Equality of Nada

One of the treasures of this country-- a package of grace, literacy and intellect is Paul Greenberg, an Arkansas journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 (at age 27) and who probably should have won it at least four times 

since then.

He settled  my own mind and self in regard to a critical concept that still plagues many airheads among us.

Now in the year 2016, we have recurrent anguished argument about "income equality".  We also have dubious factoids flung at us about the concept of "cultural equality".

Here is how Paul Greenberg solves the equation as simply as any Genius could:

The only way we could ever achieve "income equality" would be to establish a worldwide order in which every individual would be "equal"   in poverty-- equally poor.

The only way we can have total "cultural equality" is to sink the entire world population into equal ignorance.

Certainly shocks the old brain-pan doesn't it ?

But if we pause to think about it--- really concentrate our  empirical knowledge on those two statements, we must accommodate them eventually.

We certainly are all created equal in our conception and manner of birth. Then the hammering of all our particular geographical, ethnic and parental dynamics are hurled at our   vulnerable selves and psyches in innumerable known and unknown force and quantity. It is also well and good  to remember that in infancy and early years each of us is much alone,  attacked and impeded by forces not all of our design or factoring.  But we begin life competing. 

Competition is very real in some guise, and the truth is that there is no way to play the blame game for everything that happens to all of us. Particularly, im America, which  is the epitome of the 
 negation of privilege by right of birth. This country's founders dethroned privilege and crown  and their  Imprimatur has blanketed our Earth.

But there is no way to stifle or suppress mankind's divine  competitive nature. Despite the concerted effort by collectivists and anti-thinkers, we do have recorded history that goes back  6000 years in "written" record, and a richly implied prehistory that blazes with dramaric heroics  such as, for instance, the Siberians crossing  to Alaska about 27,000 years ago.

That is not accidentally a powerful lesson in competition that has affected all the wealth and culture of  all those fierce, rugged and inspired tribes.

As noted above, except that we have the sometimes twisted  History Channel  and the always precise National Geographic tradition, the teaching of history ib today's  high schools and universities is lax or nonexistent. Ergo, many younger-than-millennials do not realize that all of the days before "now" are lessons that undergird Paul Greenberg's thesis.

Venezuela, crumbling into chaos, is not the first laboratory end result of socialism--- the inchoate search for wealth equality. Everyone who was at least 12 years old in 1990 was  conscious witness to the wasteland of the communist Soviet Union. The 2016 Olympics visitors and participants will experience the endgame of collectivist Hell where every effort has been directed at "leveling" folks..

And finally, there is no better example of  personhood destruction  than the choking, hate filled despotism of radical Islamic Sharia law that literally kills every inspiration of grace or  mercy from  inside or outside the cult. How  many Nobel aureates has Islam produced ?

So,  however uncomfortable it may seem to some of us, we must bear the burden of competition and the quest for  new  knowledge of those things we cannot see, touch, taste, hear or smell. (Love, Humility, Generosity, Moderation and Tolerance for example.)  

They add up to an open mind and heart and recognition of excellence rather than the suppression of  achievement.

Maybe not very many people on the Internet  today have ever seen  millstones.

But they still grind to  create Life from seed eternally. 

And they DO  grind exceeding fine.