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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   31922 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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Alice is 5' 2"/157 cm. Bob is 6' 3"/190 cm.

Expecting Bob to get something off a high shelf for Alice does not make Bob Alice's slave.

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.

Rejecting the notion that the more able ought to help the less able is rejecting civilisation itself.

  • -11

Rejecting the notion that the more able ought to help the less able is rejecting MARGARET MEAD'S DEFINITION OF civilisation itself.

Alice has a womb and Bob does not, but Bob wants to have a genetically-related child. Since Alice is "more able" than Bob, does she therefore have an obligation to provide Bob with a genetically-related child?

Alice has a womb and Bob does not, but Bob wants to have a genetically-related child. Since Alice is "more able" than Bob, does she therefore have an obligation to provide Bob with a genetically-related child?

No, because the cost to Alice is far greater in that case.

You never said anything about the cost, merely that "the more able ought to help the less able". Now you are putting up guardrails. Fine. Define them. Exactly how "costly" must an action be to make it no longer required for the more able to help the less able?

My point was that Ayn Rand and Peter Singer are both wrong; If Alice needs help, and Bob has the means to assist, I reject both the notion that 'Bob has exactly zero obligation to help' and the notion that 'Bob is obligated to contribute even to the point of self-destruction'.

I have discovered a truly marvelous definition of one person's obligation to their neighbour, which this forum is too narrow to contain. I don't have a complete answer, but there are some useful heuristics.

For the most part, mind > body > personal possessions > non-personal property (idiosyncratically referred to by Marxists as 'private property').

The genitals and reproductive system ought not be subject to the dictates of the community, provided that everyone involved is a consenting adult.

If you do not live or work in the same place as someone else, in a modern society your obligation to them can usually be discharged by financial support, allowing them to purchase whatever they need from someone else.

So you are saying Alice has a financial obligation to Bob then? That is, she has an obligation to subsidize the cost of him having a child via surrogacy, while he doesn't have an obligation to subsidize the cost of her having a child via surrogacy since she is able to gestate a child on her own?

Alice is 5' 2"/157 cm. Bob is 6' 3"/190 cm.

Expecting Bob to get something off a high shelf for Alice does not make Bob Alice's slave.

Sure it does. Bob's got his own things he'd prefer to do. Alice's need is no call on his ability. She can go find a ladder. Or offer Bob something of value.

Rejecting the notion that the more able ought to help the less able is rejecting civilisation itself.

No, it's just rejecting Communism ("From each according to his ability..."). And Margaret Mead, I suppose.

She can go find a ladder. Or offer Bob something of value.

And if there aren't any ladders around, and Alice doesn't have anything Bob wants?

Then I'd say that Alice should perhaps make an agreement with a particularly scarce resource she is statistically overwhelmingly likely to possess, so that she can get all the things on the high shelves she wants in exchange for allowing [a] Bob exclusive access to that particular resource.

In other words, this is why marriage exists.

Genitals and reproductive systems are not a resource, and making women's survival contingent on marriage has often given abusive men the ability to inflict terrible suffering on them.

Genitals and reproductive systems are not a resource

[Citation needed.] What's the world's oldest profession?

and making women's survival

The same forces that made women's survival contingent on marriage (a physical toil) are the same forces that made men's survival contingent on physical toil. This is an isolated demand for rigor.

Of course, your theses force you into that demand, because those theses are functionally indistinguishable from "find in favor of Alice at all times". As I mentioned in the other comment, this enables Alice to functionally rack up infinite debt, and take on infinite risk, that Bob is then expected to pay for- with no other justification for that burden than "but he's better". How convenient that the lesser claim the greater is indebted to them.

has often given abusive men the ability to inflict terrible suffering on them.

Yeah, I hate working for shitty bosses too. But, as they say, it's a living.

same forces that made men's survival contingent on physical toil.

Which we have ameliorated with the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the electric motor....

this enables Alice to functionally rack up infinite debt

"The problem with infinite debts is that they are really hard to repay. On the other hand, the interest can be quite manageable." -- Slate Star Codex, May 2014

Yeah, I hate working for shitty bosses too

...which is why unions were invented.

I guess she doesn't get what's on the shelf then, unless Bob is feeling magnanimous.

And if 'getting what's on the shelf' is a metaphor for survival? Maintenance of human dignity?

Can you be certain that the precedent that you set won't come back to bite you in the hindquarters?

I would rather live in a world where the sink-or-swim, devil-take-the-hindmost, law-of-the-jungle social-Darwinist mode of organisation is left in the past and remembered as one of humanity's many mistakes, even if it means that if I become extremely wealthy my taxes will support people who are not useful to me.

And if 'getting what's on the shelf' is a metaphor for survival? Maintenance of human dignity?

Then she dies or becomes undignified. Two very different things, I might point out. Bob may find it undignified to act as Alice's fetch-and-carry servant.

Can you be certain that the precedent that you set won't come back to bite you in the hindquarters?

Oh, certainly, because I'm setting no precedent at all. If the situation appears reversed, Alice-partisans will find some reason this principle doesn't apply.

Then she dies or becomes undignified.

And how is that not a worse outcome than Bob being expected to pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate‽

Bob may find it undignified to act as Alice's fetch-and-carry servant.

'Getting things off a high shelf because he is taller' is a metaphor for paying a higher tax rate because he can more easily afford to.

It's your metaphor, you don't get to abandon it as soon as it turns out it doesn't actually support your case.

