In a recent conversation with a friend, he remarked that he has not yet come to a policy on who to give to gifts to at year end. We talked about how a single policy tries to simplify the context to an unchanging background. However, the context is dynamic. One policy does not do justice to all the variations that are present - more organic is to respond to the complexity by adjusting the action to the situation.
Then I applied this notion to the US Declaration of Independence's statement that "All men are created equal". It is pretty clear from our understanding of genetics, contextual features such as family, culture, nutrition, ... that this is far from the truth. The statement makes a patently untrue statement. This issue seems to me that if we really understand that people are not created equal, then how do we create a social and governance system that is fair, humane, and compassionate given that we are created so unequal. This is a much harder design than a simplistic generalization that there is equality where this none.
It reminds me of various religious groups that will ponder over patently untrue statements in their traditions' source book(s) trying to find creative rationalizations of what was actually meant that would make sense given that the statement is obviously false. The power of presuppositions to distort the true nature of things is unparalleled in the grasp of a true believer. An example of this is various religious traditions claiming that their god is just, compassionate, ... The amount of suffering in human history is overwhelming evidence that this is untrue. This has led believers to invent bizarre after market stories of devils, heaven and hell, ... to try and rationalize such an untrue statement. Should one not wonder that there are humans with far more compassion and kindness than the gods they worship? Beware of the rationalization of submission that we don't know these god(s) plans.
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