WARNING! This post may contain opinions or ideas that could be perceived as offensive to some individuals. The intention is not to cause harm or discomfort. If you feel that you may be offended or uncomfortable with differing religious opinions, I kindly advise you to refrain from reading further.
This post is meant to be read in the context of some of the other posts I have published on this blog [7][8] and I may cover some of the ideas in this post in more detail based on the availability of time.
The cause of discrimination and can it is justified as a form of deterrence
At the heart of discrimination is our sense of deservingness of another of some resource we have authority over. So like many other social conflicts, discrimination is a matter of distributive justice. Distribution of wealth, power or opportunity.
In the past successful civilizations ruled through autocracy and through the division of the population into classes which self regulated access to resources and opportunity. Deviants to social norms may have been deterred through non-subtle discrimination and subtle discrimination, to be made into public examples (if greek myths and such are taken to have more merit than bed-time stories). The discrimination an ancient man might have faced was certainly far worse (on average) than what we may face in modern times. Access to knowledge on philosophical inquiries into morality and the nature of reality were trapped in silos in various civilizations across time and land in the hands of the great philosophers of the times. So the danger posed by such knowldge would have not been a great concern.
Over the past millennia we have made great progress towards bringing many forms of discrimination to light where we have tackled them them through social change and laws. It is much harder now to discriminate someone based on gender, race, religion or level of nationalism. But we still allow subtle discrimination .
We may use subtle discrimination as a form of deterrence to regulate our communities and at times even our countries. Greek myths (and such) suggests how communities may have used such subtle means to tackle social issues, dissent against social norms and authority. For example, the myths where Athena ties Tiresias for seeing her naked and Artemis turning Siproites into a woman for seeking her naked can be interpreted as symbols of how poverty and shame based denial of reproductive success may have been used as punishment against non conformance to social norms. We still see synonymous situations to such myths in some modern day communities.The problem with such subtle forms of deterrence is its lack of transparency and objectivity with regards to the guilt of the accused. Further, the debate on moral relativism makes the use of this form of punishment even more questionable . This is why when such subtle forms of discrimination against a group or an individual gain country wide or global support that it turns into something that harms all humanity. I am of the opinion that subtle discrimination should not reach the point of bodily harm, dehumanization, or denial of reproductive success or be used to prevent fair access to wealth and opportunity.
What is autonomy?
We usually use the noun “autonomy” in the context of care for differently abled people or the elderly but this concept has been pondered by many philosophers (from Plato to Kant) as a general human characteristic. It conveys the degree of agency we have over our own minds, bodies and, and lives. To think this concept through analogies, we may be able to understand how an Olympic gymnast has more control over his body than the average abled man, we may also understand how the average abled man has more control over his body than an elderly man using a walker. This is autonomy over the body. We may be able to understand how Sam Harris (a popular western advocate of meditation) has more control over his own mind under the influence of alcohol than an illiterate man who has been consuming alcohol all his life. This is autonomy over the mind.
Autonomy over life must be conceptualized as two distinct parts. The first part easy to observe and comprehend, we may be able to understand how a secretive billionaire has more control over his life choices than an outcast from a lower socio economic background from an undeveloped country.
To understand the second part autonomy over life, we may consider ideas found in religion and philosophy. Both Plato and Aristotle believed in a God and gods. Plato envisioned solving the psychological issue of man and the moral requirement by creating classes of men through the myth of the metals and enforcing the classes with supernatural sanctions. With the highest honors bestowed upon philosophers [1]. Aristotle having bread a Philosopher in this context, saw gods as powerful but pitiful creations to whom the world moves as a total motive of the operations of the world. Much like a gift of a golden necklace moves the heart of the lover [2]. He envisioned the gods as pitiful creations as the gods were seen as objects as opposed to a living things and as they were restrained in their actions. By the time the western civilization had progressed to the time of Francis Bacon, these philosophical concepts had been assimilated into catholicism and possibly into protestant forms of Christianity. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor is a fictional tale of such a god being allowed to be made in the 16th century era and how it could not be allowed at the time because of the narrative of the church.
Bacon being credited by some as the father of modern science, was able to continue the western pursuits of philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality in a secular manner. Becon writes “For a while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further, but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to providence and deity” [3]. While his reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave is an acknowledgment to the explainability of empirical truths deliverable by science, his choice to justify the need of providence and deity as a means of explanation are contradictory to the analogy that accompany the Idol of the Theatre, one of four idols he went out to identify as hindrances to the pursuit of western philosophical progress. Further, though he is considered a pioneer of science he had repeatedly renounced atheism, such as when he wrote “I rather believe all the fables of legend, the Talmud.. than that this universal frame is without a mind” or “a little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth man’s minds about to religion”. (the use of the noun philosophy must be put in context of his time). Taking into consideration the influence of classical greek philosophy, his Christian upbringing, and other incidents that took place in his time, I am of the opinion that he was able to comprehend the perspective Aristotle’s gods would have had as they existed among mere men. How such gods caused events around them and how the world to them was at times a metaphor reacting their actions. He may have tried to overtly communicate this insight in the analogy he used in the Idols of the Theatre. I believe if my claim is valid, his intentions were well meaning as not everyone who might have godly insights into reality could handle it, let alone discern insights from the noise or have the moral maturity to not cause harm. This may be why he held the opinion that philosophy should be considered a separate way of expressing and comprehending reality from art and science. That philosophy should direct the course of science.
