Slicing the Equality Cake

 

Legal equality, or something reasonably close to it, is a real possibility. There should be one set of laws that apply to rich and poor alike and regardless of skin color. Whether a person accused of murder is rich or poor, black or white, there should be the same legal process. I readily grant that such legal equality is far from actual equality. The O. J. Simpsons of the world will be able to buy themselves better lawyers and will stand a better chance of getting off. This makes economic equality sound rather attractive, recognizing that, as long as people are born with different amounts of wealth, society will never be equal in the ultimate sense. 

On the surface, economic equality sounds fairly simple. We live on a planet with resources. Every person should be given an equal amount. Equal should mean equal; nothing more and nothing less. In truth though, the simple-sounding socialist adage "to each according to their ability and to each according to their need" hides enormous complexity. Who decides what each person is capable of contributing to society and what resources each person can rightfully demand from society as their need? 

Consider the relatively simple example of dividing a cake for a classroom of students. On the surface, there does not seem to be a problem. You take the cake and divide it equally based on the number of students. Where things get interesting is when you consider that this is not the only way to divide the cake nor is it obvious that dividing the cake into equal portions is really the most equitable solution. 

Here are some other possibilities:

- The weight of the students 

-  Their parents' tax returns

- How much do they like cake

- Grades 

- Likelihood of contributing to the student's self-esteem 

- Belonging to a marginalized group

What makes this issue really tricky is that one can easily justify contradictory positions. Should students who weigh more get more cake because they require more to not feel hungry or should they get less cake to protect their health? 

Furthermore, the moment we claim to be distributing the cake fairly then the stakes are raised to an infinite degree. Obviously, it is not a big deal to not get one's "rightful" share of the cake and a student can forgive the teacher for not using a measuring tape (queue the Marvelous Midos Machine song) or for failing to achieve ultimate social consciousness. The moment that the teacher claims to be distributing the cake in an equitable fashion then to get less cake is a moral judgment on a person's ultimate value. Anyone who supported a different distribution of the cake must assume that either they were wrong and therefore they are unjust people or that the teacher was wrong and therefore an unjust person. From this perspective, we now have something worth complaining about. For that matter, we very well might have something worth killing for. One simply cannot allow injustice to triumph so utterly as to pretend to be justice. 

Recognizing that there can never be an equal solution and any attempt to do so risks Hobbesian warfare, the only practical solution is to acknowledge that, however the cake is distributed, it will not be fair in any ultimate sense. Every student will have a moral argument as to why they should have gotten more but agreeing to not push that argument is the price to have any cake in the first place.

If we are not capable of discovering an objectively just way to divide a cake among classmates, how ill-equipped must we be to handle the vastly more complex question of dividing the world's resources among eight billion people? With the stakes being literal life and death, we have even less reason that people will accept less than what they think is their fair share. Furthermore, our eight billion people have little in common with each other to facilitate compromise. Most of them have absorbed historical narratives that place themselves as the victims and every other group as oppressors. How can groups that mutually see themselves as victims and the other as oppressors ever reach an agreement? The only solution is to recognize that there can never be a just distribution.       

The Socialist Ace: What If You Were in Charge?

As a free-market person, I am sometimes jealous of socialists. They seem to march from political success to success. Even the murderous failure of the Soviet Union seems, in retrospect, a minor pothole on the road as opposed to the cliff to cast socialism forever outside of the Overton Window of socially accepted opinions. By contrast, the horrors of Nazi Germany have made it impossible to be a respectable fascist. It does not matter if you claim that the Nazis were not "real fascists" and that you support "democratic fascism." 

An essential component of recognizing the evils of fascism is a refusal to distinguish between the ideals of fascism in theory and the horrors that actual fascists inflicted upon the world. This principle extends so far that, in practice, one is forced to teach a cartoon version of fascism in school where fascists are motivated simply by hatred and a feeling of superiority over all other groups. Teaching kids that fascists were motivated by the democratic ideal of the nation coming together under the leadership of a leader who would make everyone turn from selfishness and instead work for the common good would raise too many uncomfortable questions and cannot be allowed.

