Transgendered (Male) Athletes in Women Sports

While the 2026 World Cup was underway in North America, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling, which is to say, a judgment rationally argued, siding with member-states that did not permit “Y chromosome” students in public schools to play in on “XX chromosome” sports teams. Not being a writer who fecklessly evades controversial topics for fear of turning away some readers, I will attempt to tackle the jurisprudence and ethics of male athletes who self-identify as women playing in women sports such as American football in public schools.

Because gender language had become so muddled by enough people in at least some member-states even just for ideological purposes, which is to say, to impose, I resort to reductionism in highlighting chromosomes, which, after all, are empirical facts, and, at least as of 2026 when the Court’s opinion was announced, the “Y” chromosome stays for life. This is not to castigate or dismiss individuals whose respective mental states include a close affiliation and even a group-identification sense of self with the other gender. The cultural stereotypes of the widths of masculinity and femininity had arguably contracted too narrowly since at least the eighteenth century in the West that a young, slender man with long, straight hair and a high-pitch voice in 2026 would likely conclude that he is not masculine and even feminine even though everything about him that is natural/biological would by definition be masculine (i.e., consistent with male hormones and the related Y chromosome). This point should not be taken as reductionistic concerning gender-identification, but I submit that the point is often overlooked.

In ancient Greece, unlike in Rome, bisexual or gay men who felt sexual pleasure in submitting in being penetrated by a penis were regarded as just as masculine as men who penetrate anally or vaginally. Perhaps Carl Jung would say that for the ancient Greeks, both genders were regarded as containing animus and anima, albeit proportioned differently. I contend that a man who is conscious of his anima has a fuller sense of himself than a man whose self-awareness only consists of animus. Again, this is not to explain or account for every transexual person, but, rather, my intent is to widen the discussion even if doing so is beyond the tolerable narrow limits of some ideologues who presume themselves and their partisans alone as entitled to proclaim opinion as fact in contradistinction to the mere opinions across the aisle.[1]

In terms of the U.S. Supreme Court, the anima in a male person and the animus in a woman, is like a dissent to a majority opinion. As a society, we ignore dissents at our peril, especially as several majority opinions, such as “separate but equal,” have been overturned. In her dissent in West Virginia vs. Becky P. Jackson, Justice Sotomayor claims that the majority was “wrong to reject Jackson’s equal-protection” (14^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) claim.[2] Sotomayor admitted, however, “We just simply do not know scientifically that transgender students pose dangers,”[3] meaning that such students have physical advantages athletically over biological women in playing in sports like (American) football, where body-size and muscle-mass do matter at the line of scrimmage. According to the Huffington Post, Sotomayor writes in her dissent that the facts show that transgender “women” do not have an “inherent athletic advantage” over (biological) women, but a strident ideology is indeed capable of inventing facts for itself while accusing the other side of ignoring facts.[4] That the X chromosome has over 1,000 genes, whereas the Y chromosome carries only 50-200 genes, including the SRY gene, which furnishes instructions for the development of distinctly male genitalia, suggests that women and men are indeed biologically different in a myriad of ways, so the claim that biological males do not have advantages in the conduct of sport may be dogmatic rather than based on fact. This is not to say that every man is physically stronger, as the 1970s tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King demonstrated.

Perhaps the Court’s decision comes down to the prime facie assertion that people with penises and testicles are by definition exogenous to women sports. Furthermore, the equal protection clause is not violated because nobody who was born with a penis (and still carries the Y chromosome) can be on a women-only (XX chromosomes) team. Just as in labeling a film’s lesbian sex-scene as homosexual, or gay, rather than heterosexual because two vaginas and no penises are involved and the mental states of the persons in the scene go only so far and thus do not alter the label, so too do such states go only so far in terms of whether a person qualifies to play in women sports. Not even if one person in such a scene has had her female breasts (“boobs”) removed and is taking testosterone and sports a mustache—neither boobs nor facial hair counting as sexual genitalia—is such a scene heterosexual, for the sexual genitalia of the two people are the same, which is to say, homo rather than hetero. Similarly, women sports includes only people who were born with the same (XX) genitalia, regardless of how the people have decided to appear externally and what mental state they have. The underlying culprit is ideology, as per its inherently expansive propensity at the expense of even legitimate constraints.

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1. A week before the Court’s decision, while I was volunteering to work at the 2026 Gay film festival in San Francisco so I could include some examples of “gay cinema” in a forthcoming book I was writing on philosophy and theology through the medium of film, I casually mentioned to two young women that the film shown had a lesbian sex scene. “That’s heterosexual sex!” one of the young (presumably lesbian) women angrily declared to me as if her fact trumped what was merely an opinion on my part. “No,” I retorted, “a sex scene with two vaginas is not heterosexual.” To my shock, the two women dismissed this fact by stating, as if declaring a fact of their own making, “No, it doesn’t work that way.” Translation: two vaginas as a sex act can be heterosexual if one of the women self-identifies as a man. This simply is not true; a person’s mental state is not sufficient to change the label. What surprised me the next week was how many young people pushed back against my rather obvious claim that a sex scene involving two vaginas is not heterosexual, as if the claim were suddenly disputable without regard to the definitions of the words, homosexual and heterosexual. One young man even repeatedly shouted at me at a coffee shop, “You’re an idiot!” To be so dismissive of definitions may involve an underlying troubled mental state, as well as arrogance and narcissism. Ideological angst and anger do not trump definitions. The sheer presumption, even more than the flashes of anger unleased on me, shocked me, for such presumption is like arrogance on stilts during a flood. Ideology itself had become a problem in the far left quarter of San Francisco by 2026 as evinced by the presumed entitlement to not only overreach, but also lash out in spiteful anger in verbally attacking anyone who is an obstacle to the overly expansive sense of self and the presumption to declare facts out of what is actually ideological opinion as a fact. Postscript on the Gay “Frameline” festival in San Francisco: the vengeance of the two young lesbians led Cicily, who managed the festival’s operations that year to write a hostile email to me accusing me of having spoken inappropriately. She had not even contacted me first to ask what I had actually said to the two complaining, vindictive lesbians. “The film contains a lesbian sex scene” is in no sense inappropriate, especially at a gay film festival! Besides accusing me of having spoken inappropriately during my first shift, Cicily was stupid enough to send me the harsh email as I was en route to my last shift. Accordingly, I was able to write a brief rebuttal and turn back (to my own work!) rather than continue on to the theater to freely give my labor to such a sordid, resentful, and too ideologically-driven group. Saying that a sex scene is not heterosexual because it involves two vaginas and no penises is not inappropriate; in fact, it is an accurate statement. San Francisco “pride” had gone too far, moreover, in its ideological intolerance and vindictiveness against anyone objecting to the "Castro norms" so I voted with my feet the next week by not watching its parade downtown. In the Castro, for example, tips at bars, fast food places, and even at coffee shops were, according to several gay men and at least one harsh employee, required by the very employees who receive them. “It’s the Castro standard,” a young man sitting at a table near mine scolded me before he dismissively walked away from the Poesia coffee shop with his friend while making it clear to me that he was laughing at me for having complained about a barista there who had angrily demanded a tip. Self-righteous immaturity would likely continue in that district. Another “Castro standard” callously and selfishly imposed by many gay men there on their boyfriends and even husbands was the presumed right to have separate sex with other men even with romantic attachment because, as one jejune gay man told me, “everyone here does it.” But even common practice is not itself an ethical rationale according to David Hume; the sub-culture reigning in the Castro (gay) district could simply have been dysfunctional, sustained in its narcissistic pathology by unresolved psychological issues prolonging self-absorbed adolescence. Bad air!

