Inequality In Relationships Quotes

She could just pack up and leave, but she does not visualize what's beyond ahead.

There are politics in sexual relationships because they occur in the context of a society that assigns power based on gender and other systems of inequality and privilege.

Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present

Through fetishizing the inequality embedded in the romance story, women have somehow become convinced that being in, or even vying for, a relationship is something we should want -- regardless of whether that relationship might hold equal power or doesn't serve us.

We need feminism because degrading phrases like "walk of shame" are commonplace in our social vocabulary, yet these are only applied to women; whereas men in the same situation are praised by their peers and seen as nothing more than " a guy who got lucky", by the rest of society.

Studies have shown a woman looking for a 'sense of humour' wants a man who makes jokes and who likes to laugh. A man looking for the same quality in a woman does not expect her to be funny; rather, he wants her to laugh at his jokes.

Of course, adult life is not always so simple. Some issues need to be revisited—not dropped—and talk is essential to this process. We need words to begin to heal betrayals, inequalities, and ruptured connections. Our need for language, conversation, and definition goes beyond the wish to put things right. Through words we come to know the other person—and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice. This is equally true for our relationship with our self.

This point is often missed by evangelical feminists. They conclude that a difference in function necessarily involves a difference in essence; i.e., if men are in authority over women, then women must be inferior. The relationship between Christ and the Father shows us that this reasoning is flawed. One can possess a different function and still be equal in essence and worth. Women are equal to men in essence and in being; there is no ontological distinction, and yet they have a different function or role in church and home. Such differences do not logically imply inequality or inferiority, just as Christ’s subjection to the Father does not imply His inferiority.

For every woman you know who has been given substandard treatment by her parents, used by her friend or boyfriend, abused by her husband, discriminated by her employers and ridiculed by society, I know a man who has been burdened with family responsibility since childhood, humiliated by his girlfriend, bullied by his employers, pushed by society and harassed by his wife. Everybody is fighting their own battle.

It’s the underlying inequality. Someone is always the one who loves more, and it eventually drives the other—the less loving one—away. Just the pressure of it.

[Of] particular importance is the relationship between education and the political process.

I woke one night to find him staring at the ceiling, his profile lit by the glow of streetlights outside. He looked vaguely troubled, as if he were pondering something deeply personal. Was it our relationship? The loss of his father? “Hey, what’re you thinking about over there?” I whispered. He turned to look at me, his smile a little sheepish. “Oh,” he said. “I was just thinking about income inequality.” This, I was learning, was how Barack’s mind worked. He got himself fixated on big and abstract issues, fueled by some crazy sense that he might be able to do something about them. It was new to me, I have to say. Until now, I’d hung around with good people who cared about important enough things but who were focused primarily on building their careers and providing for their families. Barack was just different. He was dialed into the day-to-day demands of his life, but at the same time, especially at night, his thoughts seemed to roam a much wider plane.

Justice is the state that exists when there is equity, balance, and harmony in relationships and in society. Injustice is the state that exists when unjust people do violence to peace and shalom and create inequity, imbalance, and dissonance.

Poverty is not about numbers. It is about inequality, and specifically about inequality in power relationships. It is about a minority, ‘less numerous, [who] performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings.’15

What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools are vital parts of the social infrastructure. So too are sidewalks, courtyards, community gardens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm. Community organizations, including churches and civic associations, act as social infrastructures when they have an established physical space where people can assemble, as do regularly scheduled markets for food, furniture, clothing, art, and other consumer goods. Commercial establishments can also be important parts of the social infrastructure, particularly when they operate as what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called "third spaces," places (like cafes, diners, barbershops, and bookstores) where people are welcome to congregate and linger regardless of what they've purchased.

Since nothing is less stable among men than those external relationships which chance brings about more often than wisdom, and which are called weakness or power, wealth or poverty, human establishments appear at first glance to be based on piles of shifting sand.

