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May 05, 2010
The difference in quality between
human beings is always a matter
of degree and emphasis.
The things that makes one human being
worthy of respect and another of
contempt are likely to be very subtle
qualities -- the things that are
important to us are always elusive.
There's a tendency to over-generalize, to
focus on the trivial. The street person
is unshaved and wears dirty pants, so we
insist on being neatly trimmed and freshly
washed, but these are at best symbolic of
something else, they say nothing about why
you turn away from the street person's
chatter, but converse with a stranger at
the produce market.
SCUMZOIDS
At the moment, I'm being distracted by
some scumzoids happily chattering outside
my window. But how different their aimless
chatter from that of the productive citizen? "Productive
It drives me up the wall at least in part citizen"?
(and perhaps in the whole) because of
a knowledge of who they are. It's hard to even
talk about this
stuff without
coming off like a
stiff snob.
We believe in
political equality
as an ideal
(certainly I do),
an equality
"before the law".
But no one lives
as though they
think all human
beings are
really "equal".
We spend much of
our lives
evaluating human
beings, looking
for good
employees, good
lovers, good
artists...
But we don't have
anything like
an accepted
vocabulary for
discussing the
inequality of
human beings.
scumzoids vs
"citizens"?
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