"I'm Better Than You Are!"

This is a free-think exploration to sort through the matter of elitism and standards of what is "better" as a way of life. Particularly if you are a woman. 

Take the case of Senator Sotto. Here is a man who drips with arrogance and condescension toward the lessers who insist upon cluttering  his distinguished life. You know, like bloggers and academicians and now an award-winning book writer who is demanding he be held to account for ethics violations.

Or take the case of Joseph August America who pens blog after blog fairly dripping with haughty intellectual superiority as he parses Philippine culture for all its eccentricities as viewed through a westerner's prism that refracts behavior into good and bad colors.

Joe points toward ignorance as the reason for a lot of bad behavior, and he sorts ignorance into three buckets: (1) innocent, as with poor people who are trapped in a poor educational and family situation, (2) negligent, as with people who could and should read and think, but do not, or (3) intentional, where people pose as lacking knowledge because it gets them something, as Senator Sotto would utter, "Wha? I didn't plagiarize. I don't know what that means."

"Ignorance of the law" is generally not accepted as a good defensive argument in American courts. It appears acceptable in the Philippines when a guy who MAKES the laws holds it up as justification for shamelessly stealing the original work of another.

So I ask the question, "Are some people better than others?"

• Is a smart person better than a dumb person?

• Is a rich person better than a poor person?

• Is a senator better than a citizen?

• Is a columnist better than the person he criticizes?

• Is a healthy person with two arms better than a sick person with one arm?

• Is a white person better than a black person, or a brown one?

• Is a Muslim person better than an atheist, or a Christian?

The possible answers are "yes" or "no" or "damnifiknow".

The answer is "yes" if there are standards available to measure the quality of "goodness" or "betterness". Some are better than others.

The answer is "no" if we are talking about an individual's place on earth where we each play our part as king or amoebae, as assigned by God or the fates or chaos or whatever orders our disorder and imposes a seemingly unfair lot in life upon so many. We all stand equal, all largely ignorant of what was, is and will be.

The answer is "damnifiknow" most of the time, or maybe more accurately, "idon'tgivearatspatootie".

"Yes": When people are better

If there is a goal attached to behavior, then the quality of person counts. If we want to hire a lawyer, we want one who is not ignorant of case law. If we run a business, we want to hire people who work hard and well. If we run a college, we want to enroll kids who have done well in high school.

• So, in given settings, a smart person is better than a dumb person.

• And a rich person is better than a poor one if we are selling something.

• And a senator is better than a citizen if we need a new law.

• And two-armed people make better firemen.

But a senator is not better than the common good, or public interest. And a senator who deludes himself into thinking he is superior over his critics is just that: delusional. His critics represent voices of people the senator is charged with serving and protecting. And if he won't listen to those voices, and respect them, then he is negligent and ought to be punished. For in the hierarchy of importance, he is the lesser of the two, senator and public well-being.

Interestingly, in the Philippines, hiring a friend or family member is better than hiring a skilled person. So by the value standards of the Philippines, power and advantage are more important than productivity or fairness. Pity. The Philippines is what the Philippines always will be until the standard of "betterness" switches to competence. Honest is a part of competence.

"No": When we all stand equal

Everyone has an important place on this earth. It is sacrosanct, the place we each occupy, belonging only to us and God. What we make of it, the burdens we carry, the joys we feel, the decisions and acts and results: they are real, and they are ours, and they are meaningful. No one is better than us at that. No one.

It is when people intrude into this realm that problems arise. When one man tells another man that he is worthless if he does not believe in the right God. Or if a woman is told she cannot go to school. Or if a woman is told she must remain in a marriage to an abusive deadbeat husband. Then our rightful claim to equality is abused.

Freedom is nothing more than an unequivocal insistence that we all stand equal, under God, under the law, under nature's order.

Well, too much freedom and things get a little crazy. Loud, dangerous, unhealthy. Murderous.

So we need some order, and there are two kinds:

1. Morality, the rules of faith. These are rules based on a vision that may or may not be factually true. If the vision is overlaid on people who don't hold it as true, then we have trouble. Freedom conflicts with faith. Morality is the root of much evil on earth.

2. Laws, the common-sense rules of community, are troublesome to the devious or undisciplined, and inconvenient for a lot of us most of the time. They are the rules that allow different people to live together in harmony. Their foundation is not in an imaginary vision, but in the honorable assessment of what is best for the most people, or injures the fewest. Laws respect our differences and preserve them by protecting the community.

Laws based on faith are troublesome. When the rule is something like the kind of cloth we must wear as a head covering, a reason that derives from God rather than community well-being, we have a problem.

When the "properness" of one's sexual desires is defined by faith rather than science, then we have a problem.  Homosexuality was not understood when the Bible was crafted. It still today is not understood by a large segment of the population . . . the learned population . . . people who insist it is like smoking and can be stopped.

But scientists understand it.

And scientists understand the differences between men and women. The differences have precious little relevance to an individual's ability to think and perform a given task.

When laws demand we behave opposite the laws of nature, then we are asking for trouble.

In that situation, laws are trying to take some within the community and declare them "unequal" to the rest.  As many Philippine laws declare women to be unequal to men today. Well, when we were in the caves, yes, man was the hunter and the aggressor in seeking a mate. Today we are not in the caves.

It's a problem when the rules flowing from faith do not change but science changes knowledge. When knowledge points out that we are abusing the God-given right of each individual to claim his place on the planet. Then discrimination and harm occur.

Damnifiknow

Idontgivearatspatootie right now.

Implications

It is insane that the old men of the Senate, bound to rules based on faith, withhold education from women. It is a great shame that the poorest women of the Philippines are denied the ability to manage their lives as independent, free beings on God's good green earth.

These men are telling women "I'm better than you are" at deciding what is in your best interest.

I don't know why Filipinas so graciously concede their place on the planet to narrow-minded, ethics deficient cave men.