Can you have "empowerment" without "inequality"? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14928170
My latest deep thinks brought me to this question. I'm fascinated by people who seem to be obsessed with "empowerment" and wonder what exactly they're thinking. Obviously they tend to be people who do not feel very powerful. They are also typically obsessed with equality. What I wonder is, can merely achieving equality with someone else really be considered a form of power?

As a recent US Supreme Court case brought up, there was this gay couple who viewed empowerment and equality in terms of sending an old man who disagreed with them to a re-education camp. I'm not sure if that's really equality, it struck me as rather tyrannical.

A justification for this is sometimes that white Christians (or whatever) were tyrannical in the past, so being tyrannical back at them is how you even the scales. Aside from how class based (and not genuinely individualistic) this dialogue is regarding that example, notice how equality there is essentially defined as having a tyrannical power.

So what I am trying to ask is, how can social equality and social power actually go together if social power is, by most definitions, the ability to influence and force others to do things? Necessarily if you have power over them, you and they are not equals. I suppose the counter argument to this, in terms of the Christian baker and the gay wedding cake situation, is that they are equal in rights -- the baker has to bake their cake, and if they were bakers, they would also have to bake his cake. But that is also where the rub or catch is; they aren't bakers, only he is a baker, so trying to apply this kind of rights-based analysis doesn't actually make sense upon a deeper inspection because they are different kinds of people.

What exactly justifies or undergirds such a system of values, a fantasy that the plaintiffs could/might also become bakers? A fantasy that bakers are the same as everyone else, even though the expectations applied to a baker and a non-baker are completely different in this case?
#14928191
The Evolution Of American Thought In Its March Towards Communist Totalitarianism:

1. The Social Contract: We All Equally Own A Collective Monopoly On Security and Defense, But Equality Still Generally Means Liberty To Do As One Pleases In Other Cases.
2. Federalism: All Social Contracts Are Subject To A Greater More Centralized Social Contract And We Are All Equally Subject To Its Decrees, But Otherwise Can Do As We Please.
3. Early Progressivism: We Are All Equally The Responsibility of The State Regarding Our Well-Being, But Otherwise Can Do As We Please.
4. Neo-Liberalism: We Are Equally Own Owned By The State, But Some Oppressed Folks Need To Be More Equal, We Are Equally Forbidden To Do As We Please.
5. The Radical Left: All Are Equally State-Slave, Except White Christian Men, Who Are Technically Superior, So We Need To Exterminate Them So They Will Never Be Able To Do As They Please.

Imagevia Imgflip Meme Generator
#14928453
My latest deep thinks brought me to this question. I'm fascinated by people who seem to be obsessed with "empowerment" and wonder what exactly they're thinking. Obviously they tend to be people who do not feel very powerful. They are also typically obsessed with equality. What I wonder is, can merely achieving equality with someone else really be considered a form of power?

As a recent US Supreme Court case brought up, there was this gay couple who viewed empowerment and equality in terms of sending an old man who disagreed with them to a re-education camp. I'm not sure if that's really equality, it struck me as rather tyrannical.



Maybe a deeper think would be a good idea? Just thaying.

Achieving equality with the rest of society is certainly empowering for a group of people who didn't used to have it.

Anyway, that's not quite what happened , is it? A man running a business thought he could ignore a law that didn't suit him, only to discover he couldn't.

As he went on to insist he ought to be able to ignore a law that didn't suit him, he got sent away to learn exactly why he was wrong about that.

I don't see anything tyrannical in that. Seems fair enough.
#14928458
snapdragon wrote:Maybe a deeper think would be a good idea? Just thaying.

Achieving equality with the rest of society is certainly empowering for a group of people who didn't used to have it.

Anyway, that's not quite what happened , is it? A man running a business thought he could ignore a law that didn't suit him, only to discover he couldn't.

As he went on to insist he ought to be able to ignore a law that didn't suit him, he got sent away to learn exactly why he was wrong about that.

I don't see anything tyrannical in that. Seems fair enough.