When a little black kid disappears and the media ignores it, so does the public. I know you know this. Not only that but how much media coverage a case gets has a direct relationship to how much manpower the brass assigns to solving that case. It also impacts whether or not the feds get involved. I know you know this too, dammit . . .” “. . . Lobby her on the other case at the same time, knock yourself out, but grant her an interview on Gilbert. Is that understood?” “Loud and clear, boss. After all, we can’t let a little thing like institutional racism get in our way, now, can we?

We cannot understand the relationship between poverty and education without understanding the biases and inequities experienced by people in poverty.

Throughout Peaceland, inequality permeates the relationships between interveners and local stakeholders.

We make meaning through our everyday lives - in small activities and through relationships. These are moments of potential beauty. They are the acts that make us human.

Nations, states, and regions with higher degrees of income inequality actually have less upward mobility, a relationship known as the Gatsby curve.

For most of us, Facebook friends and Instagram followers are supplements to -- not surrogates for -- our social lives. As meaningful as the friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsatisfied with virtual ties that never develop into face-to-face relationships. Building real connections requires a shared physical environment -- a social infrastructure.

When abolitionist and suffragist Lucy Stone married Henry Blackwell in 1855, the couple asked their minister to distribute a statement protesting marriage’s inequities. It read, in part: “While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife . . . this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority.” Stone kept her last name, and generations of women who have done the same have been referred to as “Lucy Stoners.” An

Sexism is not confined by border, race, class, sexuality or gender and, to my mind (and Margo Kingston's in Chapter 6), it is inextricably bound up with a mindset of entitlement that also afflicts our relationship with the planet.

In my land, in the event of a divorce, the mother has the right to retain her children if they are still suckling. But in most cases, a mother maintains custody of daughters until a girl child reaches puberty. In the case of male children, the boy should be allowed to remain with his mother until he is seven. When he reaches his seventh birthday, he is supposed to have the option to choose between his mother or father. Generally it is accepted that the father have his sons at age seven. A son must go with his father at the age of puberty, regardless of the child's wishes. Often, in the case of male children, many fathers will not allow the mother to retain custody of a son, no matter what the age of the child.

Stalinism in turn is not an abstraction of “dictatorship”, but an immense bureaucratic reaction against the proletarian dictatorship in a backward and isolated country. The October Revolution abolished privileges, waged war against social inequality, replaced the bureaucracy with self-government of the toilers, abolished secret diplomacy, strove to render all social relationship completely transparent. Stalinism reestablished the most offensive forms of privileges, imbued inequality with a provocative character, strangled mass self-activity under police absolutism, transformed administration into a monopoly of the Kremlin oligarchy and regenerated the fetishism of power in forms that absolute monarchy dared not dream of.

People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures—not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.

Being nice is often about avoiding conflict, letting inappropriate actions slide, or bottling up words and actions that ought to be spoken and enacted to prevent creating an uncomfortable scene. At its worst, being nice reinforces actions and attitudes that strip away human dignity.

When a society helps people through its shared democratic institutions, it does so on behalf of all, and in a context of equality. Those institutions, representing those free and equal citizens, are making a collective choice of whom to help and how. Those who receive help are not only objects of the transaction, but also subjects of it—citizens with agency. When help is moved into the private sphere, no matter how efficient we are told it is, the context of the helping is a relationship of inequality: the giver and the taker, the helper and the helped, the donor and the recipient.

We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there--woman or man? You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.

Defining freedom cannot amount to simply substituting it with inclusion. Countering the criminalization of Black girls requires fundamentally altering the relationship between Black girls and the institutions of power that have worked to reinforce their subjugation. History has taught us that civil rights are but one component of a larger movement for this type of social transformation. Civil rights may be at the core of equal justice movements, and they may elevate an equity agenda that protects our children from racial and gender discrimination, but they do not have the capacity to fully redistribute power and eradicate racial inequity. There is only one practice that can do that. Love.

We make meaning through our everyday lives--in small activities and through relationships. These are moments of potential beauty. They are the acts that make us human. The inclination by class-privileged women and men to reject the domestic realm because we see and know that it is the sphere of less power--it is an inclination that gives up too much and we must claw it back. In the process, we must also work to expand the space for everyone to meet their needs--make real choices, partake in the mundane, live lives, be human. To do this, we need reasonable employment conditions across the class spectrum and social policies that are not class-biased but genuinely supportive of all families. No one should have to be super in order to be human.

