Wednesday 25 July 2012

Try replacing the word 'equality' with 'the same' or 'identical'

*

It's an interesting exercise, because it renders most sentences containing 'equal' (or equality) as very obviously false.

Having rejected 'the same'/ identical as valid synonyms, the next step in the exercise is to find another synonym which makes sense in the context.

This can be difficult...

Therefore, equal/ity is revealed as a fake concept, an obfuscator of thought.

*

e.g. "Liberty! Sameness! Fraternity!" - ahem...

e.g. "Equal opportunities" goes to Identical opportunities; "Equality of outcomes for men and women" goes to the same outcomes for men and women.

(But how can we make things identical or the same? Only one way: By making them identical or the same - by coercively imposing identicality and sameness.)

e.g. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created identical..." um, not really, so how about: "all men are created the same"... Nah. OK then: "all men are created with... indistinguishably-similar... wotsits..." - Oh, I give up.

*

2 comments:

Paul Warkin said...

"Equal" and "the same" have different meanings. 2+2 equals 4, but 2+2 is not the same as 4: one is a sum, the other is a number. I think "equal" can mean the same or identical in a specific attribute, not necessarily identical overall. But this doesn't really contradict what you're saying, because we still have to ask: in what sense are all men created equal? Which characteristic is identical among them?

Bruce Charlton said...

@PW - in a sense there is no such thing as a synonym: all words have subtly different meanings.

But these 'magic' words like equality, democracy, justice, freedom have the particular property that they cannot be replaced in a sentence without making it obviously absurd.

e.g. "*Democracy* is the only acceptable political system" - "*Replacing the government by some kind of mass vote* is the only acceptable political system."