Justice & Dignity?

[agoodwinsmith]

I am struggling with the word "freedom". Not only because has it been co-opted to mean an anarchic strong-take-all, but even in its idealistic form, I don't think it captures what I want my society to prioritize.

I recently read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber & Wengrow. I recommend it to you.

One of the things the book does is interrogate our use of the social term "equality". They argue that the use of the term equality is ultimately based on an impulse to treat everyone as interchangeable parts - equal because indistinguishable. This often leads to cruelty and neglect in real terms for real people.

I think I want to replace equality & freedom with justice & dignity.

I don't think these are unproblematic. The concept of justice is underpinned by "fairness" which I think has moving goal posts just like all the other concepts. Dignity is underpinned by "pride" and each culture prioritizes different sources of pride for itself and its various members (male & female, for instance).

Something is missing.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I found those conceptual frameworks fascinating. I'm not sure I fully agree with the authors' framing of the three types of freedom, but it's a starting point to examine what freedom actually means. I also appreciated the framing of equality, which can mean as diverse things as "everyone is equally miserable under the king," "everyone is exactly the same," and "everyone is such a fuckin' weirdo that there can't be any sort of hierarchy." Obviously the last one is the kind of equality my ideal society would have.

I also really like the framing of rights vs. responsibilities that I think I encountered in Chelsea Vowel's writing?

[agoodwinsmith]

Yes. I have seen this in Indigenous memes, etc. I haven't read Chelsea Vowel.

For me, though, those are a subset of justice. We don't really have rights unless we have a society that values rights, and also thinks everyone should have some.

[sabotabby]

I think you'd love Chelsea Vowel.

But yeah. No justice, no peace was a good slogan. Weird that I never hear it anymore.