A life without double standards

Phil Ayesho

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Self delusions are endless. The only way you can live a life without double standards is if you kill your ego.

Wait.. that would not affect the double standards inherent in the collective actions of others...

I think it is possible to have NO double standards... you just can't have that AND be alive.

The dead know no double standards...
I think maybe I can hang with the double standards as long as life will let me.
 

jeff black

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Can one live a life without a double standard?

I mean, no matter how hard you try, you will always think a certain way about thoughts that are in your mind. Will you be able to look at both men and women and feel that they are equal in every facet?
 

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Wait.. that would not affect the double standards inherent in the collective actions of others...

I think it is possible to have NO double standards... you just can't have that AND be alive.

The dead know no double standards...
I think maybe I can hang with the double standards as long as life will let me.

Sadly the dead do have double standards. Have you ever walked a cemetery and noticed that some people have bigger and better tombstones than others?
 

Drifterwood

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I must admit that I was a bit sad that noone (not many) wished to take up this thread.

Seeing double of not punny would be like being a dog with two dicks - oops where have the smileys gone?

The NudeDude's point about money is fair. Having money does make it easier to elevate oneself from certain considerations. Ethics don't mean shit if your kids are starving. Or perhaps they mean the most and we are just lucky not to have to make those choices.

How thick the veneer of civilisation? What are our private and social goals? How much do we care how we achieve them? and if we do, do we then turn round and judge those who are not so fortunate or whose dreams compromise our own?
 

Phil Ayesho

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But see, Phil, I don't think what you are talking about is double standards - not as I define it. Treating people differently based on ability is not double standards, it is different standards. In a basic definition double standard can just mean different treatment but it is more commonly used as a negative term and implies an unjust different treatment. And, knowing Drifter, I have a feeling that it is that narrower definition he's talking about.

See, I disagree... the notion that double standards is a bad thing is kind of a modern PC pollyannaish view.

The only time I hear about people complaining about a double standard... they only mention ONE HALF of the double standard.

For example- feminists went on a tear over the "double standard" of men screwing women on the side as being acceptable, but not women screwing on the side.

But that very characterization is a lie.

First... Genetically, every woman has the assurance that the child she births is HERS...
Men do not have any such assurance... when it comes to their mere seed... it becomes inconsequential... when it comes to any legacy they might leave behind, they are demanding of women a level of fidelity that merely increases the chances that their children are really theirs.

Women do better, genetically, by investing their lot with ONE man who can provide for their children ( even if they have an occasional child by another male unbeknownst to their husbands )
But reproduction poses a much more severe risk for the woman than the man...


In western civilization of the past few hundred years, women who kept having children ended up dying in childbirth and some step mother ended up taking whatever legacy there was for HER children.
Women leanred to stop having sex once they had secured a reasonable family.... this is how they ensured any legacy benefited THEIR children.
Men faced with doing without were not gonna take that deal...

The double standard that evolved was that wives would turn a blind eye to DISCRETE philandering in exchange for the social norm that their husbands would NOT abandon them.
Men agreed to this with the norm that owmen would (ostensibly) Not be cheating and making a man pay to raise some other man's child.


This was such a strong social norm that if a husband DID abandon a wife, the divorce penalties were SUBSTANTIAL.

For hundreds of years this double standard WORKED. It Gave BENEFITs to BOTH parties... the benefits they, each, valued most.


So you see... every single alleged double standard is an evolved social accommodation predicated in the fact that our circumstances are not equivalent, And our goals differ.

As our circumstance change, these accommodations must change to reflect the shift in power.

Just as the advent of the birth control pill enabled women to be more sexual thru their whole lives... and thus changed the entire foundation of the infamous sexual double standard ...
Women rather suddenly started demanding fidelity from their husbands that prior generations would have found ludicrous.

Yet they wanted to KEEP the punitive divorce laws the penalized husband that abandoned their wives.

