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Members: Human Respect & Societal Wealth - Join CiVL.COM · Words & Numbers

• 0:00
  We decided to talk about human respect, which is one of the
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  things that drew us to Civil in the 1st place, right?
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  This is Civil's mission, and as Ant and I understand our
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  mission, it it's also been ours for years and years.
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  The the idea of human respect underlies everything that we've
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  done together. For what have we been working
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  together for now? It's probably been since about
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  2010, yeah. No, even. 15 years even earlier.
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  20 years maybe, yeah. Yep.
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  So it's been quite some time and you can insert your own joke
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  here about marriage has gone bad and the whatnot.
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  But we persist and, and this idea of human respect, we, we
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  tried to distill it down a little bit, right?
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  Because it's one thing to say that it underlies and is woven
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  into everything you do. It's quite another to say, OK,
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  let's talk about that and only that.
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  And the more we talked about it, the more we realized that the
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  way we see human respect as kind of an overarching issue can be
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  distilled into two sentences that are very, very familiar to
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  an American audience and indeed to audiences around the world.
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  At this point. One of the sentences is
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  decidedly American, and frankly, I don't know where the other one
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  originated. It wouldn't make me the least
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  bit surprised if it originated here in the US, but there are a
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  number of other places that I would be equally unsurprised
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  were it to have found its its root there.
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  Very likely in the English speaking world, but not even
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  necessarily there. So the the first of the 2 is
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  what Thomas Jefferson wrote, which I contend is the most
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  powerful sentence ever written. We hold these truths to be
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  self-evident that all men are created equal.
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  The second is what I contend to be the most powerful sentence
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  ever uttered, which is a a distinction and I think a
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  distinction with a difference. And it's how can I help you,
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  which is what you hear in the commercial world every time you
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  walk into an establishment of any kind.
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  Right. In fact, we we make a joke of
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  it. That's what the guy McDonald
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  says, right? Well, it is surprised.
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  With that which is a variation of.
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  How can I help you? How can I help you?
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  And taken together, I think these two sentences present a
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  unique kind of whole, a political statement and an
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  economic statement. And it's not exactly a
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  statement, it's a question. But you take my my point and
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  it's my contention that you can only have one if you have the
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  other. Now there are counter examples,
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  of course. You can think of Singapore,
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  which is economically quite free and politically not nearly as
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  much. But by and large, if you want to
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  see places where human beings are respected most fully, and,
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  and notice I didn't say perfectly, but just most fully,
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  you're going to find a variant of each of these things
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  underlying the societies in question.
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  Human equality on the on the one hand and commercial service on
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  the other. And, and I would submit that the
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  idea of human respect is absolutely required for either
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  one of these things to emerge, but most certainly for both of
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  them to emerge together now that.
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  It's very interesting because as you're talking, I'm, I was
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  writing things down and, and I'm writing things down that are
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  matching what you're saying 45 seconds before you say them.
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  Let me back up a minute because when you said OK, we're going to
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  talk about human respect, and you start to talk about that,
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  and I jotted a note here that when people hear the word
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  respect, they tend to think about being polite, which.
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  It's not a bad thing to think about.
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  It's not, but it's a. It's a subset of what we're
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  talking about. And, and I'm picturing 2 things.
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  One respect at the level of interaction, which is, you know,
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  being polite, being, you know, kind to people, that sort of
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  thing. But then, but then the other is
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  respect as part of a belief system that it guides your, your
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  thoughts and your actions and has consequences.
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  And that fits exactly with what you just said.
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  The two sentences, All men are created equal Is the is the
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  belief part the how can I help you?
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  That's more like the polite part.
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  What can I do for you in a practical sense?
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  Well, and it's more than that, right?
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  Because you must ask that in order for you to make a living.
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  Right, yeah. And then, which I thought was
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  brilliant, you break it down into the economic and political.
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  Right, and and the. Jefferson Statement being a
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  political one, the how can I help you being an economic one.
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  And Jefferson's statement is also a moral statement, right?
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  That all men are created equal, and it points to the utter
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  inviolability of the individual. There are some things we cannot
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  do to you because of our shared human equality.
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  That doesn't mean these things haven't been done.
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  Slavery comes to mind immediately, right?
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  That's a violation of the equality principle and we
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  violated the equality principle from before Jefferson wrote to
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  89 or so years after with the passage of the 13th Amendment in
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  1865. But that doesn't make the
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  statement incorrect. It means we didn't live up to
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  it. I, I, I would, I would say that
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  the statement is categorically correct.