To sum up: the inequality r > g has clearly been true throughout most of human history, right up to the eve of World War I, and it will probably be true again in the twenty-first century. Its truth depends, however, on the shocks to which capital is subject, as well as on what public policies and institutions are put in place to regulate the relationship between capital and labor.

It is on this bedrock of inequality that so much of the Panic Years takes root. Fertility, freedom, what control a woman can expect over her future, the balance of power within relationships, who faces the greater sacrifice in parenthood, whose career takes precedence, what level of physical discomfort you should be expected to accept and who, ultimately, gets to make the big decisions are all skewed by this early view of sex, contraception, pregnancy and parenthood.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who had spent much of his youth in Europe, expressed surprise and shock when John C. Calhoun, a fellow cabinet member, confided to Adams that one of the major benefits of racial slavery was its effect on lower-class whites, who could now take pride in their skin color and feel equal to the wealthiest and most powerful whites. Thus slavery, in Calhoun’s eyes, defused class conflict. Precisely because slavery was the most extreme instance of inequality, it helped to make other relationships seem relatively equal.

...sometimes, a couple’s home will turn into an arena of threats and coercion, where unborn children become instruments of power and negotiation—and sometimes, children are born to preserve the relationship. Despite the growing notion that female-male partnerships are equal and symmetrical, this presumed balance is not necessarily reflected in reality. This means that the different power structures—manifest, latent, or invisible—that are often formed between partners attest to an ongoing gender inequality when it comes to deliberations such as the decision to have children.

Can there be true equality in the classroom and the boardroom if there isn’t in the bedroom? Back in 1995 the National Commission on Adolescent Sexual Health declared healthy sexual development a basic human right. Teen intimacy, it said, ought to be “consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable, and protected against unintended pregnancy and STDs.” How is it, over two decades later, that we are so shamefully short of that goal? Sara McClelland, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, writes about sexuality as a matter of “intimate justice,” touching on fundamental issues of gender inequality, economic disparity, violence, bodily integrity, physical and mental health, self-efficacy, and power dynamics in our most personal relationships. She asks us to consider: Who has the right to engage in sexual behavior? Who has the right to enjoy it? Who is the primary beneficiary of the experience? Who feels deserving? How does each partner define “good enough?” Those are thorny questions when looking at female sexuality at any age, but particularly when considering girls’ early, formative experience. Nonetheless, I was determined to ask them.

Many ordinary Americans believe that “large differences in income are necessary for America’s prosperity,” as one standard survey question puts it.18 However, economists who have studied the relationship between inequality and economic growth have found little evidence that large disparities in income and wealth promote growth.19 There is not even much hard evidence in support of the commonsense notion that progressive tax rates retard growth by discouraging economic effort. Indeed, one liberal economist, Robert Frank, has written that “the lessons of experience are downright brutal” to the notion that higher taxes would stifle economic growth by causing wealthy people to work less or take fewer risks.

Now imagine what a change it would be for a young black American to grow up in a society where they didn’t have to settle for the worst schools, the worst health care, the worst jobs, or possibly be subjected to the worst carceral system on Earth. Imagine what it would mean for women if they were more easily able to leave abusive relationships or escape workplace harassment with the help of strong welfare guarantees. Imagine our future Einsteins and Leonardo da Vincis liberated from grinding poverty and misery and able to contribute to human greatness. Or forget Einstein and Leonardo—better yet, imagine ordinary people, with ordinary abilities, having time after their twenty-eight-hour workweek to explore whatever interests or hobbies strike their fancy (or simply enjoy their right to be bored). The deluge of bad poetry, strange philosophical blog posts, and terrible abstract art will be a sure sign of progress.

In proportion as the ideas and sentiments succeed one another and as the mind and heart are trained, the human race continues to be tamed, relationships spread, and bonds tightened. People grew accustomed to gather in front of their huts or around a large tree; song and dance, true children of love and leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle men and women who had flocked together. Each one began to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself, and public esteem had a value. The one who sang or danced the best, the handsomest, the strongest, the most adroit, or the most eloquent became the most highly regarded. And this was the first step towards inequality and, at the same time, toward vice. From these first preferences were born vanity and contempt on the one hand, and shame and envy on the other. And the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.