2. Mark Sherman and Lindsay Whitehurst, “Supreme Court Upholds State Laws Banning Transgender Girls and Women from School Athletic Teams,” APnews.com, June 30, 2026.
3. Ibid.
4. Sebastian Murdock, “Sotomayor: ‘Facts Do Not Matter’ to Supreme Court after It Upholds Trans Athlete Ban,” The Huffington Post, June 30, 2026.

Critical Race Theory as Ideology

The word theory signifies proposed knowledge that is not merely subjective sentiment or belief that is being prescribed or advocated as an ideology; the purpose of a theory is rather to explain. Only in terms of better understanding is the implication that a better world could result (i.e., from the enhanced understanding). Even though a theory does not constitute established knowledge, that ideologues have seized on the label as a way of legitimating their respective cherished ideologies should come as no surprise because ideology sells better in the guise of knowledge even though a theory has yet to gain sufficient support epistemologically to be recognized as established knowledge. The epistemological subterfuge—a Trojan horse of sorts—also hides the fact that the ideologue seeks to persuade or advocate rather than primarily explain. Under the patina of a knowledge-claim lies quite another instinctual urge. Nietzsche’s claim that the content of a thought is none other than an instinctual urge of sufficient power to burst into consciousness—a manifestation of the will to power—provides an explanation for why the slight of hand is so easy for ideologues to make in sliding over to present the veneer of knowledge-claims even though such claims do in fact differ qualitatively from ideological claims. I contend that critical race “theory,” as well as the related interactionist “theory,” is in its very substance ideological in nature, rather than knowledge or even a theory.

The full essay is at "Critical Race Theory as Ideology."

Holidays at U.S. Parks: Usurped by Partisan Ideology

In the United States, Christmas is the last official holiday of the calendar-year, and Thanksgiving is the penultimate holiday. New Year’s Day is the first holiday of the year. Any other holidays among or between these are private rather than public holidays, and thus the public is not obliged to recognize those holidays as if they were equivalent to public holidays. Although New Year’s Day has remained safe from ideological attack, neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas have. Nevertheless, their status as official U.S. holidays has remained, at least as of 2025, and thus it remains as of then at least proper and fitting for Americans to refer to those holidays by name rather than by the denialist, passive-aggressive expression, happy holidays, which conveniently disappears even from retail clerks just in time for New Year’s because that holiday is ideologically permissible. The problem writ large is the influx of ideology trying to invalidate certain official United States holidays. By the end of 2025, the initial influx had triggered a counter-influx that is just as ideological, and thus only encircling certain (but not all) official holidays with ideology. The underlying fault lies in using the creation of a holiday to promote an ideology.

Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth were made official U.S. holidays to promote an ideology. This rationale for declaring a public holiday is problematic because such holidays should be acceptable beyond a partisan minority or even a simple majority of the public. This translates into requiring that both major parties agree (even beyond simple majorities) in Congress before a new holiday is declared.

With regard to existing official holidays that have long been on the books, the onus should be on efforts to remove those holidays because ideologically-oriented motives for change, being partisan, warrant strict scrutiny, whereas the holidays’ default status does not. In short ideologically-motivated change should be subject to heightened scrutiny because ideologies are typically partisan rather than a matter of unanimity.

That Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth are arguably too duplicative or overlapping, thus contributing to there being too many public holidays at the expense of the Gross Domestic Product and thus prosperity (and employment), is an indication that both holidays came out of an ideological push rather than a national sense or identity. In other words, the excess alone is a sign that holiday-making had gotten out of hand. In 2025, U.S. President Trump argued that there had come to be “too many non-working holidays,” and that all the days off were costing the U.S. economy too much in lost productivity.[1] Doing ideology by creating holidays does not come cost-free in economic terms. If the selfish trend of making holidays in one’s own image continues, more and more holidays might be viewed as valid only by some, rather than by every American, as being an official U.S. holiday were not validating enough. This does not mean that every American must or should celebrate every holiday.

The trend can also be seen in the changes made to holidays on which fees are waived in national parks. Firstly, that the “Trump administration removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from [the 2026] schedule of free entrance days for national parks” indicates that those two holidays are ideological, and thus partisan, in nature, and thus not fit to be public holidays.[2] Secondly, that the federal president then added his own birthday to the list of free-entrance days shows just how egocentric and thus arbitrary (to other people) holiday-creation had become. Trump also removed the birthday of the Bureau of Land Management, which could be a reflection of the president’s ideological dislike of regulatory agencies. Why not remove the first day of National Park Week, Great American Outdoors Day and National Public Lands Day too, as being excessive losses of revenue, given that none of those constitute even minor holidays like MLK Day, Veterans Day, and Juneteenth. Removing non-fee days such as Great American Outdoors Day would make sense from a financial standpoint, especially given Trump’s addition of President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday and the Fourth of July, which make more sense anyway, given all that Roosevelt did for the national parks and the major status of Independence Day in terms of anything governmental in the United States.

