heart
stone
silence
soul
mirror
clouded
lips
parched
songless
name
caste
a number
hands
heavy
untrue
heart
fall
snow, snow.
~~~
Fairness: not to think that the reasons for some decision can be read off from the benefits; not to look at side constraints like rights that dominate all other considerations; but a weighing up of different reasons and claims.
Broome's example: you want to send a candidate to carry out a difficult task in which the actor will probably die a horrible death (even though she saves lots of people). Who do you choose? Each candidate is almost identical in all respects except that one, R, is slightly more skilled and has a slightly better chance of being successful. In terms of expected benefit, she's the man for the job. But even so, the others do not have a claim to the good of not being sent.
It may in fact be the right thing to do, leads to more 'good'. But it isn't necessarily the fair thing to do. A fairness requirement might insist that we give due consideration to each person's claims (doesn't each person have the same claim in this case?). Then how to weigh fairness-claims with expected benefit? I mean, if R could save millions of lives wouldn't it be better to send her? If the task was saving a cat at a considerable risk to the human rescuer then wouldn't a lottery be fairer? Some falls are relatively free, others 'costly'
~~~
i find. i find i have less and less to say and it's enjoyable in a strange way to feel so cramped, so empty of words and thoughts. the joker in the pack of serious cards. even less patience for arguing or discussing...always was, i guess, a bit sceptical of people who question existence (of course, some people in terrible circumstances are forced to-but may God protect us) and of those who want to dissect or 'expose' the falsity of religion. Of course, we're all free to fall in out own way but there's got to be, to paraphrase Brando, another way of thinking about freedom?
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11 comments:
"she's the man for the job" ???
i want to see, just once, "he's the woman for the job" - why is that not even a possibility?
anyway
i'm just venting
and also wanted to share what came to mind, that maybe thinking is not the (only) way to freedom.
of course it's a possibility. But yes, of course you're right..in reality much less likely. I was only being playful, mani.
anyways...
so serious, you Romanian girls!
sorry, sorry, just teasinggg (bad habits die hard)
:-)
hello b.,
i have to continue being serious for a bit - and i think in this case, nothing to do with romanian-ness.
it's all a "girl" thing - being serious in the face of such teasing, or kidding, or joking. because i get a lot of it, as a woman and as the person "responsible for gender" in my work.
teasing is a way of not engaging. distancing.
ironic thing is, i never get similar teasing from any of my female colleagues or friends. they understand that teasing will be purely teasing only when the two positions will be of equal power.
no, fine mani, let's be serious for a while!
yes, i think you are right..it's one the 'put downs' by those in power to say to others (minorities of some sort or the dominated): " you don't have a sense of humour" (a.a. gill's got a good piece on the english in this regard)
but here's where i disagree with you and -to continue the serious tone-think that your thinking is , well, how to put this politely..just a touch extreme.
of course, your point is right 'in general' and of course there's a possibility that in this particular case my teasing is a way of not engaging. i don't think that that can be ruled out.
but it's a bit odd on your part if you can't distinguish genuine teasing in particular cases...if after our friendship on the internet you still have this suspicious attitude.
mani, men and women, and lots of other peoples, do not have equal power but that doesn't stop lots of good natured teasing.
i get teased all the time but that really is , perhaps, part of of the lahori culture and so people are a bit more thick-skinned.
if i joke around with you or roxana it is not because of any "unequal power" but, actually, the opposite: the lack of any consideration of power and i'm saddened that you think otherwise (is that "man' thing"?)
gosh, don't know what to say mani...you've sort of taken the innocence out of it all.
anyways,
take care,
b.
hello b.,
i know you don't like waiting for replies, but i really don't know what to say. first you agree with me and then you disagree, then you agree again and then dismiss it.
it seems to me this serious discussion we're trying to have here has nothing to do with all the good natured teasing we've been enjoying back and forth.
this time i'm saying i did not not enjoy it, it does not feel like teasing, it does not feel innocent, and i try to explain why and engage. does this negate everything else? or i should enjoy this time because i did before?
maybe this is what you mean by extreme (i wasn't sure), that i don't let it slide by even if it doesn't feel right, that i don't keep it light. if so, then yes, i agree. a while ago i realized that, on this issue at least, it feels worse to just let things pass by unchallenged than to deal with the consequences of any challenge i voice.
why should there be any consequences, now that's an interesting question to ponder...
but i think i'm way past the seriousness threshold here, am i not?
be well, b.
mani, perhaps i didn't make my points very well.
