But philosophy deals with the definitions of things. In fact, one could argue that much of the discipline of philosophy is merely a search for the meanings of things. That is one reason that the intellectual morass of this culture is so extremely frustrating. The targets are always moving, and meaning is not only difficult to find, but altogether impossible to find. This current intellectual terrain creates one of the most curious creatures in the history of human thought: The Authoritarian Relativist. This is the person who argues that philosophical, theological, sociological, anthropological, and political systems of thought are all creations of various language communities; and at the same time argues vehemently, vituperously, that they are correct and that you will be cancelled or far worse if you don't march lock-step with them to the Bastille. Theirs is zeal born of stupefaction grounded in the capricious will.
We see this insanity of ever sliding and ever evolving definitions especially in the area of the current cultural issues concerning racism. I decided that I would address some of the terms and offer a few comments on how to arrive at meaning.
Racism (old potentially objective meaning): The belief that a person's ancestry, skin color, and the like, makes him or her superior to those of other races, and as such he or she can hate and mistreat the "other."
Racism (currently approved meaning): White people only are unaware of their many sins of omission with respect to racial advantages and must rely on others to suggest various acts of penitence to correct for said privilege. Note that the white person in question is de facto guilty of this, even if he or she never hated or mistreated another person on the basis of race, or even if he or she is a poor white immigrant. The meaning here is conflated with "unconscious bias" and "implicit racism," also terms with conveniently malleable definitions.
Comments: We are sinful human beings, selfish and obnoxious and the like. No one is claiming sinlessness, but perhaps it is important to find the truth in these things. Just because we are guilty of the general sin of selfishness doesn't mean we are guilty of every species of sin that is energized by selfishness. In other words, if I do something wrong against others, or if I fail to do something good, how can it be determined that such a sin can be put down to racism rather than generic selfishness? Is it just because some of the wrong things I've done or good things I've failed to do have been done to those of other races? But what if I am consistent across all races in this respect? If it becomes clear that I am a prideful man, does it follow that I have obviously cheated on my spouse? Again, the general doesn't include every specific, nor is omission proof of this. If I have failed to do more about child slavery in Asia, does it follow that I am prejudiced against Asians? If I don't give money to the abused low caste in India, does it follow that I am a racist against Indians?
It should also be said that it is easy work to conflate, and that is why anyone can be counted as a racist today. C.S. Lewis was first and foremost a linguist, and his analysis of the word "gentleman" and the word "Christian" is telling. He was prophetic in demonstrating that both terms would become largely meaningless words. When words are deconstructed, broadened, made subjective through updating and pushed into sloppy relationships with other words, then they become meaningless, unless the group in which they are being used agrees with their use in that limited context. But then we wonder what purchasing power they can have in a different context where the word is being used differently? It is clear to me that the postmoderns are to blame for this disastrous cheapening of human language and thus human thought, and it has only exacerbated the very conflict they blamed upon the linguistic realists. Of course you will fight with someone who thinks you are evil! The problem is that some won't even give you a meaningful definition. What is evil anyway? This nonsense can only lead to gulags and guillotines, or at the very least our current civil cultural war.
White Privilege (old potentially objective meaning): The positive belief that any white person inherits a set of concrete legal and societal advantages on the basis of skin color alone.
White Privilege (currently approved meaning): The broadened and internalized negative belief that a white person need not autobiographically and subjectively fear negative societal outcomes because of skin color, but all black people do.
Comments: This new definition is why this matter has become one of narrative. We hear stories of the experiences of black people who at one time or another felt slighted on the basis of race. How many counterexamples of black people who don't fear negative societal outcomes, even if they experienced instances of racism, must we find before this definition must be reworked and broadened and internalized further? Certainly many black people can recognize an instance of racism without seeing a reason to project that upon the entire society, even when that instance was in their own experience.
And what about the mutually self-cancelling claims of all the other people with all their experiences? Even though they economically outperform whites in America, it is possible that an Asian American has a story or two to share of racial difficulty. White people with neck and face tattoos probably fear negative societal outcomes based on appearance, or at least they could share a story or two of discrimination. What about the issue of obesity? Do obese individuals feel discriminated against in our culture, and because they feel this way do they also have a claim to fearing negative societal outcomes on the basis of externals only? What about poor people in general, whose clothing is dirty and tattered?