The president’s fiddling with the fee-free days at national parks goes to show that the questionable ideologically-based rationale of holiday-creation may seem to go seamlessly along with more legitimate, and credible from a national standpoint, rationales. So, the interlarding of the former can easily go unnoticed and only objected to after too many holidays have been added to the calendar. That conservatives were joining in the game of ideological holiday taking-and-giving has effectively relativized, or flagged, what the progressive had been doing in creating new national holidays and even in trying to outlaw Christmas, a national holiday, be castigating any mention of that major public holiday by name.

The addition of a counter-force could thus be efficacious if the objective is to sever holiday-construction from the tool-kit of partisan ideology. That politicalizing had already gone too far with neither realization from the public at large nor any self-restraint by the expansionist ideologues themselves is itself a problem worthy of notice and correction. Successfully adding or ending a national holiday should receive the consent of the vast (super) majority of Americans at the very least, including both of their major political parties rather than just one with a minority of the other. Opposing partisan ideologies can be fought over on the campaign trail and at the ballot box rather than by using holidays, which, incidentally, can serve as respites from all the political turmoil. Treating holidays as political means rather than as ends in themselves, including what they stand for, has gone virtually unnoticed by Americans and their elected representatives. This takes a gradual and subtle yet important toll on the very notion of a public, official holiday, such that even the major holidays are subject to attack for ideological purposes. It is important to realize that any ideology is partial rather than wholistic because some values are emphasized more than others.

The guts that it took to risk treason by declaring British colonies to be sovereign countries, and President Lincoln’s benevolent declaration of one day to give thanks came under attack in the early twenty-first century because American history is not salubrious with respect to American Blacks and Indians, and counter-holidays, partisan in nature, were created, whether public or private holidays (as if the two were the same).  As a result, nearly every national holiday could be viewed as being valid only for people of a certain ideology on one side or the other, rather than as what a public or national holiday should be. The vacuous, ideological expression in “wishing” someone, “Happy holidays” is just one symptom of the underlying societal illness. Such a “greeting” fits with Nietzsche’s point that modern morality has been wielded like a club under the subterfuge of good-will. In other words, “Happy holidays” contains a virulent “Thou shalt not!”  Unfortunately, the very notion of an official national holiday has become collateral damage for a people grown wary of too much ideological push. Is there any respite? At one time, holidays afforded such a rest. Put simply, spending weeks arguing directly or by verbal passive-aggression about a galvanized holiday is counter-productive from the standpoint of enjoying a day off work to relax and have fun. The tyranny of an ideological minority can be just as bad as that of the majority; holidays—July 4^th at the very least, should be tyranny-free.

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1. Pocharapon Neammanee, “Trump’s Birthday Added to National Park Free-Entry Days After Dropping MLK Day and Juneteenth,” The Huffington Post, December 6, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

 In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not! 

The full essay is at "Enjoy Your Holiday."

October 12th: Happy Vikings Day!

I contend that the ideological war being waged in the United States by the 2010s over whether October 12^th should be “Indigenous People’s” Day or Columbus Day became real in 2021 when President Biden issued a proclamation commemorating “Indigenous People’s” Day not coincidentally to fall on the same day as Columbus Day. Similarly, though only unofficially, the United American Indians of New England have labeled Thanksgiving Day as “The National Day of Mourning” since 1970. The de facto hegemony of ideology in changing official U.S. holidays, including in the refusal of some people and even businesses to say “Christmas” even on Christmas Eve Day, has proceeded without the premise that ideology should play such a role being debated in public discourse. Instead, the onslaught has been enabled by the vehemence of the conquerors in insisting that their decisions be recognized and not contradicted. Once I went to a Unitarian “church” on a Thanksgiving expecting a spirit of gratefulness, as per President Lincoln’s proclamation establishing the date of the holiday after two years of brutal war between the CSA and USA. The sermon was instead on the need for sorrow instead. I walked out, shaking my head in utter disbelief. Perhaps some Americans might one day insist that a similar mood be preached in churches on Christmas Day. Both the need and insistence come with a tone of passive aggression, and are indeed power-grabs based in resentment, which Nietzsche argued is a major indication of weakness rather than strength, and thus self-confidence. Perhaps the manufactured dialectics, such as the one centered on October 12^th, can be transcended in a Hegelian rather than religious sense at a higher level.

According to Britannica, Helge and Anne Ingstad discovered “the remains of a Viking encampment that they were able to date to the year 1000,” almost 500 years before Columbus’ landing on islands in the Bahamas (rather than on the mainland of North America).[1] The Graenlendinga Saga (Saga of the Greenlanders) has Bjarni Herjólfsson as the first European to see mainland North America in 985. At around the year 1000 CE, Leif Eriksonn, son of Erik the Red, “is reported to have led an expedition in search of the land sighted by Herjólfsson,” according to Eiríks Saga Rauda.[2] This is consistent with the empirical evidence found in Newfoundland.  Leif Eriksonn “found an icy barren land he called Helluland (“Land of Flat Rocks”) before eventually travelling south and finding Vinland (“Land of Wine”).[3] Later, Leif’s brothers travelled to Vinland, where their expedition stayed for three years. This is certainly sufficient to refer to the holiday on October 12^th as “Vikings’ Day,” or “Eriksonn Day,” which would cover the brothers too. Columbus Day has been antiquated by the discovery of Viking artifacts on the mainland of North America, in Newfoundland, which is a lot closer to where the Puritans settled than is the Caribbean islands, which of course are not on the mainland of North America.

To be sure, the peoples who came to be known as American Indians by the Europeans had come to North America thousands of years earlier, and thus were not indigenous either, could be said to have been the first people to discover America, from the vantage point of Asia rather than Europe. But those people emigrated gradually from east Asia over a land-bridge that extended back then westward from Alaska, rather than coming over after an expedition of discovery. In any case, the word “Indigenous” can be struck from “Indigenous Peoples” Day for greater accuracy.

In short, Vikings Day can safely, from the perspective of the hyperactive ideologies, be used for the holiday, as there is no evidence that the Vikings in the eleventh century mistreated any of the earlier arrivals from Asia. The dialectic of Columbus Day and American Indians Day can thus be done away with at a higher level of historical accuracy.