i agree with you *in general* (i.e in most cases) that it is often the powerful, the dominant group that laugh at those who don't have power (but it can also be the other way around ..the latter might be problematic if it is sanctioned by the powerful as in the ritual entry of chaos into order)
but i disagree with you in this *particular* case...and as for "dismissing", i'm sorry, but i don't see that. in fact, i think i said we can't immediately discount that the possibility that my comments are an example of not engaging or taking what a woman has to say seriously.
i beg to differ with you..it does seem -to me at least-that this does exactly have to do with our previous banter. my point of view is this, mani: if u look at my whole blog and type in the word 'jew', say..then you might indeed find something that appears anti-semitic (reference to a jewish nose). but, here's the thing, if a stranger picked up on that i'd understand that person's misunderstanding..but if someone who i've been in contact and had some personal interaction thought that, then i'd find that odd.
yes, for me, it does negate everything else because it indicates bad faith on your part.
of course u don't have to enjoy . ur free to express whatever u want here. but it would have been nice if u'd asked, hey, 'what are you exactly saying when you make what appears to be a crude or prejudiced remark'(or something on those lines)
of course you're entitled to say it 'doesn't feel right' and i appreciate your candour in doing so. but i often address some of my female friends as 'bhai' (brother) -as i do my sister-and it's not such a big deal. in this particualr case-in case ur wondering-it was a deliberate attempt to mix up genders (i often do this in the 'religious' posts -since it is part of a tradition..well..i guess i should ask the dougal to write a guest post on thistopic since part of her ph.d was on just this)
"challenge'?
yes, i think that's what i find strange..it's , well, how to say this without creating more misunderstnding..so 'western'. if i had to challenge what my friends say or believe i don't think i'd have a single one left! one friend does like thrashing out ideas and challenging the other's views but i guess, temperamentally, that doesn't appeal to me (just saying)
mani, i don't understand where ur 'coming from' to be honest. i mean, i really think there'd be no or little conversation if i started to think through a particular lens which made me look at their views in terms of: is this person white, male, rich, christian, shia etc. etc.
anyways..this is all a bit embarrassing.
i understand that you may have felt hurt by the words 'she's the right man' for the job but the whole point of that was the precise opposite of what u took it to be...i.e to say that gender is not the issue, that a woman can be more skilled than a man in a task but fairness requires two things: not looking at such characteristics ( i thought thatw as obvious and didn't need spelling out) and, secondly, that 'betterness' can be overridden by fairness.
just to contextualise this a bit..it can be read in conjunction (to sound utterly bombastic!) with the earlier post about fairness and characteristics:"difficult choices"
keep well,
b.
you are right, it is embarrassing. if you want we can continue over email, for now and for here i'd rather stop - lets move on.
take care, b.
ps what's with the chinese? can you read it?
hmm..that's a difficult one Mani because try as i do, i find it hard to let go. i mean, it's a bit like x calling Y a racist and then X saying, let's move on. how can we bring an amicable closure to this?
When you say your female friends don't tease you I find that so hard to understand, so beyond anything I've ever experienced or known that it just seems incredible.
you know, it seemed so obvious to me that I didn't think one had to spell out that particular point (i did in the earlier post, difficult choices, when i said such characteristics were irrelevant)
I don't know, I think if it comes down to "challenging" then there's very little scope for a genuine conversation.
and where am I "dismissing" you or your views, mani?I actually agree with you (if you re-read my comments). I find it a rather bizarre thing for you to say.
Mani, i understand the need for courtesy and good manners, for reticence, but, i don't know, I guess i was brought up thinking that speaking freely was important (in fact, it's always got me in trouble at work). And if I have to think every time I write something whether I've put 'he' instead of 'she' or 'person' , well, that's something that I find claustrophobic (and, to be quite frank, silly).
regards,
b.
we can try to continue if you want. i felt like stopping because i was discouraged, b. - you say my attitude of 'challenging' is so western and it may be - i am western after all. allow me to say though that you do seem to have an issue with the word, to the point that the word itself made you defensive and we have to deal with that first - all i meant by it was doing exactly what i did, express to you openly how i FELT, how what you wrote affected me.
and i capitalize FELT because that's what's discouraged me - i tell you how i feel, and you give me all the rational reasons of why i shouldn't feel like that. which, if i may paraphrase your western comment, is a typical male way of responding - instead of trying to put yourself in my place and try to understand why did i feel like that, we reason about it. and i don't want to have this conversation with you at that level, dealing with all the rational arguments of why i should not have felt upset, without first having you trying to understand why i felt upset (which i don't think you did, despite saying you understand i may have felt upset).
