Between modern day conservatives and progressives in the U.S there is one philosophical discussion that completely differentiates the world views of each respective group. These respective philosophies are the belief in natural hierarchies for conservatives and in absolute egalitarianism for progressives. The belief in natural hierarchies by conservatives is one that believes that there will always be groups of people that dominate in nature and in human societies and certain people will reach the top of these hierarchies because they’ve earned it in some way and that is moral. While the belief in absolute egalitarianism by the left is a belief that any type of hierarchy is oppressive to individuals and that any hierarchy should be attempted to be dismantled because people at the top have arbitrarily made it there and to have that is immoral.

In this blog post I’ll be arguing for both those in favor of hierarchies and egalitarianism so I can be the devil’s advocate to some extent, but I do lean towards the idea of hierarchies.

For the case in favor of natural hierarchies many systems assert hierarchies including capitalism and hierarchies are a natural result of great variation between people and things within the natural world. For example, someone who is born with a larger stature and who is naturally athletically gifted will succeed more in basketball than someone with opposite characteristics. Is the aforementioned situation unfair? Yes but that is how natural world is. An antelope within the plains in Africa couldn’t control the fact that they were born as prey yet they were and naturally they are hunted by predators such as lions, within the natural hierarchy of the food chain antelopes are underneath lions; but does this make them lesser beings than lions? No they just have different strengths and weaknesses and that is why the fulfill the role that they have within the food chain. A more modern example of hierarchies would be that of Capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system which wholeheartedly supports the idea of hierarchies because within a free market there will always be those who find success and those who fail based on their own individual merits. Within an absolutely free market some would find great success and others would find abject failure because of their merit and luck, but in today’s society we have the U.S. government to ensure that no one is completely ruined by the free market.

Now to speak in favor of absolute egalitarianism as aforementioned in the final sentence of the last paragraph the U.S. government makes sure that some people won’t completely fail out of the free market and become disenfranchised. Also as I aforementioned it isn’t fair that some people naturally get ahead of others because of factors that they can’t control. Their are two ways to achieve the perfect egalitarian society and one would be to bring those who are at the bottom rungs of the hierarchy up or to bring those at the upper echelons down, this is considered to be moral because it serves the end of fairness and equality between persons. Those who are absolute egalitarians would also argue that all too often minorities and under represented groups are often oppressed by the majority with the hierarchy that they inhabit so the only why to create equality for those disenfranchised minority groups would be to deconstruct the social hierarchy all together.

So ‘ve argued for both philosophies and I’ll leave the rest to the reader, I hope I hadn’t straw manned either belief because I tried my best to fairly represent both parties. I’ll leave you with one question where do you think you fall within these two general philosophies? Of course you might not fully agree with one or the other because they are both extremes but I’m curious none the less.

Law as a concept has always interested me because it’s not necessarily moral and can sometimes be forcibly imposed. Different kinds of law often employ different techniques to uphold authority, two examples being religious law and civil law. Civil law is often separate from morality and it might sound surprising to some, but is all too often true both in totalitarian states and democratic states. For example, in the U.S. if a man is dying of hypothermia right outside of a citizen’s house and that citizen leaves the man outside to die, the state will do nothing to punish the citizen who effectively left the man to die when he easily could have done something. Although the citizen in that situation acted in a morally reprehensible way he had the right to do so because the state can’t coerce a citizen into letting the man in otherwise the state would be violating the citizen’s right to liberty and property. However, if a man were drowning in the harbor and the citizen told everyone in the vicinity that they were going to help the man but you didn’t the government would hold them culpable. the difference in these two scenarios is that the individual in the former example did nothing to create the man’s circumstances and had no direct effect on the man’s death; and in the latter scenario the citizen prevented other bystanders from helping the man and as a result became partly responsible for the drowning man’s death. I believe that these standards within the U.S. legal system are flawed in some ways but are ultimately for the net benefit of society because if the government were to force the citizen in the first scenario to take the man into his house then there would be true right to property and liberty.

Religious law is directly tied to morality because religious law is what dictates morality to a society. Modern post-enlightenment societies have decided to separate religious law from civil law because it could cause unique issues for people practicing morality that differs from the state’s morality. Two perfect examples would be the Catholic Church in Medieval Europe and Islam within some Middle Eastern societies today. In the case of the Catholic Church events like the Italian and Spanish inquisitions took place that would specifically target people of differing religious backgrounds because they undermined the religious and civil authority of the Catholic Church as an institution. The Catholic Church was one of the most powerful institutions in the world at this time and wouldn’t risk losing their religious and moral authority by having challengers to their religious morality in the forms of Judaism and Islam. There was also an Egyptian court case in 1996 held in the high court of Egypt that ruled a certain professor was a heretic of Islam and as a result annulled his marriage to his wife because he was no longer a Muslim. The Egyptian court case is interesting because it is a seemingly secular country but it retains certain archaic laws that forever tie it to the morality of Islam.