The role of ideology in making and remaking holidays in the U.S. can be seen as it has played out at universities located in different member states. At Harvard, which is located in Massachusetts, classes and offices were closed on “Indigenous Peoples Day” on October 12, 2024, without any mention of “Columbus Day” in the academic calendar. The ideological preference is clear not only in which name the university used for the holiday (rather than using both names), but also in the fact that the university did not cancel classes for Veterans Day. Universities in the militaristic member-state of Arizona had classes on Columbus Day but not on Veterans Day.  Whereas Harvard kept its libraries open on “Indigenous Peoples Day,” public universities in Arizona did not even do that for Veterans Day, in spite of the fact that students would obviously be studying on a one-day break from classes. Harvard is typically compared with Yale. Not even Yale cancelled classes on October 12^th (or on Veterans Day); instead, Yale, unlike Harvard, had a fall break of one week in October, which did not include Columbus Day.

In short, the respective university administrations, reflecting the political ideology that was most powerful locally, were making ideological statements in deciding whether and when to not hold classes on particular holidays. Harvard’s administration used the excuse that Cambridge, Mass recognized “Indigenous Peoples Day” as the reason why the university was recognizing that holiday and not Columbus Day, even though it too was a national (and state) holiday. I would not be surprised if Americans of Italian ancestry felt a slap. Part of the problem with ideology-fueled resentment is that such collateral damage is ignored or even, in a twisted way, believed to be justified.  Allowing an ideology to turn holidays into a battlefield is in dire need of being debated in the public square in the United States, rather than being tacitly allowed due to the efforts to intimidate. “Thanksgiving IS a day of sorrow! You better not disagree!” Such has been the tone intended to thwart even debate on the matter.

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1. Jeff Wallenfeldt, “Did the Vikings Discover America?” Britannica.com (accessed October 14, 2024).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

When Hollywood Gets Political: Partisan Profits

Entertainment celebrities and businesses alike risk losing customers and thus revenue by taking positions publicly on political issues. Fearing a surge from political parties on the far-right, some large businesses in the E.U. took the unusual step of coming out against those parties, labeling them as “extremist,” prior to the E.U. election in June, 2024. Typically, businesses there limit their political stances to particular issues that bear on core functions. This is a prudent policy, for human beings, being of bounded rationality, can easily translate ideological disagreement into switching brands. Even universities can get bruised by becoming embroiled in a domestic or international matter that is controversial. Hence after the contentious spring semester of pro-Palestine protests at Harvard (and other many other universities), the university’s administration enacted a policy not to take positions on issues in which the core functions of the university are only indirectly touched or are not affected at all. In creating a “marketplace” for academic freedom, universities themselves are best positioned by staying neutral. Although it is tempting for anyone (for oneself or one’s institution) who has access to media to sway public opinion on a political issue, I contend that the immediate self-gratification is usually outweighed by lost revenue and the reputation of being partisan. Applying strict scrutiny to one’s foray into controversial issues is harder to do if some vocal customers are demanding that a position be publicly taken. The silence of other customers, who would “vote with their purse or wallet” were an opposing position to be taken, should not be overlooked.  The singer Taylor Swift and the actor Robert De Niro provide us with two illustrations. Stepping out of their respective domains comes at a cost in those domains, and thus should, I submit, be done prudently and seldom.

As Israel was bombing Rafah in Gaza in 2024, contravening two rulings of the International Court of Justice (i.e., the UN’s court), a significant number of “Swifties,” that is, fans of the singer Taylor Swift, pleaded on social media for the international celebrity to take a position against Israel’s aggression. One fan wrote, “Taylor, please say something. Your silence is hurting us. We need you to stand with Palestine and condemn the Israeli occupation and aggression.”[1] I submit that the alleged hurt was exaggerated by the teenager. I sincerely doubt that Taylor’s silence kept many Swifties from buying Swift’s recently released album. Had the singer taken a stand, on the other hand, her fans on the other side might do more than block Swift on social media. That is to say, Swift’s financial bottom-line would be more impacted, and negatively so. It seems very improbably that increased purchases by Swifties in favor of Palestine would surpass the loss of revenue from Swifties on the other side of the issue “voting with their purses and wallets.” The lack of symmetry here is behind my advice to celebrities not to take a position on a controversial political issue, or to do so knowing that a financial cost will come with the exercise of political influence.

To be sure, exercising political influence on a societal and even world stage is tempting. As one Swiftie wrote on social media of Swift’s latent power, “if she can rally all of us to vote, she had the power to speak up about injustice.”[2] More bluntly stated, Taylor Swift had the power to significantly influence elections. The ideological benefit to her in doing so is not trivial; my point is that in accruing such a benefit, she should know that it comes with a financial cost in terms of her core function. By 2024, she had made so much money that not earning as much as she otherwise could by taking a position on Israel and Palestine could have made rational sense to her. Yet possible hits to her reputational capital could go beyond merely losing some customers of her music.

As Israel was bombing Gaza, former U.S. president Don Trump was on trial for criminal fraud in order to commit a political crime. Robert De Niro, a movie star, went to the courthouse and castigated Trump, calling him a monster.[3] As a result, the National Association of Broadcasters rescinded its Service to America Award, which the actor was to accept in just days. A spokesperson for the organization explained that it “is proudly bipartisan, uniting those from across the political spectrum to celebrate the impactful work of local broadcasters and our partners.”[4] De Niro would be a “distraction.”[5] Hence he was disinvited from even attending the event. De Niro took the high road and wished the organization well. For him, the loss of the award and even any loss at the box office if Trump supporters would then “vote with their purses and wallets” was worth it. Like Swift, De Niro had plenty of money, no doubt, and great star-power; he could take some of it out for a spin—like taking a new car out for a fast drive—without fear that he would end up in the poor house. Even so, the question of whether the hit to his personal “brand” was worth the financial and reputational cost is worth asking. Perhaps the answer is yes only if his public condemnation of Trump would end up making a difference in the election that was still half a year away. To De Niro, the answer could have been yes even if not because of the psychological reward that he felt from standing up for something important to him. Even so, rationally it would still be wise to keep an eye on the brand.