It is hard to conceive of any relationship between two adults in America being less equal than that of prisoner and prison guard. The formal relationship, enforced by the institution, is that one person’s word means everything and the other’s means almost nothing; one person can command the other to do just about anything, and refusal can result in total physical restraint. That fact is like a slap in the face. Even in relation to the people who are anointed with power in the outside world—cops, elected officials, soldiers—we have rights within our interactions. We have a right to speak to power, though we may not exercise it. But when you step behind the walls of a prison as an inmate, you lose that right. It evaporates, and it’s terrifying. And pretty unsurprising when the extreme inequality of the daily relationship between prisoners and their jailers leads very naturally into abuses of many flavors, from small humiliations to hideous crimes. Every year guards at Danbury and other women’s prisons around the country are caught sexually abusing prisoners. Several years after I came home, one of Danbury’s lieutenants, a seventeen-year corrections veteran, was one of them. He was prosecuted and spent one month in jail.

The essence of Roosevelt’s leadership, I soon became convinced, lay in his enterprising use of the “bully pulpit,” a phrase he himself coined to describe the national platform the presidency provides to shape public sentiment and mobilize action. Early in Roosevelt’s tenure, Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, joined a small group of friends in the president’s library to offer advice and criticism on a draft of his upcoming message to Congress. “He had just finished a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character,” Abbott recalled, “when he suddenly stopped, swung round in his swivel chair, and said, ‘I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.’ ” From this bully pulpit, Roosevelt would focus the charge of a national movement to apply an ethical framework, through government action, to the untrammeled growth of modern America. Roosevelt understood from the outset that this task hinged upon the need to develop powerfully reciprocal relationships with members of the national press. He called them by their first names, invited them to meals, took questions during his midday shave, welcomed their company at day’s end while he signed correspondence, and designated, for the first time, a special room for them in the West Wing. He brought them aboard his private railroad car during his regular swings around the country. At every village station, he reached the hearts of the gathered crowds with homespun language, aphorisms, and direct moral appeals. Accompanying reporters then extended the reach of Roosevelt’s words in national publications. Such extraordinary rapport with the press did not stem from calculation alone. Long before and after he was president, Roosevelt was an author and historian. From an early age, he read as he breathed. He knew and revered writers, and his relationship with journalists was authentically collegial. In a sense, he was one of them. While exploring Roosevelt’s relationship with the press, I was especially drawn to the remarkably rich connections he developed with a team of journalists—including Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—all working at McClure’s magazine, the most influential contemporary progressive publication. The restless enthusiasm and manic energy of their publisher and editor, S. S. McClure, infused the magazine with “a spark of genius,” even as he suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns. “The story is the thing,” Sam McClure responded when asked to account for the methodology behind his publication. He wanted his writers to begin their research without preconceived notions, to carry their readers through their own process of discovery. As they educated themselves about the social and economic inequities rampant in the wake of teeming industrialization, so they educated the entire country. Together, these investigative journalists, who would later appropriate Roosevelt’s derogatory term “muckraker” as “a badge of honor,” produced a series of exposés that uncovered the invisible web of corruption linking politics to business. McClure’s formula—giving his writers the time and resources they needed to produce extended, intensively researched articles—was soon adopted by rival magazines, creating what many considered a golden age of journalism. Collectively, this generation of gifted writers ushered in a new mode of investigative reporting that provided the necessary conditions to make a genuine bully pulpit of the American presidency. “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind,” the historian Richard Hofstadter observed, “and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.

