But at least everybody is special
In one of his essays, Jussi Halla-Aho
asked how it is that we can be so sure that all groups are equally
intelligent, if intelligence cannot really be measured as the IQ
opponents love to claim. The essay "Ihmisarvosta", here translated by me, makes a similar point about a notion that is even more important: the inherent worth of all humans.
In fact, I recall one of my schoolbooks explicitly quoting somebody who was supposed to be "wise" and said that as humans, we are all "equally good or equally bad". Even then as a kid, I found this idea somewhat disturbing and offensive. Since then, I most certainly have never seen anybody behaving as if they believed that everybody is of equal worth, even though this idea is constantly given devoted lip service.
But here is the essay:
In fact, I recall one of my schoolbooks explicitly quoting somebody who was supposed to be "wise" and said that as humans, we are all "equally good or equally bad". Even then as a kid, I found this idea somewhat disturbing and offensive. Since then, I most certainly have never seen anybody behaving as if they believed that everybody is of equal worth, even though this idea is constantly given devoted lip service.
But here is the essay:
An axiom is a claim whose truth is so self-evident that it doesn't need to be proven in any other way. It should be axiomatic (pun intended) that we should be careful in giving a claim the high status of an axiom. Claims that are afforded this status ought to be such that they can be seen to be self-evidently true always and everywhere.
One of the central axioms of the modern times is that all people are of exactly same worth simply as humans. Even the worst racists and anti-egalitarians try to somehow fit this axiom in their thinking. It is very incorrect to deny this particular axiom.
If you claim that everybody is of equal worth, you are simultaneously claiming that this worth is known and can be measured. If it cannot be measured, you can't verify how much each individual person is worth. This worth cannot come from outside, or at least it cannot be proven to be such, since this worth hasn't been written in stars, waters or rocks. In fact, the idea that everybody is of equal worth has absolutely no support other than being a proclamation similar to ancient "Sun revolves around the Earth", "Pope is inerrant", "women don't have souls" or "masturbation causes nearsightedness". All these claims were once accepted as widely as our belief in equality today. There was never any more evidence for these claims than there is for the idea of everybody being of equal worth. Because these claims could not be proven, they were declared as axioms that didn't need proof.
The only measurable and therefore undeniable worth of a person is his instrumental value. We can rank individuals on a hierarchy based on how much removing their skills and knowledge would weaken the society. A farmer, somebody who grows animals that produce meat or a civil engineer are more valuable than others, since without them, the others would die of hunger and cold. On the other hand, these people would survive even if all other knowledge disappeared. Somebody who can fight ranks the next, since he protects the granary and dwellings from beasts and enemies and prevents other members of society to act on their primitive instincts and destroy each other.
An artisan and his modern successors are valuable in the sense that their products improve the life of others that are above and below him in value. A scientist (especially a physicist or a chemist) is valuable, since he produces information that the artisan, soldier, civil engineer and food producers then apply in practice. We would survive without basic research, although less comfortably. A doctor has a great value, since he makes the life last longer and have a higher quality. He is not strictly necessary, since the majority of humans would survive to adulthood without him. Procreation is a necessary primary activity of all species that all other activity ultimately supports.
The people listed above materially produce pretty much the society that we live in. These professions make leisure possible along with the existential thinking that includes things like astronomy and all of the humanities. These things separate us qualitatively from monkeys, but are not necessary in any way. I have to admit, though, that thanks to behavioral sciences we are not as eager to kill each other as we once were. On the other hand, war creates cohesion inside the group and will almost always lead to technological breakthroughs.
As a general rule, artists, priests and politicians are useless. Society would function perfectly well without them, and all activities of these groups are possible only because other groups do their part. Especially artists seem to be bitter towards science, but they wouldn't paint a single painting without the chemical industry, which in turn is an applied science. The uselessness of these professions is best evidenced by the fact that they have live on alms squeezed from the rest of the society.
And the fact that they tend to be net negatives on society. The thing that personally annoys me most about artists and humanities intellectuals is how they proclaim that they are needed so that there would be beauty, even though in reality these people seem to despise anything that is beautiful, good or useful. But back to the essay.
The value of intelligence, when it is not used for anything that is necessary, is subjective, but few people deny that reading a good book or listening to reasonable arguments stimulate thinking and produce happiness. I consider it to be a strange and offensive idea that an intelligent thinker isn't more valuable than a murderer, an airheaded pop singer or a lazy bum.
Until somebody explains to me why exactly everybody is supposed to be of an equal worth, it follows from what I said earlier that I believe that differences between humans create differences in their worth and everybody is of a different worth. However, unlike the egalitarians believe, this different worth itself does not entail tossing people of lower worth to gas chambers, unless there are other good reasons for doing so. I believe that I have a higher worth than a mouse carcass lying in the forest path, but this is not a reason for me to tear the carcass apart. I believe the world is a nicer place if there is art (I'm not sure about religions or parliaments) and linguistics. But if the boat starts to leak, I consider it to be self-evident that the cargo that has the lowest worth is tossed overboard first, that is, the artists and linguists.
The egalitarian nonsense emerges from the fact that we have too many people who have a lot of energy but nothing good to do. Just like people of all eras, we are blind to the fact that we and our thoughts are nothing but a temporal flash in the endless stream of time. The future generations will spit on our graves and blow a raspberry on our self-evident axioms. There is no reason to doubt that "equality", "tolerance" and other ideas that are important for us today will end up in the list of past idiocies to the company of such ideas as Sun revolving around the Earth, Papal inerrancy, soullessness of women and nearsightedness caused by masturbation.
For some reason, I was reminded by the essay "What You Can't Say" by Paul Graham.
The only measurable and therefore undeniable worth of a person is his instrumental value. We can rank individuals on a hierarchy based on how much removing their skills and knowledge would weaken the society.
Instrumental value to whom? Unless humans have an inherent worth, there is no reason why it matters whether or not someone is useful to them. If other people are worthless, what does it matter how much you enrich their lives?
Someone might argue for a two-value system: everyone starts out with an equal value, and someone's final value is determined by how one affects events compared to other's initial values. (i.e. someone who saves 50 lives is worth 50 life value units). But any system for determining initial value will be arbitrary.
Posted by Glaivester | 7:11 PM