Two of the major contrasts between Leftist thought and conservatism (in the Anglospheric vein) are: Whether human beings are tabula rasa upon which society can writ large vs. the idea that human nature actually exists; and society should reflect an equal distribution of power, wealth, &c. vs. the idea that we should be free to be unequal in our own way. This, to whit, is the difference between equity and essentialism.
What is equity and what is essentialism?
Equity is a term that is increasingly being bandied about by Leftist of a more academic bent. Rather than stress equality, either of opportunity or of results, to those who preach this new gospel of human interaction, people are seen as nothing more than a collection of categories—such as race, gender, sexuality, and such—that must have the proportion of power, wealth, and anything and everything else found in demographic minitude reflected in anything and everything else.
Since a purported confluence of one such declared minitude—the Kyriarchy, consisting of White, straight, male, “cis”, &c. individuals—is blamed for oppressing all others by utilizing intersectional hierarchies to trick everyone else into oppressing everyone else, the doctrine of equity must then decree that the share of power, wealth, &c. of those Kyriarchs be minimized, or even abolished, in order to compensate for their kyriarchical systems of oppression, thus giving everyone else equity in order for the dieu faux Volonté Générale to be a true democracy and reflection of the greater whole.
This is why there is such a push to minimize the perceived size of those with kyriarchical traits: In order to maximize the equity of those who stand in opposition to this miasmic oppression that is Kyriarchy. And to reach this utopian ideal of absolute equity, wherein an Earthly paradise will spontaneously arise, the Left, whether individuals are conscious of it or not, will destroy society… and blame the Kyriarchs for when it inevitably fails, for “nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed“. In other words:
“But, as Cultural Marxism has replaced traditional Marxism, the Left doesn’t just want the poor to be poorer, they wand to destroy all social mores and traditions that lead to happiness and prosperity just because not everyone is partaking of it equally.
“They’d rather the failures fail harder, provided the successful were less successful.”
This thirst for inequality in the name of equity is quickly becoming manifest. When talking to the unremoulded hoi polloi, the now nebulous term “equality” is still used, but the Left are becoming increasingly more likely to substitute this new term and doctrine of Progressive faith in a sign of increasing dominance, nay, of increasing power and privilege. We are seeing it increasingly at college campuses, government bodies, and also private institutions—all of which have an over-equitable amount of wealth, power and privilege. In other words, they feel that:
“Equity derives from a concept of social justice. It represents a belief that there are some things which people should have, that there are basic needs that should be fulfilled, that burdens and rewards should not be spread too divergently across the community, and that policy should be directed with impartiality, fairness and justice towards these ends”.
Equity, then, is a fractal of this pre-categorized demographic magnitude at all levels of social representation, in all manner of things and delineations, with representation in actual effect reflecting the pre-conceived categorizations, with each category of humans reflecting a pre-determined interest and line of thinking. That the Left have squared this circle by concomitantly believing humans to be tabula rasa wherein the dieu faux Volonté Générale, having gained apotheosis, will reflect the spiritually revealed immanetized eschation. Everything must represent this equity, be it enrollment in engineering schools or to distribution of sustenance-level imitation gruel, for once set into perfect and correct thinking and social mores, this nouveau dieu Volonté Générale that is a motile and singular will of the collective humanity becomes an unslayable deity.
In contrast, essentialism is a reflection of the Aristotelian “Law of Identity“, whereby “each thing is the same with itself and different from another”. In other words, “Everything that exists has a specific nature, each entity exists as something in particular and has characteristics that are part of what it is. ‘A’ is ‘A’.” Human being may certainly have free will, and society can evolve, affected by individuals and in turn affecting them in a great interplay of near atomic scale, but humans also have a specific nature the defines how that free will and social interplay manifests itself. This is not to say that human nature can not change or be affected this great social interplay or other factors, but it is an evolutionary change determined by what is conducive towards survival, or destructive theretowards.
