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> There is no place for discrimination in this world. Ever. Of course there is. For instance, when hiring I discriminate against people that aren't qualified.

> There is no place for discrimination in this world. Ever. Of course there is. For instance, when hiring I discriminate against people that aren't qualified. Of course I know that's not the kind of discrimination you mean. It's funny how "discrimination" has become a synonym for "bigotry."

crassus 13y ago
"Differentiation between what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ requires discrimination. This is a capability no younger than life itself, which it serves as an indispensable function. As soon as there is behavior, there is discrimination between alternatives. One way leads to survival, the other way leads to death. There is nourishment, or not; reproduction, or not; safety or predatory menace. Good and bad, or the discrimination between them (which is the same thing), are etched primordially into any world that life inhabits. Discrimination is needed to survive. The very existence of archaic hominids attests to billions of years of effective discrimination, between safety and danger, wholesome and putrid or poisonous food, good mates and less good (or worthless) ones. When these elevated apes differentiated between good and bad, appetizing and rotten, attractive and repulsive, they found such discriminations sufficiently similar in essence to be functionally substitutable. When judging that some food item is ‘not good for us’, a person is ‘rotten’, or the odor of a potential mate is ‘delicious’, we recall such substitutions, and the primordial sense of discrimination that they affirm. There can be no long-term deviation from the original principle: discrimination is intelligence aligned with survival. Two contrary developments now present themselves. Firstly, there is a sublimation or sophistication of discrimination, which might be called cultivation. Abstract concepts, modes of expression, artworks, delicate culinary flavors, refined behaviors, and exotic elaborations of sexual-selection stimuli, among innumerable other things, can all be subtly discriminated on the ancient scale, supporting an ever more intricate and extended hierarchy of judgments. The reflexive doubling of this potential upon itself, as captured by the ‘higher’ judgment that to discriminate well is good, produces a ‘natural aristocracy’. For the first time, there is a self-conscious ‘Right’. This, at least, is its logico-mythical ur-form. To divide the good from the bad is good. Order, hierarchy, and distinction emerge from an affirmation of discrimination. Because the Left cannot create, it comes second. It presupposes an existing hierarchy, or order of discriminations, which is subverted through a ‘slave revolt in morality’. The formula is simple enough: to discriminate is bad. Following from this leftist moral perversion, as its second-order consequence, those who do not discriminate (well), but are in fact discriminated against, must be the good. In the new moral order, therefore, to be bad at discrimination is good — or ‘universalist’ — whilst the old (and now ‘evil’) quality of good judgment, based on competent perception of patterns and differences, is the very quintessence of sin."

crassus 13y ago

"Differentiation between what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ requires discrimination. This is a capability no younger than life itself, which it serves as an indispensable function. As soon as there is behavior, there is discrimination between alternatives. One way leads to survival, the other way leads to death. There is nourishment, or not; reproduction, or not; safety or predatory menace. Good and bad, or the discrimination between them (which is the same thing), are etched primordially into any world that life inhabits. Discrimination is needed to survive. The very existence of archaic hominids attests to billions of years of effective discrimination, between safety and danger, wholesome and putrid or poisonous food, good mates and less good (or worthless) ones. When these elevated apes differentiated between good and bad, appetizing and rotten, attractive and repulsive, they found such discriminations sufficiently similar in essence to be functionally substitutable. When judging that some food item is ‘not good for us’, a person is ‘rotten’, or the odor of a potential mate is ‘delicious’, we recall such substitutions, and the primordial sense of discrimination that they affirm. There can be no long-term deviation from the original principle: discrimination is intelligence aligned with survival. Two contrary developments now present themselves. Firstly, there is a sublimation or sophistication of discrimination, which might be called cultivation. Abstract concepts, modes of expression, artworks, delicate culinary flavors, refined behaviors, and exotic elaborations of sexual-selection stimuli, among innumerable other things, can all be subtly discriminated on the ancient scale, supporting an ever more intricate and extended hierarchy of judgments. The reflexive doubling of this potential upon itself, as captured by the ‘higher’ judgment that to discriminate well is good, produces a ‘natural aristocracy’. For the first time, there is a self-conscious ‘Right’. This, at least, is its logico-mythical ur-form. To divide the good from the bad is good. Order, hierarchy, and distinction emerge from an affirmation of discrimination. Because the Left cannot create, it comes second. It presupposes an existing hierarchy, or order of discriminations, which is subverted through a ‘slave revolt in morality’. The formula is simple enough: to discriminate is bad. Following from this leftist moral perversion, as its second-order consequence, those who do not discriminate (well), but are in fact discriminated against, must be the good. In the new moral order, therefore, to be bad at discrimination is good — or ‘universalist’ — whilst the old (and now ‘evil’) quality of good judgment, based on competent perception of patterns and differences, is the very quintessence of sin."