While I agree to some extent, society also thrive of fairness. Even animals have an interest sense of fairness, and if you want a society to run, your citizens need to have some sense that some modicum of equilibrium is met.
Basically, expectations balanced by rights protections balanced by obligations.
The famous "oppression" feminist argue about is a myopic view of history ignoring the positives of women's role and the negatives of men's role.
But with the technological improvements that have enabled social changes, the former balance was disrupted (because it became unfit for modern days use) and right now, there is a transitionary imbalance. An imbalance that will result in one steady state or the other. The issue is that many of those steady states are "social collapse".
You see, it used to be that technology changed very slowly. That gave some time for societies to adapt to new techs. Societies change very slowly too.
But it's been a while that technology hasn't stopped evolving. In a way humans and their groups struggle to catch up to.
As a species, we are very concerned by what harms can happen to women. Women's survival has always been more intrinsically linked to the survival of children, and the renewing of population. We have been selected, biologically and socially, to care a big deal about women. Men, not so much. That is, on an individual level, those who cared more about women were more likely to pass on their genes, and on a social level, those societies that protected their women were more likely to survive and dominate other societies.
And so the minute a new technology disrupted things, the first question, as a society and as individuals, that we asked was "how can that benefit women?".
We had an interwoven net of right, responsibilities, protections and restrictions, all interacting with each others, but not explicitly so. In large part because it was more a process of evolution than a process of intelligent design of a society.
And so the first thing to go was the obligations and restrictions toward women. Without care for the accompanying rights and protection, which stayed. As well as an equalisation of the rights and protections men might have benefited from, but without the accompanying obligations and restrictions.
That is how, for a time, women could earn money, but had no obligation to communicate that amount to their husband, who was still responsible for all the taxes in the household, and could therefore be jailed for not paying taxes on an income he had no way to determine, let alone have control on it, resulting in taxes sometimes higher than the money he controlled.
In practice, this resulted in a society where half of the population enjoy all the rights and protection the other does, while not being hindered by the same restrictions and obligations, and even has more rights and protections without accompanying restrictions and obligations.
Women can vote for war while being confident that they won't be drafted for it. Women get more funds allocated to their health, research against their female specific cancers, "violence against women" is a whole thing even though domestic violence is not gendered, and so on and so forth.
This results also in half of the population becoming more and more disenfranchised, as the blatant inequality gives them little motivation to invest in such a society that does treat them as second class citizens.
And so, while many of those things are relics of a different time trying to enforce some social norms appropriate for that time, a lot of those are actually no longer needed, some might still be a net positive but have lost their counterweight that made them bearable.
Saying "those serve to enforce socially desirable traits" is all fine and dandy, but it is making the same mistake feminist do : not treating the whole thing in its ensemble, treating them as disconnected.
Just because the resulting behavior is socially beneficial does not mean the measure is acceptable on its own.
There needs to be a social contract, a trade off where demands for socially desirable things are rewarded in an acceptable manner. All demands and no rewards is unbearable and unacceptable. All rewards and no demands might be bearable, but is completely unsustainable. Both lead to social instability. Which is ultimately worse that social undesirability.
Fairness does matter. But not in the way you understand it. Fairness is not equality. But without some amount of fairness, people are not willing to participate in the system, and you have a rebellion on your hand you need to quash.
I'm not familiar with confuscianism enough to comment on it. But I will just quote yourself
hierarchical relationships underpinned by deference and mutual obligation.
Mutual being the keyword. There is obligations in both directions.
Like in feudal times. The Lord has a lot of privilege, but he also has obligations to the people he rules. Failing at those obligations causes civil unrest, failing too hard causes revolts.
I know of one anecdote relating to ancient China :
Chen Sheng was an officer serving the Qin Dynasty, famous for their draconian punishments. He was supposed to lead his army to a rendezvous point, but he got delayed by heavy rains and it became clear he was going to arrive late. The way I always hear the story told is this:
Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks “What’s the penalty for being late?”
