What do you think produces inequality in society

[The Dharma Bum]

Also it is inarguable that most, if not all, of the superior creations of mankind were produced by people suffering from mental illness.



Life isn't as cut and dry as you imagine to be.

[exploited]

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

They also accepted homosexuality and trangender people. They played an important role in society as a matter of fact.

[exploited]

How about those women, handicapped people, transgendered folk, etc. who didn't want to play their assigned role? Were they allowed to?

Lol... "Early human societies were egalitarian because all people had roles."

Oh, right, makes total sense.

[Medius]

[The Dharma Bum]

[broken robot]

reading this thread, several things:

1) saying people are charismatic is different from saying that say, people should not be allowed to use drinking fountains based on their race. one is a personal characteristic that may indeed allow for a great amount of individual mobility, the other defines whole categories of people. it's not the working out of our collective subconscious as a species, it is a product of a specific time and place, based on a whole political economy of institutions, and can be changed.

2) again, there is no such as thing as absolute equality/inequality. there will never be a perfect society. alternative visions are there only to guide us in asking questions that are relevant to our time. so communism for example was born out of the industrial era as a vision to explain the great mass of suffering of people working in cramped factories. now that vision may not be as relevant in the post-industrial west given postmodern society, flexible production, etc. the question of equality is (surprise) only what is historically relevant and based on what we identify as specific problems.

3) archaeology/anthropology/whatever evolutionary science will never be able to determine "human nature" for political purposes because when we are talking about something like society we are talking about a phenomenon that, to rephrase durkheim, is something that is "sui generis" with its own laws and variables.

can we agree on these three points?

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]