"Equality Never Hurt Anyone"

When COVID shut down the gym last year I had to figure out: how does a 74-year-old keep exercising and stay healthy? The answer was to take a 45-minute walk up to the top of Phinney Ridge here in north Seattle, go down the other side and then climb the hill again. And let me tell you, after the second hill I am really panting and breathing to the depths of my ageing lungs.

Part of the walk involves walking north along the street with the best views -- and the most expensive houses -- at the top of Phinney Ridge. I won't say that the houses along the street have more than their share of Black Lives Matter and #AWeBelieve and Be the One yard signs, but they certainly display their share.

But one house in particular seems to have gone the extra mile. As well as BLM signs in the window, it has a hand-painted "Black Lives Matter If Not Now When" sign and a "Equality Never Hurt Anyone" sign that sports a BLM clenched-fist logo. On top of that the house sports a RV trailer parked partially on the sidewalk planting strip.

Last Saturday was "Garage Sale Day" and as I came up to the BLM house I noticed an older man putting out stuff to sell on a table in the middle of the sidewalk (since the planting strip was already blocked with the RV trailer).

And sitting on a bench was a thirtyish man with the usual wokey beard. I asked the young man if he was the author of the racist signs, and he retorted that there was nothing racist about "equality."

I then spewed my fancy-pants argument from Hegel that "the thing is the same as its opposite." Thus, racism, anti-racism: both indicate an obsession with race. I ended by recommending that he get out and read his Hegel.

Well, maybe, in l'esprit d'escalier I should have suggested that in the interests of equality he should sell the fancy-pants house at the top of the hill and buy an equivalent one at the bottom of the hill and give the difference to Black Lives that Matter.

And I could have mentioned that it is really curious that right alongside his innocent slogan is a clenched fist, suggesting ever so innocently that unless we get Equality real soon a little fisticuffs might be in order.

But really, the point is that, as Jordan B. Peterson pointed out in his lobster story, all animals, even primitive animals like lobsters, do hierarchy. And the point of hierarchy is to reduce violence, reduce the number of occasions when hierarchy is established or re-established by force. Why? Because violence is expensive and costs lives.

In other words, if you have Equality then the next thing that happens is that the males will start a fight to reestablish a hierarchy.

And whatabout elections? An election is all about which politician and which political party shall be first and have power to tax people and spend money on people. How does Equality fit in with that? Where do the losers go to get their Equality back?

And so on.

Sometimes I think that the left is driving us all into a cruel and merciless one-party state. But then I also think that their current hysteria is really an unconscious realization that their whole project has gone wrong and is heading into the ditch.

Which is it? I dunno. Probably a bit of both.