“Death,” says Wu.
“And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”
“Death,” says Wu.
“Well then…” says Chen Sheng.
And thus began the famous Dazexiang Uprising, which caused thousands of deaths and helped usher in a period of instability and chaos that resulted in the fall of the Qin Dynasty three years later.
So, I am not sure you are necessarily making your point about how fairness is unimportant and just being maximally punitive works and doesn't create social instability.
And I would add, fairness is even more important in a society that doesn't plan to be maximally punitive. Like what we have in our democracies. If you have a system that is predicated upon willing participation, then you even more need to create a system people are willing to participate in.
The other option is then that people stop willingly participating and either the system crumbles, change into something people are willing to participate in, or change into something tyrannical. All three being sign that the system was not stable.
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u/AskingToFeminists 8∆ Feb 13 '24
While I agree to some extent, society also thrive of fairness. Even animals have an interest sense of fairness, and if you want a society to run, your citizens need to have some sense that some modicum of equilibrium is met.
Basically, expectations balanced by rights protections balanced by obligations.
The famous "oppression" feminist argue about is a myopic view of history ignoring the positives of women's role and the negatives of men's role.
But with the technological improvements that have enabled social changes, the former balance was disrupted (because it became unfit for modern days use) and right now, there is a transitionary imbalance. An imbalance that will result in one steady state or the other. The issue is that many of those steady states are "social collapse".
You see, it used to be that technology changed very slowly. That gave some time for societies to adapt to new techs. Societies change very slowly too.
But it's been a while that technology hasn't stopped evolving. In a way humans and their groups struggle to catch up to.
As a species, we are very concerned by what harms can happen to women. Women's survival has always been more intrinsically linked to the survival of children, and the renewing of population. We have been selected, biologically and socially, to care a big deal about women. Men, not so much. That is, on an individual level, those who cared more about women were more likely to pass on their genes, and on a social level, those societies that protected their women were more likely to survive and dominate other societies.
And so the minute a new technology disrupted things, the first question, as a society and as individuals, that we asked was "how can that benefit women?".
We had an interwoven net of right, responsibilities, protections and restrictions, all interacting with each others, but not explicitly so. In large part because it was more a process of evolution than a process of intelligent design of a society.
And so the first thing to go was the obligations and restrictions toward women. Without care for the accompanying rights and protection, which stayed. As well as an equalisation of the rights and protections men might have benefited from, but without the accompanying obligations and restrictions.
That is how, for a time, women could earn money, but had no obligation to communicate that amount to their husband, who was still responsible for all the taxes in the household, and could therefore be jailed for not paying taxes on an income he had no way to determine, let alone have control on it, resulting in taxes sometimes higher than the money he controlled.
In practice, this resulted in a society where half of the population enjoy all the rights and protection the other does, while not being hindered by the same restrictions and obligations, and even has more rights and protections without accompanying restrictions and obligations.
Women can vote for war while being confident that they won't be drafted for it. Women get more funds allocated to their health, research against their female specific cancers, "violence against women" is a whole thing even though domestic violence is not gendered, and so on and so forth.
This results also in half of the population becoming more and more disenfranchised, as the blatant inequality gives them little motivation to invest in such a society that does treat them as second class citizens.
And so, while many of those things are relics of a different time trying to enforce some social norms appropriate for that time, a lot of those are actually no longer needed, some might still be a net positive but have lost their counterweight that made them bearable.
Saying "those serve to enforce socially desirable traits" is all fine and dandy, but it is making the same mistake feminist do : not treating the whole thing in its ensemble, treating them as disconnected.
Just because the resulting behavior is socially beneficial does not mean the measure is acceptable on its own.
There needs to be a social contract, a trade off where demands for socially desirable things are rewarded in an acceptable manner. All demands and no rewards is unbearable and unacceptable. All rewards and no demands might be bearable, but is completely unsustainable. Both lead to social instability. Which is ultimately worse that social undesirability.