In short, it is human, all too human, to want to have political influence on a societal or even a global scale, and to enjoy the psychological pleasure that goes with the expenditure even though it could mean fewer sales than would otherwise be the case and a hit to one’s reputational capital, or brand. Generally speaking, though, such immediate gratification may not usually be worth the long-term costs, both tangible and intangible. Balancing the immediate with the long-term is not something that we humans are particularly good at, and natural selection in the process of evolution is to blame. The time-value of money, an economic concept, stems from the human preference for instant gratification. It is for this reason that I contend that celebrities should as a rule stick to their core functions—stick to the knitting in the words of the business book, In Search of Excellence—and only branch out to “cash in” to influence a political matter only rarely if at all. Taylor’s silence wasn’t actually hurting anyone; she was being an astute businesswoman and thus acting in her best interest.

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1. David Mouriquand, “#SwiftiesForPalestine: Taylor Swift Urged to Speak Up on Gaza Conflict,” Euronews.com, May 29, 2024 (accessed June 3, 2024).
2. Ibid.
3. Dylan Donnelly, “Robert De Niro Has Award Withdrawn after Calling Donald Trump ‘Monster’ Outside Trial,” Sky News, June 2, 2024 (accessed June 3, 2024).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

On the Decadence of American Journalism: Journalists as Celebrities

I submit that when a conveyer of the news becomes the story, something is wrong; in typing this sentence initially, I did not include I submit that. To state my thesis statement as if it were a fact of reason (Kant’s phrase) seemed to me rather heavy-handed (i.e., arrogant). Similarly, when some Americans insisted after the U.S. presidential that Don Trump had won as if the asseveration were a fact of reason, I could sense aggressiveness along with the presumptuousness in treating one’s own opinion as a declaration of fact, especially if the actual fact—Joe Biden being sworn into the office—was otherwise. Opinion is one thing; fact is another. When a person misconstrues one’s opinion with fact, something is wrong. I believe this happens so often that it may be due to a problem innate in the human brain. Religious folks would not have to reach far to point out that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the sin of pride manifests in wanting to be omniscient; eating of that proverbial apple of the knowledge of good and evil ushers in original sin. A person perceiving one’s own opinion as fact, or even as important as fact, implicitly regards oneself as God. A journalist who interlards one’s role in conveying the news with one’s own commentary, and an editor who then makes that commentary the point of a story both treat a means (i.e., the conveyer of news) as an end (i.e., the news itself). I contend that at least by 2023, American journalism had fallen into this hole with impunity, which involved a lack of industry self-regulation and individual self-discipline.   

On July 4, 2023, The Huffington Post ran a story, “CNN Journalist Responds to Brazen Trump Campaign Claim with Disbelief.” The story begins with the following statement: “CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Monday couldn’t quite believe a Trump campaign response to a Washington Post question about the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.”[1] Why should it matter whether a journalist can’t quite believe a statement made by a person being interviewed? CNN also ran the story, "Anderson Cooper Is Dumbfounded by Ron DeSantis' Bad Polling Excuse." The news network reported that the "CNN anchor was confused by the 2024 Republican presidential candidate's reason for falling behind Donald Trump." Why should it matter that the journalist was confused? Maybe he was not the brightest lightbulb. The network's message was obviously that DeSantis was to blame for the journalist's confusion, so the intent was to bias the viewers and readers against the presidential candidate. The inclusion of the word, excuse, in the story's title indicates the tenor of the bias in the "news" story.  

Is it ethical for a journalist to sway or bias the reactions of viewers or readers? Euronews, a E.U. rather than a U.S. news network, explicitly espouses impartiality so viewers can form their own opinions unimpeded by that of a journalist. That network even has a feature in which video is shown of events going on around the world, such as a political protest, with “No Comment” showing at the end. What a contrast to the American news media!

CNN’s obsession with the visible reactions of one of its news anchors, Anderson Cooper, to political statements even of people being interviewed illustrates my thesis. From his “news” show, Anderson Cooper 360, the network posted a video on CNN.com entitled “Watch Cooper’s Reaction to What Sondland Told Trump.” His reaction was visibly nothing spectacular. 

Another video had the title, “See Anderson Cooper’s Reaction to Ted Cruz ‘Groveling’ on Fox.” Again, the reaction was hardly noteworthy. 

Nevertheless, his show on the new network all about the anchor, as the very name of the show makes explicit. CNN’s CEO must have thought that the anchor’s reactions would make good promotional material for the network. Strangely, a magazine’s editor even thought that Anderson Cooper’s reactions were of value apart from promotional purposes. People posted a story online about the CNN anchor’s reactions in a New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square in New York City. The story, “Anderson Cooper Was All of Us with His Hilarious Reactions as He Took Shots to Bid 2020 Farewell,” featured the celebrity’s reaction to drinking a shot of alcohol on live television. After he and the other host drank a shot, “Cooper pursed his lips and coughed in seemingly slight discomfort, though he otherwise held it together.”[2] Hilarious.

It may be that Anderson Cooper’s minute reactions were such important fodder for publications because the anchor’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was an heiress of an illustrious (and very rich) American family. She was a businesswoman, fashion designer, socialite, and writer in her own right. Interestingly, she had offered at the age of 85 to carry a baby for her gay son. That in itself was more newsworthy than any of her son’s muted political reactions on air. Of course, when Anderson Cooper had come out as gay on air, that too was deemed to be newsworthy in spite the journalistic standard that the sexual orientation (or race, gender, or political ideology) of a conveyer of news shouldn’t have an impact on the presentation of the news.

When a journalist becomes the story, especially in expressing a personal opinion, news itself (and journalism) becomes obfuscated, diluted, and even toxic from the standpoint of the role of an electorate in a democracy. The societal justification in giving journalists an outsized mouthpiece in public discourse is predicated on their function in conveying the news. This does not extend to molding public opinion and being the news themselves. In a culture in which reality-shows spawn celebrities, perhaps it is only natural that anyone on television could be made into one even for displaying muted visible reactions.

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1. Lee Moran, “CNN Journalist Responds to Brazen Trump Campaign Claim with Disbelief,” The Huffington Post, July 4, 2023.

2. Jen Juneau, “Anderson Cooper Was All of Us with His Hilarious Reactions as He Took Shots to Bid 2020 Farewell,” People, January 1, 2021.

Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity

Taylor Swift, an American singer and cultural icon in 2023, spoke “out against anti-queer legislation” during a concert in early June. “We can’t talk about Pride Month without talking about pain. There have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put [gay people] at risk. It’s painful for everyone. Every ally. Every loved one . . . ,” she said[1]. So much hurt. This motivated me to volunteer to carry a full-size gay flag in a gay Pride parade until the end of the route even though I am not gay. When I arrived in the morning, I thought the issue was political; by the time the parade began, religion had trumped the political. A small but vocal group of evangelical Christians and a larger group of young women wearing and carrying gay flags (in part to hide the Christians) were shouting at each other in utter futility of noise. What if people would use religion to dissolve the religious and political anger and even tension instead of stoking them? Both sides missed an opportunity.

The full essay is at "Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity."

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1. Shruti Rajkumar, “Taylor Swift Breaks Silence And Condemns Anti-LGBTQ Bills During Eras Tour,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2023.

Efficiency, Corporate Social Responsibility and Full Employment: Squaring a Circle

The New York Times reported that President Obama urged American businesses on February 7, 2011 to “'get in the game' by letting loose trillions of dollars being held in reserves, saying that they can help create a 'virtuous cycle' of more sales, higher demand and greater profits that will put people back to work and turn around the sluggish economy.” Obama continued, “If there is a reason you don’t believe that this is the time to get off the sidelines — to hire and invest — I want to know about it. I want to fix it.” In the speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Obama said that companies have a responsibility to help the economy recover. The trouble is that responsibility is a rather vague term that can be variously applied. This is one reason why the corporate social responsibility concept could mean providing society with the products and services that are sought via the marketplace (e.g. Milton Friedman of the Chicago school) while meaning for others increasing corporate philanthropy to alleviate a society problem such as poverty. In other words, responsibility can be made concrete in various ways that can accommodate and indeed reflect the ideologies of those applying the term.

It could be predicted, therefore, that the President's application of responsibility might have differed from some of the business managers in the audience. Indeed, Obama’s suggestion that businesses could help the economy recover by spending their reserves was met, according to The New York Times, “with skepticism by some in the audience.” For example, Harold Jackson, a executive at Buffalo Supply Incorporated (a medical supply company), called the President's suggestion naive. “Any business person has to look at the demand to their company for their product and services, and make hiring decisions,” Jackson said. “I think it’s a little outside the bounds to suggest that if we hire people we don’t need, there will be more demand.” In effect, Jackson was defending Friedman's application of corporate social responsibility from that of the President's.

To President Obama's assumption that American businesses were still sitting on the sidelines, it can be asked, in what sense? The President was pointing to what he viewed as excessive retained earnings. Yet John Schoen of MSNBC reported the same day that the American manufacturing sector was “roaring back” after the recession. Schoen reports a sustained rise in factory orders in five of the last six months, which prompted manufacturers to boost hiring. The Commerce Department had reported a few days before Schoen's report on February 7, 2011 that the manufacturing sector had added 49,000 new jobs in January. Yet this is hardly a roaring comeback in terms of new jobs. Schoen reports that businesses have figured out how to make more widgets with the same number of workers, resulting in higher productivity and profits. Investing reserves in automation, for example, raises productivity by making products faster and better. According to Schoen, “Productivity is a pretty simple concept: It’s a measure of how much stuff a worker makes in a given number of hours. . . . Productivity has also risen as American manufacturers have moved to specialize in more valuable products, sending manufacturing of cheaper goods overseas where wages are lower. As the value of American-made products has risen, so too has the average level of output per worker when measured in dollar terms.” Schoen reports that according to the U.S. Labor Department, the level of output per hour worked rose by 2.6 percent in the last three months of 2010. Even if it is not in the interest of labor, such improvement is in line with the logic of business, given how business is designed and how a competitive marketplace works. Spending retained earnings beyond that which can be expected to raise productivity simply does not make sense to a business practitioner.

In general terms, the (nearly) “jobless recovery” can be seen as pointing to a major difference between the interests of business and society—the latter being represented by the President at the Chamber of Commerce. Given the nature of business enterprise in a competitive market, it is only natural for managers (and boards) to work toward (and reward) greater efficiency (i.e. productivity). Business managers thus understand or apply responsibility in this way. As per Harold Jackson's point, to hire labor beyond the optimal efficiency point in order to solve the wider societal problem of unemployment would run against a firm's telos, or goal. Ultimately, such over-hiring would compromise a company's continued viability (which could result in the loss of even more jobs).

One cannot blame a manager for thinking in line with his or her company's logic, or raison d'etre, any more than one can blame a shark for hunting for food and eating like a shark. A shark is a shark, and a business can also be viewed as a feeding machine. To posit or impose responsibilities onto a machine does not make sense either to the machine or to those who operate it (in their functioning as operators). To an operator, responsibility means operating well—which, by the way, is virtue in the ancient Greek sense. The President's use of responsibility extrinsic to a business calculus simply would not register. It would be like trying to get ought out of is. Even within business functionality, responsibility even as in fiduciary duty to the stockholders is simply translated into “try to get as much profit as possible, now or later.” In other words, ought does not compute in a business technical vocabulary. The term is extrinsic, like societal problems and goals. To come from a societal standpoint and impose “be responsible” to a business practitioner is like shouting at a deaf person. The business person is apt to simply look curiously at the person as if wondering why he is speaking in a foreign language while assuming he is being understood nevertheless. “How odd,” is perhaps the most honest response that one could give to such a display.

The difference between the President's application of responsibility and that of Jackson can also be understood as the difference between the interest of a subunit and the system as a whole. It is only natural for a part of a whole to operate in the interest of the part itself rather than necessarily the whole. The interests of the latter can thus fall through the cracks. Government regulation is an attempt to plug such cracks, but regulations, like firms, are particular. On the issue of unemployment, the societal question is whether even a fully-operational economic system can supply full employment. If not, it may be the government's responsibility to supply the surplus employment, directly or indirectly via subcontracting. Crucially, this supply must be designed such that it does not reduce the employment provided by the private sector. The surplus jobs must be functions that the private sector does not and would not address. The President's error in his speech to the Chamber of Commerce could be that he was assuming this surplus is the responsibilities of “parts” of the system (i.e. individual companies) rather than of the system itself (i.e. the government).