This idea of causal gods, has some resemblance to the concept of providence and the eastern concept of Karma. A humanist may even speculative if they are conceptualizing the same phenomena at different degrees of accuracy or to cater to social preferences and needs. This how we can understand the second part of autonomy over life using western philosophy.
What is autonomy based discrimination?
Autonomy based discrimination is when someone is discriminated against for having more than the average amount of autonomy over mind or life or seeming to have to have less than the expected amount of autonomy over mind.
Lets first discuss the the side of this spectrum most of us are aware about and want to avoid. Most of us would agree we want to avoid enabling someone like ‘Meursault’, the protagonist of Albert Camus’s the outsider [8]. An able bodied man who’s autonomy over mind may have been compromised who finds himself having committed a murder. Camus’s absurd philosophical inquiry asks us if it is moral to allow the legal system to allow such man the death penalty? And if we are all partially at fault if we fail to comprehend the cause is possible lack of autonomy over mind. I am inclined to believe Camus being a renowned philosopher, was aware of Plato’s view on what distinguishes a man from a beast is his ability to develop the faculties that allows him to keep the beast at bay and exercise it in a civil manner.
But what about the other end of the spectrum? Hypothesize a world where we are living among gods and our actions and even the very world moves for them. Would it be fair to up root our lives, our beliefs, give up on our dignity and possessions for such gods? Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” looks at this problem from the perspective of the 16th century church. The author conveys why the church would not have allowed such a god to have lived among us as his existence and acceptance would disprove the authority of the church over man. Since the western enlightenment, some of the classical greek philosophical meta-physical explanations that were assimilated into Christianity, have been rediscovered by secular philosophers. But unlike with the church, since there is no central body to regulate access to such information and discourage the misuse, some ideas found in philosophy and speculative fiction (such as the possible hidden meaning in Bacons Idol of the Theatre) are being used in the modern capitalistic system for profit making motives. This may not be categorically wrong, but it can lead to disastrous outcomes (I will cover one such outcome in this post).
One of the philosophical inquiries of Camus’s homage to the greek myth “The Myth of Sisyphus”[6], is the motivation of such a god to keep on living, fighting against the restraints of the rulers of society enforced by classes of people divided by superstitions given supernatural sanctions (myth of the metals). The lowest classes may enforce the restrains out of pure greed or ignorance. The middle classes being more religiously and culturally affluent, require supernatural sanctions and depending on the level of access they have to their version of the sacred, they are given justification on the clondemnation that must befall on Sisyphus. The ones that avoid the philosophical death (as Camus had put it), may go onto become the rules, who may end up justifying the restraints using egalitarian arguments, fear or through supernatural sanctions others have given to their new age beliefs. Speculative fiction such as Philip K. Dicks Minority report, Blade Runner and even some allusionary ideas found in Douglas Adams Dirk Gently series may give insights into some of the means of these sanctions and the motives of such a hypothetical ruling class with regards to portraying a Sisyphus as a Meursault.
The moral danger of autonomy based discrimination
To Plato morality is the effective harmony of the whole [1] and one motive of philosophy is to better understand this whole. As Bacon writes “Nature can’t be commanded, except by being obeyed.”[5] And this is what humans have done over the millenia through beliefs, religion, philosophy and science. Understanding nature and using it in ways that are of benefit to them. Such as discerning the flow of things through the idols of the theater and aligning their lives and businesses with what they have discerned. For example, we see how some companies use subtle means to assist employees who are on the cusp of personal revolutions to have these revolutions, and in turn they profit through the alignment they have made with the natural phenomena behind such situations. But the motivation of the company and the employee needs to be genuine. Both individuals who pretend for their benefit and or insincere or ignorant well wishers who use such individuals for short term profit do so at moral danger to themselves and at the expense of compromising their own autonomy, as nature has its own plans that we may not stray too far away from.
The danger of autonomy based discrimination to others is in the way it is enforced when the discrimination is done at the level of a country or globally. As discussed earlier on in this post, to gain support to discriminate an individual or a group at a systemic level of a country or globally, a social system like the “myth of metals” must be used, and using such a system across a morally relativistic landscape can lead to large number of individuals and groups being pushing into committing immoral acts. Plato has expressed that we are member of each other and as such we carry a moral requirement.[1] This idea of the moral requirement and the repercussions of not meeting it is learned by followers of Abrahamic religions. But such lessons are harder for followers of some forms of Buddhism to learn. The situation is even worse amongst followers of new age religions and beliefs. When members of such belief systems are used to discriminate against an individual or a group, due to their blindness of the eye (allegory of the cave) they are unintentionally failing to uphold the moral requirement and they bring repercussions on themselves and others.
In closing, Profiting off of Sisyphus’s is unsustainable in modern times and we must walk away as suggested by Ursula K Le Guin’s novel “The ones who walk away from Omelas” if we are powerless to change the situations and let the systemic imbalances made by such abuses bring about retribution on those who are at guilt. And in turn modern day Sisyphus’s may educate themselves, from martyrs of the past like Spinoza and possibly Camus, and modern institutions of human flourishing to carve out fulfilling lives among mere mortals.
[1] - The republic as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[2] - Metaphysics as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[3] - Of Atheism as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[4] - New Organon as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[5] - Plan of the work
[7] - https://dumiduh.blogspot.com/2024/02/warning-this-post-may-contain-opinions.html
[8] - https://dumiduh.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-outsider-first-impressions-on-book.html
[6]
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