It's possible to see how much the brand culture rubs off on even the most sceptical employee. Joanne Ciulla sums up the dangers of these management practices: 'First, scientific management sought to capture the body, then human relations sought to capture the heart, now consultants want tap into the soul... what they offer is therapy and spirituality lite... [which] makes you feel good, but does not address problems of power, conflict and autonomy.'¹0 The greatest success of the employer brand' concept has been to mask the declining power of workers, for whom pay inequality has increased, job security evaporated and pensions are increasingly precarious. Yet employees, seduced by a culture of approachable, friendly managers, told me they didn't need a union - they could always go and talk to their boss. At the same time, workers are encouraged to channel more of their lives through work - not just their time and energy during working hours, but their social life and their volunteering and fundraising. Work is taking on the roles once played by other institutions in our lives, and the potential for abuse is clear. A company designs ever more exacting performance targets, with the tantalising carrot of accolades and pay increases to manipulate ever more feverish commitment. The core workforce finds itself hooked into a self-reinforcing cycle of emotional dependency: the increasing demands of their jobs deprive them of the possibility of developing the relationships and interests which would enable them to break their dependency. The greater the dependency, the greater the fear of going cold turkey - through losing the job or even changing the lifestyle. 'Of all the institutions in society, why let one of the more precarious ones supply our social, spiritual and psychological needs? It doesn't make sense to put such a large portion of our lives into the unsteady hands of employers,' concludes Ciulla. Life is work, work is life for the willing slaves who hand over such large chunks of themselves to their employer in return for the paycheque. The price is heavy in the loss of privacy, the loss of autonomy over the innermost workings of one's emotions, and the compromising of authenticity. The logical conclusion, unless challenged, is capitalism at its most inhuman - the commodification of human beings.

A daunting example of the impact that the loose talk and heavy rhetoric of the Sixties had on policy can be seen in the way the black family—a time-bomb ticking ominously, and exploding with daily detonations—got pushed off the political agenda. While Carmichael, Huey Newton and others were launching a revolutionary front against the system, the Johnson administration was contemplating a commitment to use the power of the federal government to end the economic and social inequalities that still plagued American blacks. A presidential task force under Daniel Patrick Moynihan was given a mandate to identify the obstacles preventing blacks from seizing opportunities that had been grasped by other minority groups in the previous 50 years of American history. At about the same time as the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Moynihan published findings that emphasized the central importance of family in shaping an individual life and noted with alarm that 21 percent of black families were headed by single women. “[The] one unmistakable lesson in American history,” he warned, is that a country that allows “a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future—that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder—most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure—that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable.” Moynihan proposed that the government confront this problem as a priority; but his conclusions were bitterly attacked by black radicals and white liberals, who joined in an alliance of anger and self-flagellation and quickly closed the window of opportunity Moynihan had opened. They condemned his report as racist not only in its conclusions but also in its conception; e.g., it had failed to stress the evils of the “capitalistic system.” This rejectionist coalition did not want a program for social change so much as a confession of guilt. For them the only “non-racist” gesture the president could make would be acceptance of their demand for $400 million in “reparations” for 400 years of slavery. The White House retreated before this onslaught and took the black family off the agenda.

If I had had to choose my place of birth, I would have chosen a state in which everyone knew everyone else, so that neither the obscure tactics of vice nor the modesty of virtue could have escaped public scrutiny and judgment. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (1754)

Conflict is much the same, injustice and inequality is nothing new to our generation only the contest has changed because not only that everyone has opinion but they also have an opportunity to voice it and that is a bit dangerous.

In the ensuing chapters, we will look in some detail at particular manifestations of the modern scientific ideology and the false paths down which it has led us. We will consider how biological determinism has been used to explain and justify inequalities within and between societies and to claim that those inequalities can never be changed. We will see how a theory of human nature has been developed using Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to claim that social organization is also unchangeable because it is natural. We will see how problems of health and disease have been located within the individual so that the individual becomes a problem for society to cope with rather than society becoming a problem for the individual. And we will see how simple economic relationships masquerading as facts of nature can drive the entire direction of biological research and technology.