This was not in any way making life MORE FAIR... it was a naked and unapologetic power grab by women, because they had been , for the first time, handed a new power over their reprodcutive biology.

This same power meant that they were not necessarily relegated to popping out babies if they had a love life, which meant that, for the first time, they could pursue careers...

Again.... the circumstances changed, and so society had to re-negotiate a NEW standard in light of this shift in circumstances.


I can not even imagine a society where there is not going to exist SOME disparity in power, objective, ability or will.

A world without double standards is a world of uniformity... of no gender, no excellence, no advantage, no gifts.

An oppression of mediocrity and sameness... all of us wanting the same things for the same reasons and with the exact same abitlites...

Its bad enough how many people are slaves to fashion... how many bought SUVs, or Uggs... cause everyone else was doing it...

There is no narrative without want, without the drama of objective and obstacle.

There is no fairness without accommodation of our differences.
 

Drifterwood

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I can not even imagine a society where there is not going to exist SOME disparity in power, objective, ability or will.

A world without double standards is a world of uniformity... of no gender, no excellence, no advantage, no gifts.

An oppression of mediocrity and sameness... all of us wanting the same things for the same reasons and with the exact same abitlites...

Its bad enough how many people are slaves to fashion... how many bought SUVs, or Uggs... cause everyone else was doing it...

There is no narrative without want, without the drama of objective and obstacle.

There is no fairness without accommodation of our differences.

Isn't this rather the disparity of being able to get what you think you need in a rather shallow materialistic society rather than people living with common ethical standards?
 

Gillette

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Expect to lose some friends in the process.

They'll expect you to put up with behavior from them that they know you wouldn't from others and that they likely wouldn't put up with themselves.

Count how many times you hear, "Yeah, but it's me."
 

Phil Ayesho

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Isn't this rather the disparity of being able to get what you think you need in a rather shallow materialistic society rather than people living with common ethical standards?

its fractal.
At all scales and in all arenas it looks the same, shows the same recursive pattern.

As A species, a nation, and ethnic group, an age group, an income group, a community, a family, a couple....
There are no such things as true equals. There is always disparity.

This disparity creates advantage and circumstances that are unfair.

ALL attempts to equalize the disparity, to make life more fair, create double standards....
In my own family, we have people who can take a good ribbing... and those who can't. Those who can't still get to dish out a ribbing... but no one really ribs them in return.
That is a double standard... Why? because we all understand, even if that person does not, that they are more emotionally brittle than the rest of us... that we can not treat that person the same as we treat each other.

How is this a bad thing?

On a deep level, we all DO share the same ethical standards... we are simply applying those standards to wildly different circumstances.

Humans do not have their ethics "handed' to them- its not taught. even toddlers have a sense of fair play. Even Chimps have it.

Everyone agrees its not okay to kill someone without just cause.
We simply differ on what constitutes just cause.
140 years ago, stealing a horse in the big city got you arrested... but stealing a horse in the wilderness got you hung... because being left horseless in the city was not the same as being left horseless on the prairie.

This reminds me of people opining about the 'evil' of stereotyping... while ignoring the fact that merely saying stereotyping is bad is, in fact, stereotyping.
Stereotyping is HOW our brains derive meaning from a storm of data.
We can NOT keep from doing it.


By the same token... it is BECAUSE we all share a genetically similar sense of ethics that we ALL create and support double standards to try and render social systems more fair.

They are never perfect solutions to social inequity... but they are the best we can do.
 

Not_Punny

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* Sigh *

I am still too tired, and to make matters worse, I get up in 5 hours for a business trip....and I've just had three beers, so you BET that I'm seeing double. :rolleyes:

DW, there really isn't enough information in this thread for people to understand the dilemma you are facing.

You may or may not be able to talk about it, but if a writer wants to "rouse" his readers, he has to play the card of E X P O S I T I O N.

No problem if you don't wanna dish details, but we can't FEEL what you're feeling because we are lacking information on the circumstances surrounding the "issue."