We don’t have to be identical to be equal:

I believe in the equality of the ultimate value of all human beings, and in fact, all things.  That is, in the essence of our being, all things are one and are thus of equal value.  However, it is self-evident that there are tremendous differences in the outward expression of different people, and different things in general.

There are many things that are quite obvious and common sense when considered, but are easily overlooked. Sometimes, the more obvious something is, the more easily it is overlooked.  That is, human beings often reach irrational conclusions on many topics, though the reality can be clearly seen when examined without bias.  In light of this, I state the following:

Recognising the equality of inherent worth of different people does not demand that they be seen as identical.

I doubt anyone reading this would disagree with this statement, and I could excuse some for questioning whether it even needs to be said.  However, there are so many examples whereby the above seems to be missed.

Equality of ultimate value and differences in individual expression:

There are clearly distinctly different levels of equality between different people.  If we were to look at four people in a community, one baker, one school teacher, one police officer and a doctor, you can easily understand how each of these people are equally contributing towards their society, but in different ways.  You could certainly frame a question about the level of specialist knowledge and skills required for the different jobs, but essentially they are all necessary and important^[i].

However, if we compare a brain surgeon to an unemployed drug addict, they are clearly not equal in their individual expressions.  A brain surgeon is contributing enormously to the wellbeing of others in their community, vastly improving the quality of life of many, and actually saving the life of others.  An unemployed drug addict is generally a danger and burden to themselves, their family and friends, and to the wider community.

This should not however mean that we dehumanise those that suffer from substance abuse.  I have been there personally, and whilst I didn’t fall as far as some, I certainly was a shadow of the man I wanted to be.  We can recognise the inherent worth of each human being, whilst simultaneously recognising that some are expressing that inherent worth, whilst others are not.

Someone who struggles with substance abuse and cannot hold down a job (and thus lives on welfare and charity) is not living outwardly in according with their potential, and is not expressing their ultimate value.  Someone who serves the community and saves peoples lives on the other hand is living outwardly according to their potential, and is expressing their inner value in the world at large.

Demonstrating this principle to understand comparative religion:

I first started writing because I wanted to encourage tolerance and understanding between different religions.  However, I soon discovered that many – or even most – of the people arguing for pluralism were also arguing that the worlds religions were all equal and identical, and that it was only human misunderstanding that was making it seem otherwise.

The reality is that this view is untenable, as the facts simply do not support it^[ii].  The truth is that whilst there are indeed largely universal overlapping features of spirituality and religion, the world’s faiths are almost always heavily colored by the culture of their time and place.

This doesn’t just mean that they express the same truths in the vocabulary of their culture.  Rather, it also means that they have many unique features, and different strengths and weaknesses.  Also, it means that they are different mixtures of divine truths and human, egoic projections.

So, we can encourage harmony between people of different faiths without having to ignore all the differences between them.  We can reject the exclusive and hyper-conservative perspectives that see different religions as being on opposite sides of a cosmic battle of good against evil (with eternal consequences), without having to ignore the reality that some faiths are better than others in different ways.  They are not all equal and identical in their expression, and yet each human being is equal in the eyes of God, regardless of what faith (if any) they express.

We can (and should) be able to express criticisms of the beliefs and practices of different faiths without diminishing or dehumanising followers of such faiths.  We have to be able to have constructive debates and give critical examinations of religious groups without resorting to (or being wrongly accused of) religious bigotry or racism (as particular religions are commonly associated with specific racial and cultural groups, criticisms of some religions often get dismissed as racist).

We can do this whilst still seeing the differences between us as ultimately superficial, and seeing the common ground between faiths and people as a whole as being of true importance.

Gender and polarity:

There has been a massive push in Western culture recently to try to realise the ideal of equality between the sexes.  I for one have never been tied to strict traditional gender roles, so in principle I generally applaud this.  However, agreeing with the general value of something isn’t always the same as agreeing with the way something is implemented.

Whilst cultural conditioning can explain some of the differences between men and women, it is quite clear that some of our differences have a biological basis.  That is, whilst men and women are equal in ultimate value as human beings, we are not identical in our expression.  These biological differences are generally more pronounced in a traditional or primitive (this is a heavily loaded word, to be used carefully) way of life.  However, in our modern world they are becoming somewhat less important, and men and women are now able to share many of the same tasks and roles largely equally.