68. In A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), Wilder writes, "The ghetto is not so much a place as it is a relationship - the physical manifestation of a perverse imbalance in social power. The ghetto is not the cause of social pathology, it is its destination. It is not the set of ever-changing, ever-negotiated disparities that dominate it but the financial, physical, and legal coercion that give rise to them. It cannot be defined by the people who occupy it but by the struggles that place them there. It is not social inequality but the attempt to predetermine the burden of social inequality. Thus, ghettos are different sizes, have different demographics, and suffer different conditions. They have in common only the lack of power that allows their residents to be physically concentrated and socially targeted" (p. 234).

the end is not combatting inequality as such, but combatting immobility, and counteracting the isolation and estrangement of some Americans from the core institutions and relationships essential to building thriving lives. Our

Denial of the fundamental role of class relations and struggles in the production of oppression and inequality defines intersectionality’s macro-level assumptions about the relationship among its key elements. Regardless of the politicised vocabulary, i.e. references in the intersectionality literature to imperialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, class, and so on, intersectionality – like the RGC perspective that preceded it – is an abstract analytical framework which, like sociology, approaches the study of social phenomena ahistorically, i.e. in abstraction from their capitalist conditions of possibility

Juselius and Takats (2016) uncover an empirical relationship—‘a puzzling link between low-frequency inflation and population-age structure : the young and old (dependents) are inflationary whereas the working age population is disinflationary’. They use data from 22 countries between 1955 and 2014, breaking up that time period so they are not biased by periods of high or low inflation. Their analysis shows that 6.5% of the disinflation in the USA from 1975 to 2014 can be accounted for by age structure. The age structure, they argue, ‘is forecastable and will increase inflationary pressures over the coming decades’.

Memories sustain us — they tell us who we are and to whom we’re connected.

But, [here his voice became impassioned] you must keep in mind that, although human needs are universal, humanity remains divided into two great classes: the herren [masters] and knechte [servants]. The ‘top dogs’ still lord it over the ‘bottom dogs,’ and this vast inequality generates misery and violence. Let us, by all means, develop the theory of basic needs. But if we do not incorporate that theory into a theory of society that reflects the relationship of top dogs to bottom dogs, we will not be able to explain or resolve violent conflicts.

The telos, or divine “endgame,” for racial reconciliation is not restored relationship between Whites and people of color. It is not, as one ministry colleague, activist Onleilove Alston, once sarcastically described it, the image of “a big Black dude and a White dude on a stage, hugging it out with a single tear rolling down their cheeks.” It is the establishment of a just world, one in which racial inequities have been abolished. This means that the current practices, policies, and societal norms that disadvantage people of color or advantage White people must be abolished and corrected. Further, there must be intentional, sustained, and large-scale effort to remediate the economic, educational, political, social, physical, and psychological harm inflicted upon people of color by racism.

Much research points to the race problem as rooted in intergroup conflict over resources and ways of life, the institutionalization of race-based practices, inequality and stratification, and the defense of group position.1 These are not the views of white evangelicals, however. For them, the race problem is one or more of three main types: (1) prejudiced individuals, resulting in bad relationships and sin, (2) other groups—usually African Americans—trying to make race problems a group issue when there is nothing more than individual problems, and (3) a fabrication of the self-interested—again often African Americans, but also the media, the government, or liberals.

Sometime in the early 1920s, Keynes outlined a book he planned to call “Essays on the Economic Future of the World” (figure 3).101 The chapter titles mostly represent the issues—inequality, agricultural prices, the singular circumstances of the nineteenth century—that occupied him throughout the decade, and whose resolution constituted his various versions of the Liberal platform. Population, the third chapter, was always at the top of his agendas for the next Liberal government. The concluding chapter, however, is the more enigmatic “Education, Eugenics and Φυσει δουλοι.” Keynes took the phrase “Φυσει δουλοι” (phusei douloi), “slaves by nature,” from the first book of Aristotle’s Politics. It is with the qualities of human beings that Aristotle begins: “One that can foresee with his mind is naturally ruler and naturally master, and one that can [work] with his body is subject and naturally a slave.” For Aristotle, an enlightened polity recognizes that these two kinds of people are bound by their mutual interest, and social stability requires that both embrace their natural and symbiotic relationship. Keynes, envisioning a new kind of relationship between state and citizen, had in mind a similar symbiosis, but one in which the eugenic cultivation of talent might reshape rather than harden existing social strata.