During my experiences with both my personal deliberation and the sexual assault deliberation ‘One Alert Too Many: Addressing Sexual Assault through Prevention, Protection, and Prosecution’ I attended as a participant I felt that a multitude of ideas were exchanged. We established such an effective dialogue by means of creating a solid information, prioritizing the key values at stake, weighing the pros, cons and trade-offs between solutions, ensuring mutual comprehension, the equal exchange of ideas and both had participants updating their old opinions.

During my experience moderating my group provided the participants with a plethora of information in favor of different perspectives and the participants provided ample examples of their personal experiences in both public and private schools across different states across the U.S. Being a participant in the sexual assault deliberation I was worried that I would be too ignorant to speak much on certain topics but luckily the group presenting that deliberation provided all participants with detailed papers providing context for the deliberation while allowing for discussion. It was a very different experience walking into the sexual assault deliberation ignorant compared to being entirely prepared for my deliberation.

At my group’s deliberation I found the diversity within our group to be astounding, especially so with the appearance of the geology professor and the journalist from the Penn State alumni paper. All of the students with different backgrounds also made for a dynamic conversation that had a variety of complex and valid ideas even if everyone didn’t agree. And when I was a participant in the sexual assault deliberation I felt encouraged because of the diversity of backgrounds and opinions in the room, because if the room were dominated by a certain group of people with similar backgrounds it would be intimidating to speak because of the argumentative power that they would hold as a group.

When I was leading the deliberation I definitely found the most interesting part was when the group weighed the pros, cons and trade-offs to each groups approach. Sometimes the participants even thought of cons that I hadn’t considered like that sometimes the class discussions that group three established could provide a repressive environment for people dissenting from the popular opinion held by the majority of their peers. In both deliberations I felt that everyone present was effective at ensuring mutual comprehension even after a misunderstanding that occurred between another participant and I in the sexual assault deliberation, but we quickly addressed the error and moved on. I also observed that in the deliberation that I was moderating no particular participants stood out as dominating the conversation and freely exchanged ideas even though some disagreed. The most important factor was that everyone felt comfortable to share their opinion with the whole group that kept the deliberation from being drawn out or awkward.

I believe that in my groups deliberation most participants maintained the same view after the deliberation but I think everyone who attended gained valuable insight as to the opinions and experiences of others that enriched everyone’s understanding of the topic overall. In regards to the sexual assault deliberation that I attended, I learned a great deal about the subject from attending and although my views on the subject hadn’t changed drastically I believe that I have a more nuanced opinion now because of it.

Stoicism is a school of philosophical thought that has influenced my personal philosophical views in profound ways. Recently I’ve been reading a seminal book in stoic philosophy the meditations by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Throughout the book the ideas of stoicism provide a certain order and positivity to life ed ven though it acknowledges that some things cant be controlled or avoided. The founder of stoicism, zeno of citium, was an affluent merchant until he lost everything he had in a horrible shipwreck. In Zeno’s newfound poverty he found a greater purpose in philosophy and used his experiences to foster a philosophy of order and positivity that would remain throughout the ages. Ultimately stoicism is based on the concept of self improvement with purpose, because stoics reason that for one to truly be improved the must use their newfound strengths to serve their universal purpose. The idea of everything being connected for purpose within the universe is a cornerstone of stoic philosophy and the purposeful connection of everything is known as the logos of the universe. Stoics would then try to serve the universal purpose through achieving actions based on rationality to improve the world. Marcus Aurelius exemplifies the idea of one having a purpose in his questioning “[were you] born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?”. I found this quote particularly interesting because all too often in today’s world people do things that are well within their comfort zone and will prioritize meaningless indulgences instead of things that are truly important to them and those around them. This idea is primarily why I like stoic philosophy it can provide purpose in our world of modernity that so desperately needs because of the existential vacuum found within america. I would highly recommend anyone reading this to read some stoic philosophical theory because it truly can improve your outlook on life and fosters positivity. I believe a good litmus test to see which ideas work and which ideas don’t is to look at the results of those ideas. And when you compare the philosophy of stoicism to something like nihilism there really is no contest. If you believe in the natural logos of the world and that gives you purpose and you improve the lives of those around you as well as yourself you’re a better person for it. If you believe that life has no inherent purpose and that you should live to do what pleases you because nothing else matters you will end up not growing as a person. So let’s say hypothetically that the belief of stoicism is wrong and that there isn’t any purpose to anything, you would have still lived a positive life because of stoicism, even though your beliefs were “naive”. So now I leave the continued exploration of stoicism to you, the reader, because there is far more complexity to be understood within this philosophy but I hope that this post piqued you interest because i find stoicism extremely fascinating.