Rational Philosophy

On sexism, racism and any other ism: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Gloria Steinem; the importance of drawing distinctions, and the unfortunate side-effect of bigotry.

Gloria Steinem’s Op-Ed yesterday — “Women Are Never Front-Runners” — shows that even a fervent anti-ismist can get tangled up in her own knitting. Ms. Steinem laments that Hillary Clinton faces an uphill struggle convincing voters that she’s a viable leader just because she’s a woman. Steinem contrasts Clinton’s task with Obama’s, arguing that Clinton has it harder. Although Steinem presents no evidence, I wouldn’t try to argue that she’s wrong. Unfortunately though, her thesis swells with the rhetoric of bias, ending with what’s supposed to be a rallying cry against isms ‘We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”’ And this would demonstrate lack of bias how?

Human beings have developed an extraordinary ability to draw distinctions and categorize the world around them. Consciousness requires that we do so. The first glimmer of consciousness rests on the awareness that there is a self and a non-self. From this primary and fundamental distinction we begin to separate the world into up and down, in and out, hot and cold, blue and pink, soft and hard… This ability has been honed to a fine point because it has provided an evolutionary benefit. The better able we were to draw distinctions, the more skilled we became at identifying safe foods to eat, suitable materials for clothes and tools and shelter, etc.

In another story today, brewers pursuit of ever hoppier beers and consumers pursuit of ever more gratifying flavor, gives an example of just how far we’re prepared to go along the road of differentiation and distinction. The whole enterprise of humankind rests to a large degree on the striving for new distinctions.

But the faculty to draw distinctions, while it can be trained or enhanced, is fundamentally indifferent to the nature of those distinctions. In other words, although some of us can’t distingush Bach from Hayden we can all distinguish a jackhammer from a songbird, a pen from a pencil, and our own cell-phone ring tone from everyone else’s. We draw distinctions so naturally that they become easy pegs for our murkier judgments.

This is where isms come in. When we derive arbitrary judgments from a characteristic, no matter how well distinguished that characteristic may be, we fall into the trap of the ism.

By all accounts, Hillary Clinton is a woman. Identifiying her as a woman is not an ism. Saying she’ll make a better or worse leader because she’s a woman is an ism. There’s no rational basis for making such a connection. (We can easily find many examples of both men and women leaders who are wonderful and many who are awful.)

To get to an ism from a distinction we have to apply flawed logic and reasoning, or blind ourselves to logic and reason. Racism in all its forms, for example, requires the racist to suspend his or her faculty of reason. But why do we do that?

Isms are born of ignorance or fear. Either we are too ignorant to understand that our judgments are flawed, or we are afraid of some group that’s different from us, or of losing our power over them, or of being forced to recognize their equality.

The antidote to isms is reason and logic, persistenly, patiently, blindly, and tirelessly applied.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

PS. Of the IPAs I’ve tasted, my personal favorite is Smuttynose IPA. Highly recommended.