Bill:
If so, I wish you wouldn't do so in response to my posts, quoting from my posts as if I was the one you are arguing with. You can see, I'm sure, that by doing this it implies that I am arguing something different from what I am.
[WS:] Sorry, but this thread has a long history and I indeed did not have time to read the earlier stuff. I was merely arguing a point rather than attacking you personally (which I rarely do anyway), but if you feel being unjustly picked on, my apologies.
However, I still think that you did not rebut my argument that wealth is a more "equal opportunity" way of status attainment than ascribed status characteristics. In fact, I am quite surprised that you said that not everyone has an equal ability to attain wealth - that reads like a page straight from social Darwinism that justifies wealth inequality as "natural."
Joanna: "One of the very few times we disagree. Giving stuff away is about becoming bigger. It's not about the people you give the stuff too; it's about the giver who thus gets to expand into the infinite future. It's about being remembered. It's about buying a stairway to heaven. It's about fame, notoriety. If they had any humanity, they would not have taken the money in the first place."
[WS:] Absolutely. Philanthropy has always been about merit making and status buying. Even the potlatch was designed to boost the status of the chiefs by showing off their wealth. It is no coincidence that in societies than value egalitarianism (e.g. the Scandinavian countries), philanthropy and charity are dirty words implying social inequality and paternalism.
Ravi: "Not necessarily so, unless you believe that natural phenomena do not hold inner contradictions (I will spare you the weekly rehash of nature vs. nurture and that whole line). There are a lot of things that are programmed into us biologically, evolutionarily, chemically, etc, but eradicating, limiting, overcoming or masking them is also part of the bag of tricks we are endowed with."
[WS:] I am not sure what you mean by "internal contradictions" - I always thought that contradictions are the domain of the human though rather than material reality.
But more importantly, while I do not disagree with the remainder of the above paragraph, I do not think it is realistic to build an ethical imperative on it. Ethical imperatives need to be realistic in the sense of being attainable by most people in most everyday life situations - instead of the select few living in a monastic environment. While a few can show enough strength and determination to overcome, at a great effort, to transcend their "nature" (i.e. inherited traits) - it is not reasonable to expect that most people will do the same in everyday life.
On the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that most people will fail to live to those high standards demanding eradication of what was "programmed" to them. So why positing ethical imperatives that demand that eradication? To show that people are fallible and "sinful"? To justify the existence of a priestly class supposedly able to live up these norms? I do not see any other reasons.
I think a far more realistic alternative is to assume those "programmed" traits as given and posit ethical norms that improve on those traits a bit, but are relatively easy to attain. This way we can reasonably expect that people will follow these norms, and who knows - may be with time they will internalize them to the point of becoming new "programmed" or internalized traits. Which brings us to the point made by Robert:
Robert: " I would imagine that concerns with status would pretty much disappear as people became more fully developed, more genuinely individual, more truly free."
[WS:] I would like to hope so too. I think that a significant progress has been made over centuries, e.g. regarding acceptance of violence in everyday life from medieval spectacles of public torture of people and animals to the nearly universal rejection of torture in modern developed countries (except US and Israel). Likewise, the tolerance for social inequality diminished quite dramatically from feudal times when it was seen as "natural" to modern developed countries where it is seen as an aberration (again, with the exception of the US and perhaps the UK). So there is a reason to be hopeful that things may get even better in the future.
However, I still thing that there is something natural in status attainment - as evidenced by the fact that status hierarchies are found in many animal species (birds, dogs, wolves, primates, to name a few) that are obviously free of the influence of advertising of any kind. I think it is reasonable to expect that status differences are to stay with us in one form or another. The point is to make them the least damaging to the wellbeing of people and societies.
Wojtek