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  With that all men are indeed created equal.
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  And you have to understand of course, what Jefferson meant by
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  it. It it's not some form of
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  equality that most modern and by modern I mean it from the
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  Progressive Era onward would hold to right.
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  It's not an equality of outcome. We don't all die with the same
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  things. As a matter of fact, James
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  Madison in The Federalist, which was written in support of the
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  Constitution in the summer of 1787, Madison said that if you
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  begin with this concept of of equality, you will necessarily
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  end with an inequality of outcome because people are free
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  to do as they will. Some will be industrious, some
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  will be lazy, some will be lucky.
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  Some will be unlucky. Some will be very pretty, others
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  will be very ugly, right? There are all kinds of things.
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  Some will be tall, some will be short.
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  And if that sounds flippant, it's not right.
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  We have scads of historical data proving that people who are
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  perceived as beautiful have better life outcomes than people
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  who are perceived as homely. Oh, it goes all the way down to
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  I've seen studies of of student evaluations in colleges and the
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  more attractive teachers get hired student evaluation
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  ratings, which you say, well, that's just student evaluation.
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  No, but what goes along with that are raises and other sorts
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  of perks. That there's real world
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  consequences to this. Right.
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  Very few people who are 5 foot two end up being president of
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  the United States. Right, right.
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  The the taller candidate almost always wins.
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  Well, on what? On a.
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  Curiosity, right? On our last episode you you
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  mentioned the Kennedy Nixon debates, where people who listen
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  to the debate on the radio said Nixon won, but people who
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  watched it said Kennedy won. Of course, Kennedy was much more
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  attractive than Nixon. I I think even Nixon would
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  likely agree with that statement, right?
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  Yeah, that's true. But when you, when you start
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  putting these things together and you start figuring out what
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  a worldview looks like, right, you, you, you start to realize
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  that this moral statement that was offered in a political
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  document really is quite controlling.
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  And every revolutionary movement and literally every single one,
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  I'm talking about the the Chinese revolution, the
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  communist revolution in in Russia, all relied on Jefferson,
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  explicitly or implicitly, this idea of human equality.
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  Now, I think we could cheerfully say that most of them abused it
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  quite horribly. But when you get to things,
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  think about social change in the United States.
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  When women started demanding equal rights, what was the
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  argument? It wasn't oh, poor us, help us,
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  won't you? It was We deserve this because
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  we're equal. Right, right.
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  So too. So too black rights.
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  So too gay rights. Literally anything you can point
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  to in our history. People didn't show up to the
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  government as supplicants begging for redress.
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  They showed up as free individuals demanding equal
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  rights. Right.
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  Now that that's interesting, because that's not typically how
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  we perceive the political process, right?
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  We don't start with the inviolability of the human
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  being, that which must be respected at all times in all
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  circumstances. But that's really where every
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  political discussion must begin. Because if it doesn't, then
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  slavery is perfectly acceptable. Denying the wrote the vote to
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  women? Perfectly acceptable.
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  Criminalizing homosexuality? Perfectly acceptable.
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  It it's what through Simicus and Plato's Republic referred to
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  when he said justice is the will of the stronger.
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  And there's always an element of that in political life.
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  But do you really want to live in a world where whoever's
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  strongest gets to declare justice?
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  Where the where the strong do what they will and the weak
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  suffer what they must? No, I I would rather start with
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  a moral statement. And from a moral statement,
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  literally any moral statement, you can build a moral universe.
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  And we've. Built a pretty good moral
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  universe here. You, you can build a moral
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  universe to, I would say to a greater, lesser degree,
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  depending on how seriously you take those first principles.
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  And, and I think what's happened, how we've gone astray
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  in the US is that while we still pay lip service to them, we
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  don't take them nearly as seriously as we should.
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  And the practical result is you end up with a government doing
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  all manner of things that has no business doing.
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  Well understand though, that building a moral universe is an
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  intellectual endeavor. Living in that moral universe is
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  a political imperative. We built it, but then we didn't
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  live in it. And, and just to be clear, we've
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  never lived in it, Not perfectly, not fully right.
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  This is always been aspirational and we've come closer at
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  sometimes than others. I think socially we're doing far
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  better now than we have ever done literally at any point in
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  our past. Yeah, I, you know, I'd never
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  thought of that to, you just said it, but I think you're
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  right. And, and think about what that
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  means under the the umbrella human respect.
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  That means we're succeeding right now at a higher level
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  socially interacting with each other than we ever have.
• 13:03
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