Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the value of 'recognition'

The World Bank held an International Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2005. I don't know what they were smoking but the idiot Pratap Bhanu Mehta turned up and said this-

It is now a commonplace observation, thanks largely due to Rousseau who most vividly wrote about the psychic burdens of inequality, that most human beings, unless they have been dehumanized to an unimaginable degree, place some value upon themselves.

WTF? This is not a commonplace observation. It is an extremely stupid observation. Try saying it to a guy sitting next to you on the train. 'Dude, guess what? Most human beings place some value on themselves. Rousseau said that. Don't it just blow your mind?'  I guarantee the bloke will get off at the next stop and report you as a probable suicide bomber.

This does not mean that they are selfish; it is rather that they place some value upon themselves and wish that this value be somewhere affirmed.

This has already been done. In 1968 I affirmed the value of all beings and admonished them to abstain from naughtiness.
Why does this idiot feel it necessary to say it is not selfish to place value on oneself? Was there some other fellow at Arusha who was looking at him in a marked manner and muttering 'selfish swine' under his breath?

The institutions and practices of most inegalitarian societies deny individuals this basic form of recognition, the recognition that they are valuable in some sense, that they have some moral standing.

Rubbish. Inegalitarian socieites affirm that individuals are valuable when they are cheerful and obedient and deferential and suck off their superiors on demand. Verily, that path leads to Heaven. Disobedience will cause you to burn in Hell fire for ever and ever.

In most societies this quest for having one’s worth affirmed will take debased forms.

Like writing worthless shite like this.

The only way in which you can secure others acknowledgement is either by seeking to dominate them, or by putting a convincing show of attributes and accomplishments that are capable of winning the acknowledgment of others. This is because the only way you can get acknowledged is by having power over them, by being able to say, “I know I am worth something, because I have power over you.” Those not in a position of being able to dominate, secure acknowledgement in other more self debasing ways. They say something like, “Pay attention to me, because I can make your comparative sense of self worth even more pronounced by debasing my self for you, by flattering you.”

Mehta was debasing himself by talking worthless shite. Would he have debased himself yet further by saying 'pat attention to me and I'll suck you off'? No. People would have though he liked the taste of cum.

Inegalitarian societies where there is no public acknowledgment of individual’ self worth will be characterized by both a fierce competition to dominate, and paradoxically, an exaggerated sense of servility.

An inegalitarian society has public acknowledgement of some individuals' self-worth. So does an egalitarian society. In both a beggarly rapist with zero social skills will be given no public acknowledgement of his self worth. He will be beaten and incarcerated and treated like a lump of shit till he tops himself.

How is it paradoxical if servile behaviour is exaggerated in a place where some guy will blow your head off if you don't hurry to get him his drink?

These are the two strategies of securing acknowledgement. Both desire to dominate and a kind of self abasement, Rousseau suggested, would lead us to lead inauthentic lives: lives that were not governed by values our concerns that were properly our own.

Mehta is being silly. Servile behaviour arises out of, not a desire to be acknowledged as a servant, but the desire not to be beaten to a pulp. 

Such societies would also give individuals frequently reasons to consider their self respect injured: inegalitarian societies will routinely humiliate it members. 

All societies routinely humiliate some of their members when they rape and kill and steal from their peers. No Society routinely humiliates all its members.

The aspiration to democracy is in part an aspiration to have one’s moral worth acknowledged.

The aspiration to democracy is equally an aspiration not to have one's moral worth acknowledged as the Dictator of the country.

The charge that an arrangement or a set of procedures is “undemocratic” carries moral resonance, not simply because it describes a faulty procedure, but because it is accompanied by the sentiment that in being undemocratic someone’s moral standing has been slighted.

Don't be silly. The charge that something is 'undemocratic' is evidence that the person speaking is a shit-head. What matters is whether someone's moral standing has genuinely been slighted or not.

Acknowledgment by others of your moral worth is at least partly constitutive of an individual’s sense of self respect.

Only of you consider them to have moral worth. Being thought a great intellectual by Pratap Bhanu Mehta would make any reasonable person want to commit suicide.

A sense of self respect is necessary to have a firm sense of one’s own value, to have the conviction not only that life is worth living but worth living well.

Rubbish! Suppose I am in unbearable pain. I may have a great sense of self respect but I don't have the conviction that my life is worth living. Clearly, the thing is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for anything. Why mention it? One could just go on coining other such phrases 'a sense of one's place in the Universe', 'the feeling of making a difference in the lives of others', ' being able to say miaow to the neighbor's cat', 'watching the next episode of Supernatural', 'overcoming metaphysical nescience', ' being able to form meaningful relationships with astral bodies' etc, etc.

The absence of self respect can be corrosive; it can make most pursuits meaningless.

Mehta's intellectual pursuits are meaningless. But he has tremendous self regard. Clearly too much of the thing is even more corrosive than its absence.

In some senses, equal voting rights are a dramatic expression of individual’s moral worth.

Rubbish. Equal voting rights are a simple solution to an otherwise intractable problem. It is based on ignoring 'moral worth' because the thing is difficult and controversial to measure.

But unless the collective arrangements of society give individuals the minimum bases for social self respect, of which the equal right to vote, is just one aspect, society is likely to be characterized by an odd combination of a fierce competition for domination on the one hand, and abject servility on the other, and when neither succeeds, violence as a way of announcing ones moral standing.

Nonsense. Violence as a way of announcing one's moral standing will only disappear if it is swiftly detected and heavily punished. Democracy is irrelevant. Suppose I'm having a drink in a 'stand your ground' State. I bump into a little old lady and am abject and servile in my apologies to her coz I'm afraid she'll blow my black head off.  In gun-less England, she and me will exchange foul mouthed repartee, till she glasses me as happens every other Saturday night.