Socialism, by contrast, is allowed to be judged by its ideals disconnected from its mass murders which are attributed to the personal failings of leaders like Stalin and Mao. In truth, as with fascism, the crimes of socialism were committed not because people failed to live up to its ideals but because they followed them all too well. Understand that if you truly believed that you had the solution to the problems of mankind and could make the world a loving happy place and all that was standing in your way were a few million bad people motivated merely by spite, you would agree to kill them. To refuse to save mankind out of a personal desire not to get your hands dirty with a few homicides would be monstrous.

What makes the ideals of socialism particularly appealing is a very simple question. If you look around the world, it is obvious that it is an incredibly unjust place with the world's resources distributed in a way that can neither be defended on grounds of fairness nor for its ability to maximize utility for all of mankind. If you were in charge of distributing the world's resources, could you distribute them in a way that was fairer and optimized utility? For example, it does not take a genius to come up with the idea that the world would be a better place if we paid professional athletes less and used the money to pay for lunches for poor kids.  

If you answered yes to giving kids free lunches or to any number of the schemes that are likely running through your head, then it is very difficult to resist socialism in principle. We might still have to figure out a means to make sure that the right person, someone like us, came to the top. That being acknowledged, once we solve this problem, we should be able to make the world at least somewhat of a better place. Recognizing that the world's resources are not distributed justly, it is the job of all moral people to work to redistribute resources in a way that is more equitable. From this perspective, it is hard to resist dividing the world into socialists, the good guys who work to better mankind, and opponents of socialism who want the world to be unjust presumably because they either are too ignorant to recognize that the world is unjust or because they are part of the oppressive class who are responsible for all the oppression.

Historically, most people, particularly if they have had some education, have believed that the world would be a better place if only they were in charge. One thinks of the example of Plato and his philosopher kings. It is not a coincidence that Plato was essentially a socialist who believed that the rulers of his republic should hold everything in common including wives and children. 

A partial defense against the siren call that socialism would lead to a better world if only your people were in charge is to recognize that it is unlikely that your people will ever get to put their plan for a better world into practice. Imagine that you had to choose between accepting the political/economic order that we have or agreeing to live in a world in which a random individual was allowed to redistribute resources according to their sense of justice. How many people would chance socialism then? Make no mistake that one person's version of justice is, to others, a nightmare worth forstalling even at the cost of their lives. I can imagine that certain ex-girlfriends and advisors would rather kill themselves than take a chance on living in my "just" world.    

A higher-level defense against socialism would be Hayek's "Why the Worst Get to the Top," which essentially argues that we do not even have the opportunity to take our chances with the moral sensibilities of an average person. Choosing socialism will mean submitting ourselves to the sort of moral monster willing to do what is necessary, even mass murder, in order to place themselves in a position where they can refashion a country according to their notion of justice. 

To truly break free of the spell of socialist ideals, one has to instinctually believe to the core of their being that if they were the benevolent dictator and had the power to redistribute resources according to what they believed was right, the world would not be a better place. Consider the example from earlier of using a socialized athletic system to fund education. We already have a version of this with college athletics where the millions that some athletes are worth are redistributed to universities that work for the "public good." I have a hard time accepting that the NCAA is really more just than the NBA or the NFL but I am sure readers could tweak the system to make it fairer. 

I confess, even after being a libertarian for more than a decade, I still cannot shake the fantasy that I would make a pretty good world ruler. Granted, my fantasy of being the Messiah includes a lot of telling people that they are all individuals and can think for themselves. As this is a fantasy, everyone is able to think for themselves while simultaneously doing what I would have wanted them to do anyway, saving me the effort of even having to think what orders I should have given in the first place.           

Imagine: The Nazi Version

I recently got into an argument regarding John Lennon's classic song, "Imagine."  Like most conservatives, I find the song to be dishonest precisely because it simply assumes that if we got rid of things like religion and property, society would become a happy place. What makes me a Burkean Conservative is that I can imagine very well what the world might look like if the song was ever carried out and it is a nightmare that terrifies me. The person could not imagine that I could find the song objectionable because it supported wonderful things like the end of greed and the brotherhood of men.

 One of the tactical advantages that liberals have in the war on ideas is that they get to be judged on their good intentions and never their practical results. As if being an idealist was some kind of blank check to do whatever you want. As a satirical thought experiment, I decided to rewrite the lyrics for "Imagine" in a way that holds on to its dream for a better world. The song now simply serves a different ideology. 