However, the reality is that many, if not most people prefer polarity in their romantic relationships.  That is, heterosexual men generally prefer feminine women, and heterosexual women generally prefer masculine men.  There are certainly many exceptions to this rule, but as a general rule it is almost universally true.  We also see this polarity in many (but not all) homosexual relationships, as it is common for one partner in a same-sex relationship to have more pronounced masculine traits, whilst the other has more pronounced feminine traits.

There is however also a push coming from the far-left (and into the mainstream left) to remove or even reverse natural human gender polarity.  I wish to walk carefully through this ground, as I am not interested in pushing back against any group or persons.  There needs to be freedom for everyone to express themselves naturally without being pressured into cultural norms that aren’t personally always a fit for their individual tendencies.  However, we can allow this without abandoning the natural polarity that many (if not most) people naturally express and enjoy.  We can evolve our understandings of gender without throwing out all features of traditional values that are rooted in biology and natural law.

Men and women are equal in value (as are intersex and transgender people), but we are not identical in our expressions.  Men and women do have distinct differences that should be understood and appreciated as complementary.  This leads me to the following statement, which I feel is worth emphasising:

Seeing unity within diversity should be our aim, rather than artificially enforcing uniformity.

A small percentage (approx. 0.02%^[iii]) of people are born intersex, in which genetic abnormalities can blur the traditional distinctions between males and females.  Again, intersex people have equal value, but they have distinct challenges to experience as human beings.  Likewise, transgender people (those that suffer from gender dysphoria and choose to undergo surgery and hormone treatments to change their appearance to that of the opposite of their biological sex) have equal value to other people.  However, their experience is distinctly different to that of the rest of us.

I have been collecting sources on this subject for the past 9 months or so, in preparation for a series of articles where I will cover specifics relating to transgender issues.  I will state here that we can (and should) treat transgender and intersex people with the respect and dignity that they deserve, but that this doesn’t mean we should bend to all the requests made by far-left activists.  We can see the equality of trans and intersex people^[iv]without rejecting the traditional gender binary.  We can respect the diversity of human personality without throwing out all distinctions of human biology (which is what many radical gender activists are actually trying to do).

Race, skin color, culture and civilisation:

As a final example, I want to also say that we can accept the equality of people of different races, skin colours and cultures as equal in their humanity, whilst recognising the differences in their expression.  I wish to be clear that I reject all ideas of the inherent superiority of anyone based on the colour of their skin or their genetics.  However, this does not mean that we cannot recognise some cultures as being more advanced than others, in different ways.

We need to be able to differentiate between the degree of civilisation in a culture, without resorting to racist ideas about some races and cultures being ultimately smarter or better than others.  I would prefer to say that certain cultures have developed forward momentum at particular times which has brought about rapid evolution, whilst others have stayed largely the same over very long periods of time.

At different points in recorded history this momentum has taken place in different cultures, with people of different skin colours.  Egypt, Sumer, India, Persia, China, Greece, Rome, Britain, the US, etc. have all had momentum in their favour at different times.  Only extreme bias can lead to the conclusion that some races or skin colours are objectively superior to others.  I personally believe in the ideal of a cosmopolitan, multicultural society.  However, such an ideal can only work when we come together under common values and leave traditional tribalism behind.

We need to be able to discuss the reality that some cultures are closer to the animal level and some further along the evolutionary chain, without resorting to a gross and oversimplistic dichotomy about inferior and superior races, or the equally problematic and oversimplistic dichotomy of oppressor and victim.  As I’ve said repeatedly, we need to be able to have important conversations without sacrificing either our intelligence or our decency.

Speak the truth with love, fearlessly.

Peace

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^[i] Though I recognise that some people might have a particular gripe with one or more of these professions.