What institutions and objectives can satisfy the minimal requirements of acknowledging people’s moral worth is a debatable one.

No. It is the subject of positive Economics and positivist Jurisprudence.

But at the very least, freedom from abject necessity, removal of invidious and humiliating forms of discrimination, some equality of opportunity and access to a set of goods that are minimal requirements for being a capable agent in the modern world.

Positive Economics has a vested interest in providing such things because it increases productivity in aggregate and lowers uncertainty. Properly done, the thing more than pays for itself.

Mehta, however, thinks differently. His big discovery is-

The paradox is that the more unequal the background institutions and practices of society, the more likely it is that politics will be a struggle to displace the holders of power rather than an ambition to bring about social transformation. 

Does this idiot not understand that unequal 'background institutions and practices' are enforced by holders of power. They have to be displaced before any social transformation can occur. There is no paradox here.

 'The struggle to move ahead will not be a common struggle for justice – for little commonality exists – but a competitive quest for power.

So what? If the existing holders of power are killed or otherwise displaced, 'background institutions and practices' won't operate in the same way. The Social transformation may not be large but there is no reason why it should stop there. If one power elite bites the dust, why not the next?

Anyway, what is the alternative.

A society that is adept at humiliating its members is, as Rousseau convincingly argued, more likely to make them adept at humiliating others than it is to teach them about justice.

So, the current power elite has to go because of all this humiliating they keep doing through 'background institutions', in the process slightly less humiliation is produced. If Mehta is right and less humiliation means more public spirit, then there could be a virtuous circle.

Just talking shite about humiliation helps no one.

This perhaps explains one of the paradoxes at the heart of Indian politics. There are few other democracies where the universalist language of injustice, rights, even constitutionalism is so profusely used and has become part of so many political mobilizations.

 Nonsense! Everybody in the English Speaking world talks this type of shite. The Scottish Nationalist Part has started talking about 'Right to Food' and empowering women by giving them access to agricultural land. Don't believe me? Take a gander at this

, Executive Director of Nourish Scotland, Pete Ritchie, said: “The Scottish Government is making real progress, for example by starting to monitor household food insecurity in the Scottish Health Survey. This means we’ll have a baseline to measure the impact of policy against.”
“But the right to food is about more than tackling acute food insecurity – it’s also the right to access nutritious and culturally acceptable food in a dignified way. And it means building sustainability into the food system for the long term, in terms of access to land, tackling climate change and safeguarding biodiversity.”
“We’re calling for a cross-cutting rights-based approach because food cuts across so many parts of our lives – it doesn’t make sense to just look at food and poverty in isolation without thinking about the impacts on health, workers' rights, access to land, farm incomes, environment, or climate change.
“The forthcoming Good Food Nation Bill should set a new direction for a resilient and fair food system, which nourishes all of Scotland’s people – and should establish a transparent process for monitoring progress across the board.

Mehta could have penned these words himself. I'm lying. He'd have added some shite about the right of Scottish women not be humiliated or fat shamed for feeding their wee bairns nowt but deep fryed Mars bars.

But it is a stratagem for particular individuals or groups to gain access to power, not an acknowledgment of the due claims of all.

An acknowledgement of the due claim of all would not be Party Political would it? What's your manifesto? 'Everybody be nice to everybody'.  What's the other guy's manifesto? 'Make this country great again- and fuck foreigners to death'. Guess who wins?

Discourses of law, constitutionalism, rights, justice, obligations, do not signify that a particular set of values are being taken as authoritative and these set genuine moral constraints for individuals. Rather, they are the languages in which particular grievances are expressed or interests advanced without the least acknowledgment of reciprocal or parallel interests and grievances of others.

Quite true. The reciprocal rights and grievances of rapists and muggers are ignored by politicians running for election.

A sense of justice towards someone presupposes a sense of reciprocity, it presupposes that you acknowledge others.

Rubbish. It presupposes that you can kill them if they fuck with you and get acquitted by the court. Even better, the police should beat the fuck out of the guy and the court should send him to Jail where he gets beaten regularly.

A sense of Love and Mercy and the desire to serve others presupposes a sense of reciprocity. Justice aint no such beast.

The more the social distance, the less likely that such reciprocity obtains.

Which is why Democracy is useful. When the power elite sees the size of the majority the new guys have gotten they don't try conclusions but run away. That's a good thin. A fundamentally eusocial signal has been sent.

It is quite possible for a democracy to experience great clamor for recognition by particular individuals and groups without these resulting in diffusion of norms of justice.

Norms of Justice get diffused when bad guys get arrested and put away quickly and Contracts are speedily and equitably enforced.

This follows the general pattern of the ways in which Indian society has been democratized.

Which is also the way every Society has been democratized. If money is spent on beefing up the Courts then norms of justice get diffused. If gangsters turn into politicians, things go the other way.

Democracy in India has advanced through the competitive negotiations between groups, each competing for their interests, rather than, the diffusion of democratic norms.

Now this idiot is blathering about democratic norms instead of 'norms relating to recognition' or 'Justice'. What he doesn't get is that if criminals provide better contract enforcement and stronger push-back against corruption, then they get elected.

It is, in some senses, a contingent outcome of social conflicts, not necessarily a deep seated norm.

OMG! What is wrong with this man? Everything is a contingent outcome of social conflict- 'deep seated norms' arise in no other way.

The purpose of political mobilization has not been to make the state more accountable but to get access to or share in its power.

Mehta was writing this before the emergence of the Aam Admi Party which took power from Congress in Delhi. It was based on a political mobilization supposedly solely concerned with accountability. We all know how that turned out.