No two things are alike, so no two things can be equal.
What does it mean therefore to have the equals sign?
Is it something that's only "real" within mathematics?
Abraham Lincoln used the word in his Gettysburg Address. Here's the first 29 words:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created EQUAL" [my emphasis].
The speech continues on for about 240 words more, but the rest of it is fluff, and filler.
It's the last word of his first sentence on which America stands.
Here are a few problems.
One, it says, "All MEN."
What about woodchucks? He doesn't mention anything about woodchucks. Gettysburg was not seemingly fought over woodchucks.
30,000 men from the north did not lay down their life so that woodchucks could be equal to men.
Lincoln was still operating on a Christian sensibility. Julia Ward Howe, when she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, shared that sensibility.
"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on" (Julia Ward Howe, Battle-Hymn of the Republic)
Lincoln did not write in The Gettysburg Address, that America was founded on a "proposition that all SPECIES are created equal."
So far, no presidential candidate has made WOODCHUCK RIGHTS the center of their platform. (This could be our opportunity, people.)
Imagine a furious battle over woodchucks.
50,000 died at Gettysburg. Would they have died for the rights of woodchucks? Will we see a future battle in which 50,000 Lutheran Surrealists die over the rights of woodchucks?
Equality is a big problem. What does it mean that one man is equal to another? If we throw in the ERA and the notion that women are equal, with the famous sentence, "Equal pay for equal work," what does it mean, since no two people are alike, and so, no two workers alike?
How abstract is the notion of equality?
When we start to think about how abstract the notion of equality is: can we really make each person equal without making each person identical? How can there be difference, and yet still be equality?
Lincoln says that equality is a "proposition," like an axiom out of Euclid.
Let's buy it.
Does it then mean that people around the world are included?
Is someone in the Darfur equal to someone in Cincinnati?
Is the life of a little girl learning to read in Mosul worth the life of a little girl learning to read in Missouri?
How far does the equal sign extend?
Republicans claim that it's infinite. That is, that ALL MEN are created equal, and by ALL MEN, they include all children, too, (including the unborn).
Democrats have a much more limited notion. They mean, Americans. They don't want to fight outside of our borders for this abstract principle.
The Green Party wants to include animals, some of them even want to include bugs, but they are not willing to include non-Americans.
Martin Luther argued that all Christians are equal in the eyes of God, and the Pope is not ontologically greater than the lowest stinking pauper.
Jesus claimed the same thing.
St. Paul claimed that this held for the uncircumcized, while St. Peter said it held only for the Jews who believed in Christ.
Andre Breton postulated a set of beings called surrealists, who were under his command. He was their official pope. Philippe Soupault argued that surrealism was a universal, and that there were surrealists all over the world. We postulate a new movement called Lutheran Surrealism, but have yet to settle its perimeter. Will we include woodchucks or not?
It's a question of set theory. What set of beings is included under the equal sign?
6 comments:
No two things are alike; metaphor is based on comparison of two things; therefore, outside of mathematics the equals sign creates metaphor. Metaphor is one of the more common techniques we use to attempt to understand the world around us.
As I understand Surrealism, one of its fundamental techniques is the random juxtaposition. To juxtapose two objects, to place two objects in the vicinity of one another invites the reader to compare the two objects, to use one to understand the other. The random juxtaposition holds readers'/ listeners' attention when the juxtapositions are apt. Bly calls it "leaping." I can't remember exactly what Bly says, but to me, it seems that the objects must be different enough that the mind does not readily grasp the connection but instead senses that it is there. The objects must not be too different, however, otherwise the mind of the reader dismisses the connection.
The apt juxtaposition, the metaphoric leap, I guess works because often the world is also hard to understand. (I think that's also why I'm drawn to poetry like Edson's.)
Woodchucks could be equal to men, but I think it would be more apt when dealing with ideas of equality to focus on another animal which suffers from obvious oppression, perhaps free range chickens, cattle, or maybe dogs/cats. Maybe a zoo animal like the elephant. Or maybe an endangered species. Polar bears might work.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Lacking the ludic, does the juxtaposition then become too didactic?
How much equality can a woodchuck chuck?
However, I'm getting into this late, I haven't read your whole blog, but doesn't Christianity suppose that man has dominion over over the earth and its creatures? I mean, there's responsibility involved, naming and building arks and such, but dominion nonetheless.
