Extended Double Standard: The Bible as Killer App




MIND READERS DICTIONARY : Mind Readers Dictionary show

Summary: I'm entitled to do what you, in my same circumstances would not be entitled to do--that's a double standard. Being civilized means trying to constrain the natural human tendency toward such double standards. The tendency toward double standards doesn't originate with humans. It is as old as life itself. All organisms demonstrate autonomous agency. A bird, unlike a rock, looks out for herself and hers. A tree without even a nervous system competes for sunlight. We humans have got life’s autonomous agency plus nervous systems, a major double standard augmenter. We really feel our personal pain, much more so than we feel the pain of others. We are compelled by the neuron’s persuasive and convincing power to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others. Add to this another double-standard augmenter. Language the inventive power to give voice to our individual desires and to rationalize them. Language reliably grants me an explanation, however specious for why I personally deserve what you, in my situation would not deserve. “Ah, but don’t you see,” I say “if you were in my circumstances it would be completely different…” And then I invent a reason why it would be. Civilization’s great inventions have been constraints on double standards. “Rule by law” for example is a double standard diminisher, moving us away from “rule by man” whereby a lord, supposedly chosen by God gets to impose his double standards. That all of us are in theory “equal under the law” is a significant check on our natural selfishness and double standards. “Rule by law” also moves us away from a variation on “rule by man” whereby a Lord in Heaven defined by some Great Man of Faith exercises that man’s double standard. A pope saying “God says that I’m exceptional,” for example. Double standard exceptionalism starts at home with “I demand more,” but really takes off when extended to a tribal “We demand more.” For example, “God loves us,” instead of merely “God loves me.” Is extending our double standards to an “exclusive we” a double standard augmenter or diminisher? One the one hand charity begins at home, so extending the standard to our next of kin and tribal neighbors is exactly how you would expect the diminishment of double standards to start. Rule of Law, that great double standard diminisher grow by gradual extention ,first for example in the Magna Carta from kings to nobles. On the other hand, extending the double standard from “I demand more” to “We demand more” is probably more of a double standard enhancer than diminisher. The delimited altruism of the extended double standard liberates me to promote my double standard without fear that I’m being selfish. To the outside world the tribe member says, “Yes I’m claiming I deserve more than you do, but notice how selfless I am in also claiming my family and tribe members deserve more than you deserve.” Historically the extended double standard “We demand more” idea has unleashed both the great movements--national independence, civil rights, women’s rights, workers rights--and the horrible movements—national exceptionalism, racial supremacy, tribal bullying and bigotry of all sorts. Righteous indignation on behalf of “us” feels righteous because in some cases it is, for example when beating back the encroachment of exceptionalists who succeeded in imposing their extended double-standard and crowding others out, the way men did with women for millennia, and Nazis did with Jews and then Jews do with Palestinians today Women, Jews and Palestinians in their time of oppression are righteous for demanding more for their tribe. Their oppressors in their time think they are being righteous when demanding more for their tribe. But they’re wrong. It is the added power of extended dou