In sum, responsibility is a dubious concept to apply to business; the term is too vague to have much traction in discussing such vital matters as affect our economic livelihoods and the related viability of our economy. It seems to me that the priority ought to be that every able-bodied and minded adult has a job (or, otherwise, a means by which he or she can have sufficient economic wherewithal to survive in this interdependent society), whether through business, non-profits or government. Ideologies, including responsibility itself, ought to be relegated as luxuries with which we can play on the margins once full employment has become a fait accompli. That is to say, ideologies might contribute to improving full employment, rather than being depended on to reach it or allowed to keep us from it. Of course, it could be countered that ideologies are part and parcel of this entire discussion and thus cannot be dissected from it. That may well be. Even so, I submit that ideologies such as laissez faire and corporate social responsibility ought not be allowed to thwart us in how we constitute full employment as a societal fact. That is to say, we ought to direct full employment by whatever means necessary then work from there (once attained) to improve it. Simply put, for some reason, we don't treat full employment as necessary.; rather, we treat it as a goal.  "How odd," an alien from another galaxy might say (in its own language, of course), should one visit us and want to study us.

Sources:

Michael D. Shear, “In Speech to Chamber of Commerce, Obama Urges Businesses to ‘Get in the Game,’” The New York Times, February 7, 2011.

John W. Schoen, “Factories Boom, but with Few New Workers,” February 7, 2011, NBCNews.com.

Biblically-Based Investment Funds: A Matter of Priorities

Is it biblical to say a Christian can serve both God and money? In the Gospels, Jesus speaks to this point directly; it is not possible. In early 2017, Inspire Investing established two new exchange-traded funds having a “biblically responsible” approach to investing—meaning that they would avoid buying shares in companies that have “any degree of participation in activities that do not align with biblical values.”[1] That such activities include even tolerance for gay employees raises the question of just how practical an evangelical investment strategy is after the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all of the 50 republics making up the U.S.

According to the New York Times at the end of February, 2017, 92% “of the Fortune 500 companies include ‘sexual orientation’ in their nondiscrimination policies and 82 percent include ‘gender identity.’”[2] Mark Synder of the Equality Federation pointed out that businesses “have been leading the fight for full equality over the last few years. L.G.B.T. people are part of the fabric of our nation.”[3] In short, the approach of the funds was “squarely at odds with that of nearly all of corporate America.”[4] Finding companies in which to invest in may not be so easy for the employees of the two funds. Put another way, the rate of return achieved may be compromised. Of course, an evangelical Christian would contend that compromise with sin is no virtue—certainly no Christian virtue.

Adding to the difficulties is the fact that not all evangelical Christians believe that discrimination is a biblical value, Snyder asserts. Of course, the very word discrimination is ideologically laden; it implies that the thing prohibited is salubrious rather than sordid in nature. Within evangelical Christianity, the tenet that sin explicitly listed in the Old Testament should not be supported or enabled is nothing short of an article of faith. Yet even here, that Jesus of the New Testament is silent on the matter of homosexuality may give even holders of that article some pause. At the very least, the question of priorities can be raised. Should not the funds avoid investing in companies that enable or contribute toward sins identified by Jesus? To put emphasis on a sin not mentioned by Jesus has the opportunity cost of the benefit foregone from focusing on sins that are important to Jesus in the Gospels.

In fact, that Jesus stood with the outcast might prompt an evangelical Christian to feel uncomfortable in taking on a marginalized group in society—especially the transsexuals. Yet Jesus tells the prostitute to sin no more, and gays today are not apt to view homosexuality as a sin and agree to abstain from sex. Gays would be on firmer ground in pointing out that Jesus preached love foremost—a sort of love not delimited to friends and family. Hence Jesus hangs out with the sinners, loving even the “unclean” rather than going after them or those who help them.

Hence the question: what would a biblical-oriented fund based on Jesus’s concept of love (i.e., agape) have as a metric? Companies in which people fight and insult each other, such as Uber, would presumably be off the list. So too would military contractors. But just as the traditional “sin” stocks involving tobacco, gambling, and alcohol would not necessarily be excluded, so too would the matter of a company’s HR policy on gays be of small import. In short, matching Jesus’s priorities in the Gospels would arguably be a sounder basis for a biblical-based Christian investment fund. In the end, the question is whether Christians truly understand Christ’s brand of love. I suspect that it is not as ideologically comfortable as the current practice indicates. I suspect that a truly Christian investment fund would not line up on one side of a general ideological division in society, for religion transcends ideology—otherwise faith reduces to self-idolatry.

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[1] Liz Moyer, “Alongside Faith in Investing, Funds Offer Investment Rooted in Faith,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Rousseau and Marx: Against Excessive Economic Inequality

Both Marx and Rousseau are “anti-history” in the sense that socioeconomic and sociopolitical large, complex organization, well beyond the small groups of prehistoric homo sapiens people living a sustenance existence, has alienated workers from themselves (Marx) and introduced artificial, or “moral,” inequalities and inauthentic fronts (Rousseau). In other words, the human condition in the modern world is not a story of progress; paradoxically, things have gotten worse in spite, and indeed in part due to the extent of technological progress. In other words, under the subterfuge (i.e., camouflage) of “progress,” the species has actually acquiesced to increasing decadence and deterioration as human organization has become larger and more complex.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx: Is there a Common Denominator?  

Image Source: anitagaribaldi.com.br

Even so, Rousseau was himself a product of the Enlightenment—an expansion of the free use of reason (i.e., beyond tradition) that he claims widens inequalities. As for Marx, his assertion that man is by nature a part of nature flies in the face of the violations of human nature (e.g., ignoring greed) that doomed the oppressive and yet idealistic Communist states in the twentieth century—the bloodiest and perhaps greediest century of them all. In fact, the Communist “experiments” were to human nature as the Christian sin of usury was to the time value of money.

A person could reasonably ask why ideologies, whether economic, political, or religious, produce such mammoth blind-spots. Is it in the nature of ideology as it interacts with the homo sapien mind to produce denial as a defense mechanism overprotective of a cherished arrangement of interrelated beliefs and assumptions that a  person values? Before the cognitive revolution, which occurred between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, homo sapiens did not have fictive minds and languages; nobody could produce and share a priori  (i.e., ideas that are not from experience, hence not from an empirical source in the world) abstractions like “justice” and “democracy,” as well as fictional stories including myths and folktales, any of which can go into an ideology. The first evidence of religion is dated at around 50,000 years ago (a small statue having a lion’s head and the body of a homo sapiens). Interestingly, sapien means knowledge or wisdom in Latin; members of our species have not been shy in naming our own species.

