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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   31101 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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You've certainly got your soldiers lined up in an impressive defense in depth. But reality does not care.

If You Have The Means At Hand, You Have The Responsibility To Help.

Rejected. The able are not the proper slaves of the needy.

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.

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?

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.

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