Wednesday, April 18, 2007

equality indeed (joke alarm)

Kurt quipped on the CT forum: "We have been a horrible animal. after the Spanish inquisitions, the two world wars, Hiroshima, Roman games. Its clear the earth is trying to get rid of us." Joyce Carol chimed in the middle with the question "But which sex is doing this stuff?" without a second thought Kurt Vonnegut made the snarky comment "Women are no good at doing science, you know? We discovered that at Harvard." (see the video)

I thought this was a nice short exchange for more reasons than one. Kurt may have meant that - In Cat's cradle Kurt talks about the detachment of scientists from the impact their discoveries have on the world, however disastrous they may be. Especially that this is independent of gender. But if you twist his statement it could also mean "If Women claim they can do the most wonderful discoveries just as well as men have in the past, they should accept with calm deference that they are capable of committing the very same horrors as well."

History has shown only few contributions of significance from women. Naturally so. So why would anyone search history to point to the potential of women or the capacity of women to be creative as evidence? Rather, why not believe in the inherent equality of men and women as the basic hypothesis of natural law? Desmund Tutu described of man (and women) "he(she) is capable of most evil acts as he(she) is of the most elevated."

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