It bothers me a great deal. It seems that the only constructive ways that progressives have been able to come up with to equalize the unequal has been to flatten, to push down, to dehumanize and to remove the differentiation between people, by administrative fiat if necessary.
The thing is, if you decide that Applicant #42 is a good candidate, you're going to bring them in anyway. If you have a ton of biases, you still have just as much of an opportunity to enact them as you would have before, though you might have to be a bit more subtle. This doesn't solve the problem; it's a patch on top of it designed to feel good while accomplishing nothing.
> Does it really seem all that healthy to just dismiss and ignore and totally negate compounding value of cross-generational achievements and accomplishments
If by this you're referring to the heritability of traits, yes, it's a shame that things that are statistically and demographically visible have to be erased in the attempt to flatten everything.
> somehow you can inhumanely simply strip humans of their humanity in order to craft a perfect specimen of humans
I don't know if this is the ultimate goal; my instinct is that this is the projected goal, because it is at least somewhat defensible philosophically even if I dislike it. The actual behind-the-scenes goal might be as simple as reducing people to more-manageable consumers that cause less trouble and more reliably produce the quarterly numbers we need.
Progressives have to do that because employers continue to be racist and sexist and discriminate on age, purely based on a resume. So removing that first filter is a good thing.
This is a red herring that I see a lot, especially in online discussions. Progressives (like myself) aren't "equalizing the unequal" as you put it. You're conflating our goals with those of socialists and communists from 100 years ago who were coopted by authoritarian dictatorships.
We're working to remove barriers that create inequality, such as discrimination by gender/race/creed etc. And I don't buy crocodile tears for the (generally white/male/older) people currently propped up by the status quo.
I do share your concern, however, that any policy can have ulterior motives. I see that more coming from knee-jerk and nanny state policies crafted by the far right today (that used to supposedly be a province of the far left). See: the military industrial complex growth in response to 9/11, the prison industrial complex growth in response to the war on drugs, etc.
The thing is, if you decide that Applicant #42 is a good candidate, you're going to bring them in anyway. If you have a ton of biases, you still have just as much of an opportunity to enact them as you would have before, though you might have to be a bit more subtle. This doesn't solve the problem; it's a patch on top of it designed to feel good while accomplishing nothing.
> Does it really seem all that healthy to just dismiss and ignore and totally negate compounding value of cross-generational achievements and accomplishments
If by this you're referring to the heritability of traits, yes, it's a shame that things that are statistically and demographically visible have to be erased in the attempt to flatten everything.
> somehow you can inhumanely simply strip humans of their humanity in order to craft a perfect specimen of humans
I don't know if this is the ultimate goal; my instinct is that this is the projected goal, because it is at least somewhat defensible philosophically even if I dislike it. The actual behind-the-scenes goal might be as simple as reducing people to more-manageable consumers that cause less trouble and more reliably produce the quarterly numbers we need.