Tag Archives: being

Fractured Subjectivities

Just the other day I had the privilege of listening to a brilliant talk by Kris Cohen (Reed College) who examined questions of togetherness, social alienation, and what it means to “know” someone, among other things. Expanding on his book that I have, admittedly, yet to read, Never Alone, Except for Now: Art, Networks, Populations, Cohen looked at whether we can “know” someone from their social media profile(s), what anonymous search queries can tell us, if anything, about a population, and how we can be with those who we never meet. During the question and answer session, I sought to clarify a point he made and fired from the hip with a question/objection. As I’ve had slightly more time to think on the issue, I feel as if I ought to expand upon it and see how it might apply to other instances.

Towards the beginning of his talk, Cohen brought up the Twitter page of @tinynietzsche (embedded below) as an example of a “person” he somewhat knew. More precisely, Cohen brought up @tinynietzsche’s Twitter page along with a few other social media accounts to make the point that these accounts, these “people,” merely referenced externally existent individuals. Before raising any objection, I wanted to make sure I correctly understood the argument so as not to strawperson Cohen and, so far as I can recall, his re-affirmed thesis ran something along the lines of “When I view this Twitter account, I’m in some relation with this person, but I can only say that I know a ‘part’ of them. They have an external life that I do not and cannot know as I only have access to limited information about them.”

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Equal in Ability vs. Equal in Being

So there’s a sad trend that I’ve noticed that occurs both in neo-reactionary circles as well as on Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance and that is to conflate equal in ability to equal in being. Specifically, the argument that is often touted is that “well some people are stronger than others and some races are smarter than others etc. so you can’t say humans are equal!”.  (an example is this article)

But to say this is to commit a fallacy. It assumes that the argument egalitarians make is that true human equality means that humans are all the same, when in actuality the argument is not that all humans are exactly the same, rather, that there is some common standard amongst humans and this standard (which I’ll talk about later) is constant. And if this standard is constant, it is a baseline for what it means to be human and thus, on the most rudimentary level, creates possessing this standard or characteristic (humans) would be ontologically equal – that is, equal in being.

This would be, for the most part, a species classification. For example: some breeds of dogs are smarter than others, some are more aggressive than others, and some are just down right cute. [fig 1.] But at the end of the day, they are all still dogs and thus, if one assigns moral judgements based on species, they would be ontologically equal while not being physically equal.

[fig 1. – My little baby in a cowboy hat for New Years!]

Now humans are an interesting bunch (one that I don’t care for all too much) in that there is debate over whether there is a unifying standard, that is, something that every human has and is something that makes us human. Theists would argue a soul, Kantian’s would argue rationality (haha), and others would argue nothing. I honestly have no idea. I have no idea if such a standard exists. So I will leave with a comment and a few residual questions. I don’t know if there is some unifying feature in humanity and to be honest, I don’t care a huge amount. But I do care when people falsely conflate equal in ability to equal in being. They are not one in the same – someone can be one but not the other (much like a square is a rectangle but not vice versa per se).

So readers: is there a unifying human standard? I would love to hear what you think.

But in your analyses please consider the following questions:

  • is the standard inherent to what it means to be human – that is, do all humans meet it?
  • if some don’t meet it, are they not human?
  • and if so, how should one evaluate them?