Christianity seems to use the "greater than" & "less than" symbols in this case, in the case of the human relationship to other species. Where does the > and the < fit into juxtaposition and metaphor? What good is the ability to compare things and talk about it anyway?
reading henri de lubac again
"the drama of atheistic humanism"
he begins and ends the work
by attesting to the primitive insight of christianity
which more or less
blows jewish particularity
out of the water
or the desert what have you
and
the early church fathers
gregory nanzianzen et al
were insistant on the point
man's dignity man's nobility
rest's in the awareness of the genesis story where "created in the image and likeness of god" is the favor and identity granted to all humans
and is the distinguishing feature
we are all creatures equally created
the fact of creation assumes something of our share with all creation
the immortal soul
the intellect
the mind
the person
all one
all the evidence
we are made for god
by god
through god
to have dominion in the world
seems to require the constant acknowedgement of that principle
how the west got on to the high intesity rational "control" of nature seems to me to be an awareness that can be connected to the second great dramatic narrative in genesis
how we see ourselves and how we see the world around us can always be worked through the first two stories
how we attend to the failures to properly account for god's graciousness is wrapped up in the drama of the christian story
god so loved the world
to take god out of the equation
is to place man on equal biological footing with all the other animals
and a different ethical process seems to occur
wasn't it dostoevsky who said
something to the effect
"if god does not exist, everything is permitted"??
the moral depravity of man tends to get couched in language of "animal"...they are animals!!
mary midgely seems to take a more sober and serious look at animals finding in her own observation and the evidence from the field of scientific inquiry that animals are indeed noble in their own right
and less prone to drastic violence than humans within th econtext of their biosphere they act and react with interesting and noble character even while being far more predictable than humans
barry lopez in
"of wolves and men"
stated that there is not one verifiable account in all of history where a wolf has attacked a human being
undoubtedly where there was
injury and misfortune in the wilds perhaps a wolf took advantage
the point being
the human imagination did more to
castigate the wolf in evil terms
than any wolf did in manifesting its own character
without god
man/woman forsakes nobility and becomes more bestial than the beasts
your thinking
kirby
is important in forming my thoughts this summer
thanks
j
Jack, what a lovely reminder to bring metaphor and Breton's notions back into the equality sign question.
I think it's in the Second Manifesto where he discusses what he calls the "arc of the spark" between two images, and says it is the "beauty" of the comparison that determines the value. He explicitly mentions Lautreamont's umbrella and sewing machine on a cadaver table, as being this kind of image. He says that they can't happen consciously, they must just come.
Bly's book on leaping poetry -- leaping from conscious to unconscious -- another very strong part of that surrealist lineage.
I suppose I was just thinking mathematically -- that no two things can be identical, and so to say that they are equal is somewhat odd.
Has one plus one even been proven, or is it something that we have to take on faith?
John Hanson -- thanks again for this viewpoint --
Genesis argues for STEWARDSHIP -- which implies a certain kind of responsibility -- we get to name the animals, but also have responsibility toward them, right?
This puts us in something of the same position re nature that God has toward us.
At any rate, we are made in His image, but are we equal to God?
According to St. Thomas I thought the hierarchy was made according to the amount of freedom experienced --
rocks have none
plants have a little more
then animals
then women
then men
then angels
then God.
God has perfect freedom so he also has total responsibility, according to Aquinas.
That chain of being has been discombobulated since Darwin -- but does it mean that I'm equal to a centipede? Some greens say yes.
Peter Singer argues for the equality of species.
At any rate -- to Jack Martin -- there's no beginning to this forum, and no end. We're always in the middle is all, so feel free to join in. Jack Martin is a very good poet look up his poems -- he teaches high school in Colorado.
I sold him a book through Amazon.com by the poet Russell Edson and it's developed into a conversation.
Ha.
At any rate, we're also reading British philosopher Mary Midgley this summer (at least a few of us are) she's interested in animals but is against the sociobiology of Richard Dawkins and is almost 90 years old.
Her books try to locate our relationship to animals without either declaring them equal to us, or without saying that we have no responsibility whatsoever.
I'm now reading her autobiography The OWl of Minerva.
There WERE apparently many owls who nested in the Acropolis back in the days of Socrates.
in god there is no distinction between essence and existence
- thomas aquinas
and that does translate to freedom
animals can be trained
to do human like acts
but on their own
animals do not aspire
to be like humans
while it seems somehow
in the march of
humanity there is this idea
that our ethical life
is bound up in our
striving to be what god intends us to be
or whjat we think god might want us to be
our minds it seems to me
are fundamentally analogical
always knowing one thing
in terms of another
what is bly doing these days??
he's poet laureate
of the state where i live
i don't hear anything
but then
there's always a lot goin on
maybe he'll pipe up
during the republican convention
bars in the twin cities
get to stay open
until 4 a m
while the convention lasts
don't know what that's all about
windbags and all
anon
j
I saw an interview with Bly is going to come out in the next Enneagram Monthly. I'm interested to see if he knows the Enneagram.
I haven't received my hard copy of Enneagram Monthly yet.
He's still married.
I never liked his poetry but his poetics are interesting and I liked reading Iron John and the next men's book. They were savaged but I think he had a lot of good points.
Also, he was raised as a Lutheran and still seemed to understand the two kingdom's idea in some of his poems (not sure, since he's also such a Jungian).
Maybe he has a Lutheran side to him yet. Dunno.
P.S. Good comments on animals and humans. Animals never really aspire to be human if left to themselves.
There's a neat book called The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells in which a mad doctor is torturing animals into becoming human through vivisection and terror.
They don't like it much.
Wells is making fun of God in the wake of Darwin. He is asking why God tortured animals for four billion years to get them to finally become human.
It's a daunting question and I've never read a good answer, but one must exist.
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