Paradoxically, the purported ideological sources of the ruddy French Revolution and the seemingly inexorable U.S.S.R., respectively, privilege a human condition (and nature) before ideology, in the state of (prehistoric) nature. This does not mean that the ideal is idealistic in the fictive sense as exemplified by the Golden Age depicted by Hesiod and Ovid, and the “what people would agree to but admittedly never did” social contract  envisioned by Kant. Rather, Aristotle’s tweaking of the idealistic depictions of a Golden Age that never existed into a version reflecting the rural farm life of antiquity, and Hobbes’ intentionally realistic state of nature as nasty, brutish and short come closer how both Rousseau and Marx approach the state of nature as an ideal from which mankind has essentially “screwed up.” 

Both Rousseau and Marx could point to the fictive mind and use of language that resulted from the cognitive revolution in prehistoric times as decisive in the unfolding of the ensuing increased inequalities and self-alienation. The ability to talk about things that do not really exist, such as abstract ideas sourced only in imaginations, and to create fictional stories by imagining a fictive world are requisite to not only  adapting to different natural environments, but also cooperating flexibly with many strangers in artificial or man-made environments. To go beyond the social confines of what gossip can maintain among people who know each other (150 people at most) and create and live in social, economic and political systems that are larger as well as complex and thus can artificially order or regulate even very large numbers of people, the homo sapiens mind had to leap in evolutionary terms to being capable of fictive thought and words. Perhaps a genetic mutation connecting the two halves of the homo sapiens brain took hold in double-click time, evolutionarily speaking, and thus today we have abstractions invisible to the naked eye, such as Microsoft, and even Corporation, Democracy and Nation, Harvard and University, Justice and The Supreme Court enabling very large numbers of people to flexibly cooperate and thus live together rather than in small bands.

 It follows that the very complex, abstract ideas that Marx and Rousseau utilize in the process of ratiocination (try that word, which basically means reasoning, out at a dance party and you will be like honey to the most attractive bees!) is itself a crucial, even perhaps decisive factor in the problems that the philosophers identify and attempt to explain. For example, Rousseau argues that the artificial sources of inequality are found only once people have formed a society and thus is a people rather than merely members of small groups sustained by much fewer interpersonal interactions (and thus less wants, pride and jealousy). A people is itself an abstraction possible only in a fictive mind. Such a mind is also necessary for the abstract ideas and associated legends like Company, General Motors, and The Goldman Sachs Way to exist in people's minds so large numbers of workers can be coordinated in an exploiting way, according to Marx, and alienated from themselves in both the process and product of their work. Simply for a large company to be possible, more than gossip is needed to maintain the coordination that is necessary. As the homo sapiens humans went from prehistoric, subsistence-level hunter-gatherers in small bands to either accumulating great wealth or working in factories and offices as inequalities increased in the process, history went terribly wrong, according to Rousseau and Marx, so both go back to a simpler time, an actual rather than imagined existence before history, from which to make transparent certain problems in their own day, in the unfolding of history as if it were fated to be so and could be no other Way.

Rousseau would doubtless agree with Marx’s warning, “Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as the political economist does, when he tries to explain. Such a primordial condition explains nothing; it merely pushes the question away into a grey nebulous distance.”[1] In other words, one should not go back to a fictitious primordial condition.  Arguing in favor of the humans who lived in the state of nature (i.e., before living in societies), Rousseau clearly does not mean fiction in arguing that it is “ridiculous to represent savages constantly murdering each other to glut their brutality, as this opinion is diametrically opposite to experience.”[2] That experience, or empirical evidence, that Rousseau points to is that of “the Caribbeans [sic], the people in the world who have as yet deviated least from the state of nature.”[3] In looking at a primitive people of his own day, Rousseau was assuming that they would be sufficiently similar to the human being who actually lived before humans began living in societies. Such an assumption has been challenged by anthropologists studying the history of religion; Rousseau is not in danger, however, of being accused of portraying a dream world that never existed.

Furthermore, even though Rousseau highlights living in society as distinct from the state of nature and Marx focuses on economic production as distinct from satisfying only one’s own sustenance needs, both philosophers privilege the human primordial condition over so-called “progress” in order to make the point that things have gotten worse. Rousseau argues that prehistoric human beings were more compassionate and less contentious and, not by coincidence, less rational, in the state of nature before living in society. It is “society alone, which has added even to love itself as well as to all the other passions, that impetuous ardour, which so often renders it fatal to mankind.”[4] The demands that come with the increased interpersonal contact have brought out the worst in human nature—even transforming it into something too smart and ironically contentious.

Similarly, in arguing that the physical and spiritual life of humans is linked to nature, man being by nature a part of nature, Marx too privileges the species as it was long ago before work and its output became separated from the worker. “In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being.”[5] . . . (H)e duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created.”[6] His labor is a “free, conscious activity,” the object of his own will and consciousness.[7] 

Even though Marx differs here from Rousseau in positing that humans were more intelligent before being alienated from one’s own work and the product thereof made the worker stupid, Marx too depicts a historical downward trajectory. “The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.”[8] The increased value of material things and the increasing commoditization have come about historically, in the Industrial Revolution. Laboring on another’s product alienates the worker from both it and the production process wherein one labors. Alienated from nature and the freedom in one’s own life activity, the worker “does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.”[9] Additionally, the amount of economic inequality increases, and in this claim Rousseau would also agree, although coming to it from a primarily sociological rather than (though not excluding) economic standpoint. 

In summary, both Marx and Rousseau base their philosophical and ideological ideals on the pre-historic human condition, whether in predominately social or economic terms (there being no religion given the non-fictive minds and languages). That is, the ideals hinge on a condition that really (i.e., empirically) existed, long before the stories that the two philosophers would formulate and publicly tell—stories that ironically would be (mis)appropriated in ways that pushed humanity even further from the simple life that far distant ancestors had enjoyed in relative equality (and empathy), as well as non-alienation from themselves even when hunting and gathering. In their work, those prehistoric ancestors had a deeper awareness of being of a particular species, and they were not so prideful and selfish as to intentionally and unintentionally exacerbate the existing natural inequalities in talent, family, and motivation.

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[1] Karl Marx, “Estranged Labour,” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. (Marxists.org). Accessed August 18, 2013.

[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1910).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Marx, “Estranged Labour.”

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.