i am being very open now.
i had the same feeling and same discouragement in a previous discussion on a similar topic we had a while ago - commenting on some post of yours. i think there antonia also commented - and i could see how we both were telling you about how we FELT, and yet the discussion kept coming back to reasons and logic and arguments, all beside the point of what we were both saying. i got equally discouraged then, i remember.
now, isn't all that reasoning and logic western, too? but then the western world was built by men, too.
in this case i can't even entirely blame the medium, blog-comments-etc, because i'm having this experience all too often in real life, too - this type of parallel discussion, the lines unable to touch.
my women friends and i tease each other a lot. we don't tease each other about being the best man for the job or any other variation of such 'jokes', because we ALL understand that it is humiliating, and that each and every one of us, women, gets enough of it in so many shapes and sizes outside of our women-women encounters, that we don't need to bring it in as well.
you yourself said that in relations of unequal power teasing is not really teasing. so when as a woman in an unequal world i tell you that it did not feel like teasing, why do you then tell me that in this case it should have been ok? this is what i meant by dismissing.
see, as a white person, i would never tease a black friend in a similar way. if my black friend would choose to make those jokes about me or herself, or with another black friend, that would be her right. but not mine, as long as the world remains racist.
"we have to deal with that first"
hmm, dunno, mani, that sounds a touch like lecturing on your part. should i say that that's a 'white' or (christian/muslim) 'missionary' attitude? you see, that's precisely what i'm trying to get away from?
but no, since you bring it up let's "deal with it"
first of all, i often try to qualify the negative 'western' comments by saying 'modern'west and even then i usually say it tongue in cheek...as in fake moralizing..'decadent west' and all that. more to the point, anyone who takes one look at this blog and sees the love i have for western music, art, poetry would find, i think, your comment about "dealing with it" quite ludicrous.
okay, could i just say this to try and clear things up: the teasing bit was about romanian girls not the point itself which i said was quite right "in reality" . i also agreed with you that it's often a put down to women or others when one says something like ' lighten up' or get a sense of humour. so , i think we agree on that, no?
"all reasoning and logic western"?
oh dear! tell me you're taking the piss here? please.
obviously not western, and obviously not a male thing either!"a typical male way.." i'm afraid you're buying into all sorts of sterotypes that i can't accept..as if to say that women are not capable of reasoning and only (or mainly) feel things.
i don't now what 'level' you want to have the conversation, mani. why don't we try at the level of common courtesy (wich i hope we can agree is not female or male)? it would be common courtesy for a friend to at least say: what on earth are you talking about b? (if, that is, one wanted to have a conversation..otherwise, sermonizing and moralizing are par for the course)
well, i wasn't teasing you or anyone else about being the best man for the job. if you reaad the comment again i think it was more about romanian girls (of course, if you found that offensive then i apologize)
can't remember the antonia comment but yes, i do remember some problem (mainly at my end, no doubt).. i mean, when it comes to the female readers/commenters on this blog i am slightly in awe of their inelligence but maybe there's some deep-rooted misogny..i don't know. possible, yes. but i think that's slightly insulting to them since i'd like to say or believe that i just disagree with their arguments and not their arguments becasue they're women.
it should be okay becasue the world we share, me and you that is, is not unequal and i have never thought of any of the people who comment here -whether i've agreed with them or not- in terms of equality or the lack of equality.
am in now supposed to think before i write to roxana, anton, or anyone else about their gender, height, weight, religion, colour, nationality, etc., etc.?
mani, have u thought about the possibility-the possibility only, not the truth of the matter-that it could be hat you are , for whatever reasons, so sensitive to this issue that you took the easy way out and put me in a box?
but i'm not making a joke about your womanhood or about women. as i said, the point of writing that was actually to indicate that gender is not an issue when it comes to skill or 'betterness'. you read it in a different way (perhaps understandably so).
but i don't see how that's 'dismissing' you or your views. once i realised it hurt you i tried to address the issue by saying i thought you were right in most cases and that in this particular case (mine) it can't be ruled out. i dunno, i don't think that's really being dismissive.
b., thank you for your thoughts. i will come back and read them over time, to try to understand from a clearer mind and moment. now i would really like to stop this, we can pick it up a while later if you want, but for now i think we've both passed the boundaries of what you rightfully call common courtesy and i'm not comfortable continuing in this context. i do admire your willingness to discuss and insistence that we speak openly. let's hope we can return within the boundaries as we pick it up from here.
be well, b.
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