^[ii] See the following lengthy article I wrote on religious scriptures: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/on-interpretations-of-scripture-why-many-religious-conservatives-and-progressives-misread-ancient-texts-and-misunderstand-religion-in-general/

^[iii] A much higher figure is often quoted of 1.7%, but this figure includes people who are very clearly biologically female in every respect, but have genetic abnormalities that make it difficult for them to conceive and/or carry a child to term.  The much lower figure of 0.02% is apparently accurate in referring to intersex people as diverging from otherwise clear human gender distinctions.

^[iv] You may have noticed I didn’t mention “non-binary” people here.  That is because the identification of someone as non-binary does not refer at all to anything biological (or an inverse of their biology, as in the case of transgender people), but rather refers only to personality.  Hence, non-binary is of a different category to issues of gender, as “gender identity” is not synonymous with biological sex as common uses of the term gender are.

It should go without saying that we should treat people that consider themselves non-binary with respect and dignity.  However, this doesn’t mean that we have to concede to all demands made by gender activists, or accept all accusations of bigotry that are often levelled against those that disagree.

My initial thoughts on modern gender issues:

I’ve been reading, listening to and watching a lot recently regarding issues of gender, and I plan on writing in some detail about a number of different relevant topics related to this.  For today I thought I would just write a very brief introduction to my thoughts on the matter.  When I first started this blog I wrote a series of ‘101’ articles to introduce my thoughts on religion/spirituality, science/philosophy and politics.  This is perhaps my ‘101’ article on modern gender issues.

I want to start and end this piece in the same way, by saying that we all need to come together and appreciate each other and ourselves.  I feel that much of what I say in these articles is simply common sense.  Unfortunately we are not always as sensible and rational as we like to think.  When it comes to relations between men and women, we could really afford to get back to basics and address the foundations before going into specifics.

To start with, men and women need to respect the strengths of each other, and be kind and considerate to one another.  In Western culture today there is an immense amount of hostility between the sexes, and it is absolutely coming from both sides (though again, not always to equal degrees, or in the same ways).  We all learned when we were young that two wrongs don’t make a right.  This seems to be largely forgotten by many today, as reactivity is becoming increasingly normalised.

I have been saying for some time that the far left and right poles of politics feed each other with their reactivity.  There is no shortage of crazy stuff going on at both ends, and both sides use the other as justification for themselves.  You could certainly generalise by saying that women’s rights/feminism is a part of the political left, whilst men’s rights and traditional gender roles are favoured by those on the right.  Radical gender division seems to be more and more mainstream today, and we need to make a break from it.

Whilst I have certainly for a long time favoured the political left more so than the right, I am leaning more towards a political agnosticism at the moment.  I have often said that agnosticism regarding religion and spirituality is a healthy and honest approach for people that haven’t yet been convinced of the reality of spirituality (or haven’t been convinced of materialism).  Likewise, perhaps opting out of the political divide may be a healthy approach for a while, especially considering the amount of time and effort required to really have the depth of understanding to be confident as to who to align with (if anyone)^[i].  Most of us are familiar with the expression “spiritual, not religious”.  I have been considering the phrase “spiritual, not political” as a new variant.

So, masculine and feminine qualities are designed to be mutually beneficial, to complement and support each other.  The reality of being human is that no one person can fulfil every role, or specialise and excel in the same fields.  We all have different strengths and weaknesses.  Hence, it is only healthy that we appreciate the strengths of other people, understanding that we benefit enormously from them.

Likewise, men and women are equal in ultimate value as human beings, but in general we can have different characteristics and strengths.  These days we correctly recognise that men have both masculine and feminine qualities, and women have both feminine and masculine qualities.  However, in general masculinity is naturally dominant in most (but not all) men, and femininity is dominant in most (but not all) women.

Outside of this generalisation, there is obviously a wide spectrum in the balance of these two polar opposites in men and women.  Some men have very strong masculinity and almost no feminine qualities, whilst the majority of men have a small to moderate balance of feminine qualities along with their masculinity.  There are still some men in which feminine qualities dominate.  Many of these men are gay, though this is not always the case. Likewise, the same is also true of women in reverse.

We human beings are somewhere between the animal kingdom and our divine potential.  On a physical level we share much with the animals of this planet.  We see much in common in the behaviour of the males and females of many species and human beings.  And yet we are also different to them.  We have had more than a glimpse of our potential to transcend mere instinct and survival, and dream of a different kind of life where we decide how we want to live.