Your description of events is actually totally wrong, it wasn't illegal at the time he did it and he ended up winning the court case. Regardless, I wasn't talking about the case so much as whether or not it makes sense for equality and re-education camps to go together.
#15108040
Right, let's try and break down what you're thinking about.

Various groups who have been historically disempowered (it seems you would agree with this - otherwise it's another discussion), work, and are supported, to empower themselves. At a minimum, this implies they have more power than before, incomparison to the people who had more power than then. If they gain enough, they have equal power. If they gain even more, they have now more power than those who previously did. We assume we are looking for everyone to have equal power.

Now you're puzzled over the idea that having equal power might imply neither side can influence the other. They are in a stale mate.

So having equal power might not imply I can't be influenced by anyone else. For instance, let's assume all people, as citizens have equal power, as citizens. But if one of them breaks the law, can they then be, for instance, put in prison or fined? Yes, because those punitive functions of society would be carried out by citizens acting as enforcers of the law - judges, police etc. - not simply as citizens. They wouldn't have the power to do those things just as fellow citizens.

Now that's talking about power in the sense of what is permitted (morally or legally) for a person, or representative of the law, to do. But there is another sense of power, which is simply the physical ability to do something or not. In this sense, it would be strictly true that people of equal power couldn't force each other to do anything, as they would simply cancel each other out. And it would also mean that a person who, for instance, was physically weaker than another (I realise there are other ways in which you can be stronger or weaker than another - you might be a muscle-bound person who is emotionally fragile, for instance), without some kind of augmentation, could never be empowered compared to someone who was stronger.

I don't want to say that these two things are completely distinct. For instance, when someone is physically disabled, we might talk about empowering them, and part of that might be equipment which will lessen their physical disability. But part of it will also be them arguing they have certain rights, and asking that other people acknowledge that they do. When we are aiming for equality, I guess we are recognising that some people have been treated as if they had fewer rights than everyone else. When/If everyone recognises this, then they have been empowered in an important sense. We might also both help people to overcome physical or other weaknesses that they have, as much as can, and is compatible with recognising others as equals (so taxing a billionaire heavily or even stopping the ability for people to accrue billions (as I'd aim for) so as to allow other's in poverty to live a decent life and have a decent place to start from is fine, but taking their partner because someone else doesn't have one isn't, as it's people's legitimate free choice who they shack up with).

Now what rights people have is a debateable issue. Depending on what you think those rights are, you may have a different opinion on the baker case. But it won't be because you are against people being empowered in general. If you are, it can only because because you don't think that people have rights (and hence can't be deprived of them), or because you think that empowerment is purely about whether someone can force another to do their will, and equal empowerment logically rules out this happening. Hopefully I've made a clear argument of how someone can force you to do something, but it not simply be that you are now unequal, but that they are enforcing on you rights they hold which are ultimately based on the same equal rights they hold.
#15108061
Victoribus Spolia wrote:The Evolution Of American Thought In Its March Towards Communist Totalitarianism:

1. The Social Contract: We All Equally Own A Collective Monopoly On Security and Defense, But Equality Still Generally Means Liberty To Do As One Pleases In Other Cases.
2. Federalism: All Social Contracts Are Subject To A Greater More Centralized Social Contract And We Are All Equally Subject To Its Decrees, But Otherwise Can Do As We Please.
3. Early Progressivism: We Are All Equally The Responsibility of The State Regarding Our Well-Being, But Otherwise Can Do As We Please.
4. Neo-Liberalism: We Are Equally Own Owned By The State, But Some Oppressed Folks Need To Be More Equal, We Are Equally Forbidden To Do As We Please.
5. The Radical Left: All Are Equally State-Slave, Except White Christian Men, Who Are Technically Superior, So We Need To Exterminate Them So They Will Never Be Able To Do As They Please.

Imagevia Imgflip Meme Generator


So when do we get to the communist part, again? As far as I can see, it's just as much sink or swim as it has been for the last 50 years, & a handful of billionaires own the state lock stock and barrel. That's some mighty fucked up communism.

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