There's no limit to your principle; you can dress it up as a "slightly higher marginal tax rate" but nothing in your principle says it ends there. It can be a 100% marginal rate; more, it can require Bob to draw down his wealth to help all the Alice's in the world until he's got nothing left to help with. Or (as in your metaphor) it can require Bob's personal service with no limits to that either.

In the UK, the government eats everything. I pay:

  • 45% tax on what I earn (up to 60% if I earned more)
  • 20% more tax on the remaining money when I actually spend it
  • more in stamp duty if I buy a house or sell a house (which I can’t because the government taxes me too much and inflated away my small inheritance)
  • 40% of everything that’s left if, somehow, I manage to die with some money left.

And everything is hideously expensive because whenever I go to the doctor or anything involving any skilled professional I (and any of their customers including the poor) effectively have to fund their extortionate taxes on top of mine!

Like, I know that ‘pay another 2% of tax that you can easily afford to make sure that the needy are taken care of’ sounds good but it’s a fantasy. The above is where that sentiment ends up. Very quickly you get ‘the government has to tax everyone to make sure everyone gets the support they need to pay their taxes’.

I do not believe that there is any level of taxation that does not either blight the lives of half the population and slowly melt the economy or clearly and visibly fails to take care of the needy. “The poor will always be with you” is not a moral statement, it’s just a fact. We cannot, long-term, take care of everybody that we might like to. And no politics, no ideology however well-meaning can make it otherwise.

“The poor will always be with you” is not a moral statement, it’s just a fact. We cannot, long-term, take care of everybody that we might like to. And no politics, no ideology however well-meaning can make it otherwise.

--Corvos, 2026

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.

--Paul Ehrlich, 1968

The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.

--Alfred Velpeau, 1839

Same schist cheems mindset, different day century....

More comments

In addition to Corvos' point, civilization has also historically required the less able to defer to the more able. It's a two-way street; The able help and do a disproportionate share of the work, and in turn, get status and power, the less able give up status and power in exchange for being provided for.

Modern societies' insistence that you can get one half without the other is partially a sham, and partially the thing that is killing it.

civilization has also historically required the less able to defer to the more able.

People have historically done lots of things that they ought not to have.

The able help and do a disproportionate share of the work, and in turn, get status and power, the less able give up status and power in exchange for being provided for.

Almost, but not quite.

If you have the ability to help someone, and you help them, you deserve appreciation. In extraordinary cases, you deserve prestige. You are not entitled to dominance, and you sure as hell aren't entitled to dominance over the people you helped.

I assume you are familiar with the phrase "with great power comes great responsibility." Do you recognize that it runs the other way as well? With great responsibility, comes great power? If so, what's the difference between power and dominance? If not, why not?

I assume you are familiar with the phrase "with great power comes great respons[i]bility."

I am familiar with that phrase. Part of the responsibility is to not use that power to do bad things. Reducing someone else to a state of subjugation, for no other reason than that you can, is a bad thing.

"Bad Things" and "Subjugation" are subjective terms.

You want humans to cooperate. Cooperation necessitates hierarchy. Hierarchy is not objectively distinguishable from "subjugation".

Even real subjugators generally do not subjugate "for no other reason than that they can". "Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth" is the typical form.

If you want the able to help the unable, the bare minimum price for that help is for the unable to obey the able. This is not an obscure fact to anyone who interacts with young children. Absent such obedience, you are just obfuscating costs, and the obfuscated costs will bring the system down one way or the other in relatively short order.

Reducing someone else to a state of subjugation, for no other reason than that you can, is a bad thing

And yet you actively believe this should be done, because the practical means of enforcing

it is the principle that If You Have The Means At Hand, You Have The Responsibility To Help.

creates a contradiction, since the result of that subjugates those categorized as Having The Means.

Being expected to contribute to your neighbour's well being is not subjugation. Conan the Barbarian's desire to crush the adjacent tribe, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their women is not the same thing as expecting that if you have more food than you could possibly eat before it spoils, and your neighbour is near the point of dying from hunger, you ought to share you food with him.

Being expected to contribute to your neighbour's well being is not subjugation.

But being forced to do so because someone else thought I should is. I seem to be forced to do that a lot these days, especially due to the below. (It's also not just goods or labor I'm expected to contribute; I'm also required to forego the benefits of my private virtue, usually referred to as 'freedom', when that neighbor can't handle it.)

and your neighbour is near the point of dying from hunger, you ought to share you food with him.

I'll trade an "ought" only provided an effective solution for the moral hazard that is "I'll eat all my food beforehand because someone else will be forced at gunpoint to share it with me after it is gone" exists.

It seems to me that a tall man who isn’t allowed to decide when and where and if he fetches things for shorter people is just a step-ladder made of meat.

What if there are 10 Alice’s who genuinely need things fetched down on a constant basis?

What if there’s only one Alice but she abuses him and makes her dislike of him known on a regular basis?

What if Alice and her fellow shorties have subjected Bob to a constant campaign of psychological manipulation since birth explaining that his tallness is a privilege to be used for the benefit of the short, or indeed that his tallness is actively oppressing them by causing shelves to be built which they can’t reach, for which he must repent by serving them in the manner they demand?

In many of these scenarios Bob appeared to be… let’s not call him a slave to avoid the noncentral fallacy, but certainly slavelike. Similar to an indentured servant.

In practice, what seems to happen is that ‘we’ or ‘society’ determine how much labour Bob is required to do for the underprivileged (in our benevolence). In which case Bob is not only their servant but even more so ours.

Civilisation does require this to some degree but the scales have tipped far too far in the last hundred years and the racial version has finally tipped far enough that all of us are Bob and we’re sick of it.

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