RE: Peterson's 12 Rules for Life v2.0-- actual book discussion
October 2, 2018 at 6:43 pm
(This post was last modified: October 2, 2018 at 7:07 pm by bennyboy.)
(October 2, 2018 at 11:21 am)Grandizer Wrote: Yeah, Benny is clearly a bright guy, but I don't get the impression that he is bothered much that there are people less fortunate who are struggling because men in power won't bother to fix the problems they themselves have contributed to and worsened.
If you can afford a computer and an internet connection, there's a starving kid out there who's missing a meal. I'll bet your yearly snack budget could feed little Akbar for about 10 years, no?
Are black people in the U.S. struggling? They have free schooling, no? A welfare system? Something like a basic health car system? Did you earn all of the benefits that citizenship in your country (I'm assuming the US) provides? Or was it handed to you by those who succeeded in establishing those systems before you?
Where do you draw the line? Help those nearby you? Well, nobody nearby me is particularly poor, since I live close to the Samsung mother ship. Should I be deeply concerned about inequity in the world? Which should I focus on-- black people who can't get into college due to low SAT scores (oh the racism!), or the families of brown people who were bombed to shit by American drones, and are sifting through mountains of rubble for garbage that they hope will be edible?
Should I draw the line at the human species? What about the millions of livestock who literally live in shit, restrained even from moving, so you can have your daily Big Mac? Am I required to care about them, as well?
(October 2, 2018 at 11:56 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: Yeah, I’m the first to admit I don’t have much faith anymore in the forces of good defeating the forces of evil, or even being all that different from them deep down, but I still have the presence of mind to not think “well, these unjust hierarchies are a good thing.” Inevitable, perhaps, and certainly difficult to take down, but not good by any means.
All hierarchies seem unjust to the majority who don't end up on the top of the pyramid. But that's not what justice is-- justice is about the social contract: each member of a society accepts certain responsibilities and has certain duties, and in that context, maltreatment of a citizen in good faith represents an unjust state.
But this isn't America's problem with racism. The problem is that America is losing hold, and ungracefully so, and needs to be firing on ALL cylinders. All citizens need to be as well-educated as possible, as healthy as possible, as motivated as possible, if America is going to avoid complete irrelevance within the next one or two generations. Anyone who doesn't think every possible dollar should be put into education, for all races and at all socioeconomic levels, is a traitor to the U.S. nation.
America as a whole, including even black citizens, is wayyyy better off than almost every other country in the world. But that's likely to end, and when it's the United States of China, we'll see what real injustice looks like.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems America is likely the most equal major nation in all history, and the fact that we can carry on a conversation like this one freely is a testament to the powers-that-be in the U.S.