We seem to be going through the growing pains of a species in the process of dramatic evolution.  We have taken many major steps out of our past, but we have not stepped fully into a better future.  We seem to be somewhere in the middle for a while.  So, perhaps we can start by recognising that we have not yet arrived at our destination, but that we are very much working on how we think we ought to relate to one another and coexist.

Traditional gender roles were shaped heavily by basic biological differences between men and women.  Upon this foundation we were conditioned in different ways by our cultures, and as a combination of biology and related natural psychology, and cultural conditioning, we came to know ourselves to be somewhat different from each other.  In a perfect world this would simply mean peaceful cooperation, harmonious interdependence.

Unfortunately though, in many circles it has now become extremely unpopular to discuss the biological differences between the sexes.  It is now common for mobs of angry voices to rise up against anyone that dare discuss such things.  I have often said that human beings do not naturally excel at balance.  When we discover an imbalance in one area we do not naturally swing towards the centre.  Rather we often swing to the exact opposite imbalance.

In the past it was certainly the case that too much was made of the biological differences between men and women.  For much of recorded history across the globe the differences between us have been seen as rigid limitations on what men and women could achieve.  They were perhaps seen as clear barriers that defined what kind of life one could live.

In today’s world it seems that we are swinging a very long way to the opposite extreme.  The emphasis on societal conditioning in shaping masculine and feminine qualities has reached the extreme that many people outright deny basic biological differences between men and women.  It is reaching the point where you can’t state the obvious without being lynched.  I won’t go into details today, but I’ll discuss a number of relevant examples in future articles.

We have attempted to provide equal rights for both men and women (a very contentious issue), and have made major leaps forward.  I for one have no desire to go back to the way things were (in the 1950’s, or the 1500’s for that matter), in the massive inequality and abuse of power that was common.  However, we have by no means arrived at some enlightened future destination.

We also should make mention of intersex and transgender people, and the issues surrounding them today.  I would think that intersex and transgender people are being treated by larger numbers of people today with a greater respect and dignity than perhaps at other times in recent history.  However, this is not to say that intersex and trans people do not still face major difficulties (including targeted violence).  It is hard to know for certain how they have been treated in the more distant past and in other cultures, as records are patchy at best.  Certainly much progress has been made to ease the stigma surrounding both intersex and/or transgender people (some people may be both), and give them legal protections as afforded to everyone else.

Certainly we must recognise that sex/gender is not always clearly binary.  However, I think we can do so intelligently and respectfully without fully embracing radical gender theory, and throwing out all distinctions between men and women.  Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater as we re-evaluate many of our assumptions about life.

There are some real issues to be looked at here that are more complex then recognised by many within their own communities and outside.  As with many other subjects, human beings don’t always understand the fine subtleties that differentiate basic rights from special privileges.  As such these matters are touchy subjects that divide many into groups that are extremely hostile to each other.

At some point I will attempt to go into examples relating to feminism, the “red-pill” men’s movement, trans issues etc.  Again though, I want to stress that we need to go into these subjects with deep sensitivity and compassion, rather than with a desire to fight against the crazy extremes of the human ego.  There is lots of madness going on.  We all need to chill out a little and cool things down.

There seems to be little appreciation for each other amongst great numbers of men and women.  So many of us are deeply scarred by personal or collective traumas, and have made an enemy out of the other.  This is no good, and it is hurting men and women alike.  I want to encourage my readers to just say no to the new norms of hostility between men and women.  We want to see people inspired and empowered.  Hatred is never empowerment.  Love is the natural and healthy state of all living beings.

Anger and hostility can have legitimacy as natural responses to immediate circumstances of danger and injustice.  However, as habitual states of being that are perpetuated by internal psychological processes, they are deeply dysfunctional and toxic.  To be empowered we must heal, both individually and collectively.  Truly we want all beings to thrive, whether male, female, intersex and/or trans.  We want all beings to live with freedom and opportunity, and to be respected and loved.

May all beings thrive and live in peace.

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^[i] See the following: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/how-do-we-really-know-what-is-true/ .