S'pose

The American Marx, Professor Rawls, is the philosopher of Justice As Fairness, who "envisions a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights cooperating within an egalitarian economic system." He has his devotees play a little game of make-believe to ferret out their values. He tells them to put themselves behind "the veil of ignorance" and decide what kind of society they'd like to be born into, without knowing who they'd be born as, where, etc. He expects, rightly, that most pussified souls will choose an egalitarian liberal welfare state, where anyone's chances of more than subsistence survival are greatest.

I believe this is called "acting out of self-interest and fear?" I thought bold and brave liberals eschewed that crass emotion, along with H8, as something only rightwingers experienced. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Being a man of thinking...ok, being a man whose natural inclination is to live in his head...I like thought experiments. My own little sorties into that realm have been enjoyable for me, if uncomfortable for my readers. So here's another one --inspired by the 1951 sci-fi flick When Worlds Collide--which I'll leave up to you.

A large body is discovered, hurtling through space toward Earth. As it approaches, it is further discovered, surprisingly, that it is not an asteroid but a small planet. And even more amazing, very much like Earth. Rather than colliding with us, it slows down and settles into an orbit not so far from us. Travelling from our Earth to the new planet is not very difficult. 

So, we have a possible new home for, well, a part of the human race. A new start for a some of us. And guess what: you are put wholly in charge of this project. You get to choose who goes and under what conditions. You alone.

So?


BTW, the Wiki article about the movie, of course, contains this bit of critical wisdom:

Adilifu Nama, Cal State professor of Pan African studies, regards the collision between the two worlds as a type of metaphor for the then-ongoing post-colonial confrontation between the developed nations and the third world. He views the film as confirming a form of "whites only" racial segregation found in the United States during the period, as inferred by "the visual absence of blackness". As evidence, he notes that only "white people" survive the disaster. Thus the film "overtly advocates white racial homogeneity as a requirement for the preservation of the American way of life".

Hard to argue with that.

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