What you are about to read is real. These are not actors, but are the actual opinions of the people who are expressing them.
No, seriously, I couldn’t make these things up.
Well, I’m pretty creative, so I could… but you’d accuse me a writing psychologically dishonest fiction.
In an article by Joe Gelonesi called “Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?”[1] [No, he’s not being cute, he is really worried that some kids are disadvantaged by other kids having good homes.] Gelonesi considers the work of philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse who have been…“…conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.”
The laugh track you expected after that last quote, isn’t coming.
He goes on, “the issue stretches well beyond the fact that some families can afford private schooling, nannies, tutors, and houses in good suburbs. Functional family interactions—from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories—form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations.”
Egad! Some families are strong and healthy and give kids an advantage over those who are raised in broken and dysfunctional homes… SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT THIS INEQUALITY!!!
And what are their solutions?
Help broken families to repair themselves? Educate the ignorant? Discipline the undisciplined? Encourage good parenting?
NOPE
Instead, they begin with a discussion about how the most complete solution would be to abolish the family and have all children raised by the state, saying… “‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’”
Perhaps you should go back and read that. If it makes sense to you, go check yourself into a hospital for the mentally deranged. Do we value “equality of result” so much that we are willing to destroy the family unit to keep some kids from receiving the powerful social and educational advantages that a good home gives them?????????
In case you missed it, they are saying that since solid families are good for children, we should seriously consider weakening families to prevent this goodness from getting to kids… because some kids don’t get it.
Well, while some are ready to go there, these three bastions of social virtue are a little reluctant to bring in the ultimate solution. Destroying the family is a tad impractical and a touch counter-productive given that we need some people to grow up into functional adults in order to earn enough to support the entitlement programs that take care of the dysfunctional.
Gelonesi writes of Swift, “The break-up of the family is plausible maybe, he thinks, but even to the most hard-hearted there’s something off-key about it.”
So what is their next solution?
The article goes on, “It seems that from both the child’s and adult’s point of view there is something to be said about living in a family way. This doesn’t exactly parry the criticism that families exacerbate social inequality. For this, Swift and Brighouse needed to sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don’t.”
I think they have been smoking peyote every waking hour for a decade… but let’s go on.
They write, ‘What we realized we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children, if allowing those activities would create unfairnesses for other people’s children’.”
They conclude that Families should consider limiting activities that give their children unfair advantages, without completely eradicating activities that build loving relationships which are essential to raising functional adults who can keep the system afloat.
So, they must be loving, but not too loving, loving, but not too instrumental in empowering their children to perform at their peak potential.
Again, I’m not kidding.
They insist that… “Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,’ he says. ‘It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realize these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school.’”
The article continues, “In contrast, reading stories at bedtime, argues Swift, gives rise to acceptable familial relationship goods, even though this also bestows advantage. The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,’ he says. This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion—that perhaps in the interests of leveling the playing field, bedtime stories should also be restricted. In Swift’s mind this is where the evaluation of familial relationship goods goes up a notch.”
Swift, again, doesn’t want to destroy love in families, but wishes that he could perfectly extract every other advantage that existing in loving families or prosperous families gives to those children. He concludes on Bedtime stories saying, “‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift.”
This is just the beginning of the insanity that one creates when equality of result becomes THE moral standard of the age.
These philosophers are readily willing to challenge the very notion of parental rights over the children they produce, but do not seem even remotely willing to challenge the very basis of their “uneasiness.”
Namely: Why should equality of result be regarded as a virtue?
(Virtue means strength, but this paradigm celebrates equal misery and loss as a virtue for no other reason than that it IS equal.)
Why should an artificial crafting of equality of outcome be considered a moral victory? Why should a reduction of all to the level of the weakest and most dysfunctional be regarded as right and proper on any level? Who says so?
Even atheist evolutionists should have trouble with this notion.
The improvement of society for the whole… the improvement of the species… the betterment of the economy… are not best achieved by the hamstringing of the strong, by the advocation of inefficiency, by the reduction of everything and everyone to the lowest common denominator in society.
To even describe the “goods” of one as the “disadvantaging” of others is to misconstrue the nature of the world and the hope of happiness and general prosperity of all. Strength does not disadvantage others, their own weakness does, laziness does, ignorance does, slowness does, poverty does, cruelty does, disjointed family life does, crime does, foolishness does. These are the enemy of inequality of result.
The problem with society is NOT strength, intelligence, speed, endurance, education, honesty, family, bonded community, love, kindness, and the capacity to create and sustain wealth; these are, [from a human perspective], societies greatest hope.
Equality of result is NOT a virtue, since its only means of actualization is the weakening of all to the detriment of all.
[1] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058
[2] The use of Lareau’s book to illustrate this post, in no way suggests that she would agree with the conclusions of the men whose opinions are here represented. Her book does examine how family structures impact the whole of one’s life, which is not being debated here.