 

Imagine there's no afterlife

It's easy if you try

No damnation below

Just the nation above

Imagine all the people embracing the common good

 

Imagine no rigged elections

It’s easy to do

No need to be divisive

And no more Jews

Imagine all the people embracing the common good

 

You may say I'm an idealist

But I'm not the only one

I know someday you'll join our party

And the leader will make us one

 

Imagine no individuality

I wonder if you can

No need to be selfish

A bond of blood and soil men

Imagine all the people working harmoniously

You may say I'm an idealist

But I'm not the only one

I know someday you'll join our party

And the leader will make us one

 

As I hope readers have figured out, my new version of the song is now Nazi, instead of socialist, propaganda. Since all that most people know about Nazism is a strawman caricature fed to them in school, it is easy to forget that the Nazis were idealists, motivated not by hatred for non-Aryans but love for the German race. As Hayek understood, it is precisely the people who believe that they are building a better world who are most likely to commit mass murder. If you honestly believed that all that was standing in the way of a better world were a million people acting out of spite and greed. The only truly humane thing to do would be to kill them. It would be the height of selfishness to let the world fall into darkness because you do not want to get your hands dirty.

The fact that I have included "no more Jews" should no more disqualify the song from being about peace and love than Lennon's "no religions too." It should be understood that by Jews I mean Zionists, capitalists, and communists. In truth, anyone who tries to oppress other people.

As my song proves, Nazism is about people coming to work together through their mutual love of the leader. The only reason why anyone could be against Nazism is that they are selfish and do not want to work for the common good. Alternatively, they are clinging to the superstition that there are such things as free will and morality. If you fail to understand this, it is probably because you are a hateful Jew. I am not asking you to accept that Nazism is true. I just want you to broaden your mind and imagine that Nazism is something wonderful.

Female Spirituality in the Late Middle Ages and the Search for a Feminine Christianity (Part VII)

Conclusion:

There is a need, for scholarship, to separate the study of medieval women, from the modern day political issues that confront women. For me, this would mean that the study of medieval women could be carried in the same fashion as one would study medieval peasants, and merchants. In many respects the study of peasants and merchants could serve as a useful model for those who study women. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the study of peasants and merchants was hopelessly intertwined with the present day issues of Socialism, Capitalism and the rights of workers. Since then the field has matured. While the issues of Capitalism and the rights of workers have not gone away, it is possible to write about such issues in various historical contexts while completely divorcing what one writes from having anything to do with the modern incarnations of these issues. Medieval merchants and peasants were not proto-capitalists and proto-labor movements; they were their own entity and must be studying on their own terms.

Similarly, while I do not expect the issues of women’s empowerment and women’s spirituality to disappear, one should be able to write about medieval female visionaries in a way that is not a commentary on women’s empowerment and women’s spirituality in modern times. The women we have dealt with here were not some nascent women’s movement, waiting for the dawn of modernity to come out into the open. They existed within the context of late medieval Catholic theology; the issues they dealt with and their thought structures came from that world. To understood them we must remove ourselves from the equation and humbly and enter their world on their terms.

I would see the whole question whether or not female spirituality was a form of empowerment for women in the Middle Ages as a trap. The very wording of the question bespeaks of modern concerns. Today most historians would find the question of whether or not merchants in the Middle Ages demonstrated true class consciousness to be quant, silly and ultimately meaningless. It creates a false dichotomy in which one must choose between equating medieval merchants with moderns or creating straw-men out of them. The only intellectually honest response is to say that medieval merchants had a class consciousness, but not in the way that moderns would use the term; this effectively makes the term, and hence the whole question, meaningless. I would hope to see the day when the question of whether women were empowered or really created their own form of spirituality during the Middle Ages will be treated with the same scorn. To ask this question is to create a false dichotomy between saying that medieval women were like moderns or turning medieval women into straw-men for the prejudices of moderns. All one can say in response to such a question is that the whole issue of empowerment meant something very different for people in the Middle Ages, rendering the original question meaningless.

The question that should guide research is how does female spirituality fit into the larger narrative of the evolution of Christian thought in the later Middle Ages. The goal being to integrate medieval women into medieval intellectual history. One should not be able to get away with the traditional narrative of medieval religious history, going from Francis of Assisi and Bonaventure to Albert the Great and Thomas Thomas Aquinas to William of Ockham without talking about Hildegard of Bingen, Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. This has nothing to do with empowering women. This is a matter of our narrative of the Middle Ages being incomplete without them.