A clear example of this is seen by the controversy over “gender”, whether physical and actual physiological differences between the two biological sexes is real, or if “gender” is just a social construct imposed by the Kyriarchs upon the tabula rasa of manking upon the noble savages.
An academic paper from Mississippi State University entitled “Equity or Essentialism?” by Adam Love and Kimberly Kelly clearly suggests the later. This is nothing more than a denial of biological reality and of the essential nature of the biological differences between men and women. They posit that there are only differences because society thinks that there are differences. Thus inequality and segregation are caused by a Volonté Générale corrupted by the Kyriarchs, thus preventing apotheosis and perpetuating its own existence. Love and Kelly suggest that a continuum of men and women where “many women routinely outperform many men, and in some cases, women outperform most—if not all—men in a variety of sports and physical skills/activities” is being covered up by society willing a difference by treating men and women separately, and that if society were only to be forced to abolish all distinction, then a false essence of the difference between men and women would be replaced by a new social construct; this new social construct would abolish the inequality of segregation, and usher in equity wherein there is not a whit difference between the two groups whatsoever. That this notion is demonstrably false will not shake the faith of these two authors.
In effect, women and men exists as two separate entities only because the corrupted Volonté Générale has willed it so, due to the overequitable power and privilege of the miasmic and conspiratorial Kyriarchy.
This is outright denial of objective reality. Indeed, in another academic paper, Eviatar Zerubavel of Rutgers University in an paper entitled “The Five Pillars of Essentialism: Reification and the Social Construction of an Objective Reality” champions just such a worldview. Everything is just an objective opinion—reality is just a manifestation of the Volonté Générale, be it of the deified or the kyriarchically corrupted general and motile will of society. After all, reality is just, like, your opinion man, and “realization that ‘reality” may not be what… [one] though it was” will blow your mind… must like a revelation to a connoisseur of marijuana or a generic hippie.
Indeed it is an attack on all Western thought, or even on the thought and philosophy of any rational civilization on Earth, ever. “A” is no longer “A”. “A” is whatever Humpty Dumpty cum deus decides it is. One may not be able to fully know life, the universe, and everything, but one can be certain that there is an answer (i.e. 42), but that doesn’t mean that objective reality doesn’t exist. Just because not everyone agrees on what is or is not real—does not grok or fully agree as to what something’s essence is—does not mean reality is “intersubjective” and a mere manifestation of the will and opinion of the Volonté Générale. “A” is “A”. We search for this truth from beliefs and mores that have stood the test of time as collected by religion, from the scientific method, from the application of human reason, from the notion that things that are the same are not different, and from the reproducibility of universal constants; these are the “five pillars” that Zerubavel is claiming to be a great lie—obviously a contrivance of the Kyriarchy—that must be rejected by the objective truth of subjectivity. Zerubavel conflates the perception of reality with reality itself, such that perception proceeds reality, rather than perception flowing from reality, going so far as to explicitly call for reification of social constructs, clearly by impressing such unintelligently designed contrivances at odds with objective reality on the objectively true state of mankind as a tabula rasa!
If the Volonté Générale can reach apotheosis by correct thinking of the New Soviet Man Person imposed upon the tabula rasa, than new dieu faux will always engage in correct thinking because the deified general will of mankind wills it to be so! This brave new world will take the form of absolute and perfect equity where the correct decision is always reached. Any essence that deviates from this utopian perfection must be denied as heresy, for it denies the Left’s cherised dieu faux, the Volonté Générale!
In order to perpetuate the axiomatic faith that human beings are tabula rasa that can be made equal by the imposition of subjective opinion, and that such equity being a state of total and pure social justice is an objective truth, these deniers of reality reject objective reality itself by dismissing that: Human nature exists; that men and women are a subset with distinct natures of their own; and that moreover, individuals have their own particular nature that makes them different and unequal to everyone else, to the point of denying the very existence of objective reality.
They are at odds with reality.
Reality, in the end, will win.
Pingback: In The Mailbox: 09.28.16 : The Other McCain
Pingback: Obama’s Intersectional War on the Military | The Political Hat