Again, the reason for the second definition is because the first definition is unworkable in America in the year 2020. But nothing is really won with this new definition as it merely in the end atomizes what one is trying to demonstrate is systemic. If racism boils down to "well, I personally had this experience..." then that is only proof that an individual met a sinful human being whose sin was individually expressed in racism. It says nothing about whether or not that particular sin is enshrined in law or in the hearts of the whole society.
Equality (old potentially objective meaning): The belief that there should be no legal barriers placed upon individuals in their attempts to seek happiness. And everyone is accountable to the law to do what it dictates, even those of high station. If there are unjust laws, then equal voting in a democracy should create an environment to correct for such things.
Equality (currently approved meaning): Various measures should be taken to provide everyone, but especially historically disadvantaged groups, with the same education, healthcare, wealth, influence, and all, that the wealthiest among us have always enjoyed. The state must intervene to redistribute wealth and opportunity. In other words, Socialism!
Comments: A lot of conservative commentators have noticed the equivocation fallacy in this kind of thinking. It confuses "equality of outcome" with "equality of opportunity." Dalrymple's question is a powerful one. He asks the following: If society "owes" it to all people to receive education, healthcare, food, shelter, entertainment, opportunity, etc, then why on earth would anyone work for such things or be grateful for them if received? All one needs to do is to demand them because of the human capacity to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide.
Thomas Sowell is also right! Socialists have assumed that legal equality is the same as "cosmic equality." What Sowell means by "cosmic equality" is the belief that everyone ought to have an equal portion of everything, including presumably natural talent, opportunity, money, education, and all. But is that reality? The simple fact is that people are unequal, and how is one to measure the impact of hard work? Identical twins often end up unequal in achievement. How is such a thing possible? Because there are inequalities at work for which human societies are not responsible. Why is one industrious man stricken with cancer and another less industrious man succeeds? Why do most slothful or morally compromised men make little of their lives? Is it all to be put down to external factors such as the "failure of society?"
Justice (old potentially objective meaning): Plato wrote an entire massive work on this single concept and came down with a rather elegant definition involving a balance between appetites, reason, and honor in a society and also in the individual. Christianity has always argued that justice, or what it calls righteousness, is grounded in the character of God, which is well described in the pages of the Bible and thoroughly translated into actionable dictates in the Ten Commandments. Older generations took the concept seriously, and whatever their difficulties in defining justice, had rather strict and serious systems that they developed to capture and meaningfully enforce it. Lex Talliones is at the heart of western justice systems, for example, and deeply affects our legal system to this day. If a man does evil act A, he deserves a fair punishment for said act. Such a rule of law should be fairly distributed across the entire society so that even the rich and powerful are to submit to general laws. As such, justice was not thought of by these luminaries as simply a feature of power, but a matter of rational accountability to higher truths grounded in the design plan for the human race.
Justice (currently approved meaning): We now have the social justice variety of the old concept of justice, which is far less boring, but is also utterly terrifying. Ask the typical social justice warrior pushing for equality what Plato or the Bible or the constitution may mean by justice and you will always hear a single response: "Those people are from the old patriarchal paradigm that took advantage of slaves and women and the poor. All their ideas of justice are part of a system meant to secure power and personal advantage, etc." In other words, justice was and is a feature of capricious power only. The answer to their power is to cause the pendulum of power to swing to those who don't have it currently. That is justice! Old systems are to be thoroughly purged and replaced with new systems. From whence come these new systems and this new definition of justice? The answer is frankly anyone, but mostly those with the will to assert their power. Nietzsche must be thrilled from his spot in hell that there are those committed to making hell of the earth.
Inequity is conflated with injustice, and also limited to certain disadvantaged groups. In short, "justice" collapses to vengeance for past sins, to be enforced against the "groups" guilty of those past sins. Should all the sins of all the groups be put through such corrections? Well of course not, because that would take us into irrelevant abstractions. But if there are certain people whose experience of the abundance of the American experience is lacking, then they can always comfort themselves with the hope that they too can overthrow the current power structures someday. And on it goes ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Welcome to the justice to be enforced by the wolves all around you. The teeth they bear is their ideology!