It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these inter-related developments seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling the EU referendum and asked people to endorse the status quo. What we see with the mask pulled back and the fog of fantasies at last beginning to dissipate is the revelation that Brexit is much less about Britain's relationship with the EU than it is about Britain's relationship with itself. It is the projection outwards of an inner turmoil. An archaic political system carried on even while its foundations in a collective sense of belonging were crumbling. Brexit in one way alone has done a real service: it has forced the old system to play out its death throes in public. The spectacle is ugly, but at least it shows that a fissiparous four-nation state cannot be governed without radical social and cconstitutional change.

Ideologies that obscure racism as a system of inequality are perhaps the most powerful racial forces because once we accept our positions within racial hierarchies, these positions seem natural and difficult to question, even when we are disadvantaged by them. In this way, very little external pressure needs to be applied to keep people in their places; once the rationalizations for inequality are internalized, both sides will uphold the relationship.

In the mid-1950s, Governor Luther Hodges cited Aycock’s “march of progress” in his defense of Jim Crow as a system that both ensured political tranquility and enabled racial uplift. His successor in the state house, Terry Sanford, noted that Aycock famously proclaimed “as a white man, I am afraid of but one thing for my race and that is we shall become afraid to give the Negro a fair chance. The white man in the South can never attain to his fullest growth until he does absolute justice to the Negro race.” This framing enabled Hodges, Sanford, and, later, Governor Dan Moore to define the “North Carolina way” in sharp contrast with the racially charged massive resistance rhetoric that defined the approaches of Alabama under George Wallace and Mississippi under Ross Barnett. This moderate course caused early observers like V. O. Key to view the state as “an inspiring exception to southern racism.” Crucially, it operated hand-in-hand with North Carolina’s anti-labor stance to advance the state’s economic interests. Hodges, Sanford, and Moore approached racial policy by emphasizing tranquility, and thus an intolerance for political contention. These officials placed a high value on law and order, condemning as “extremists” those who threatened North Carolina’s “harmonious” race relations by advocating either civil rights or staunch segregation. While racial distinctions could not be elided in the Jim Crow South, where the social fabric was shot through with racial disparity, an Aycock-style progressivist stance emphasized the maintenance of racial separation alongside white elites’ moral and civic interest in the well-being of black residents. This interest generally took the form of a pronounced paternalism, which typically enabled powerful white residents to serve as benefactors to their black neighbors, in a sort of patron-client relationship. “It was white people doing something for blacks—not with them,” explained Charlotte-based Reverend Colemon William Kerry Jr. While often framed as gestures of beneficence and closeness, such acts reproduced inequity and distance. More broadly, this racial order served dominant economic and political interests, as it preserved segregation with a progressive sheen that favored industrial expansion.12

Ideologies are the frameworks through which we are taught to represent, interpret, understand, and make sense of social existence.14 Because these ideas are constantly reinforced, they are very hard to avoid believing and internalizing. Examples of ideology in the United States include individualism, the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system, consumerism as a desirable lifestyle, and meritocracy (anyone can succeed if he or she works hard). The racial ideology that circulates in the United States rationalizes racial hierarchies as the outcome of a natural order resulting from either genetics or individual effort or talent. Those who don’t succeed are just not as naturally capable, deserving, or hardworking. Ideologies that obscure racism as a system of inequality are perhaps the most powerful racial forces because once we accept our positions within racial hierarchies, these positions seem natural and difficult to question, even when we are disadvantaged by them. In this way, very little external pressure needs to be applied to keep people in their places; once the rationalizations for inequality are internalized, both sides will uphold the relationship.

Whites enact racism while maintaining a positive self-image in many ways: • Rationalizing racial segregation as unfortunate but necessary to access “good schools” • Rationalizing that our workplaces are virtually all white because people of color just don’t apply • Avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded terms such as urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good neighborhoods • Denying that we have few cross-racial relationships by proclaiming how diverse our community or workplace is • Attributing inequality between whites and people of color to causes other than racism

Here is why the wellbeing economy comes at the right time. At the international level there have been some openings, which can be exploited to turn the wellbeing economy into a political roadmap. The first was the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs are a loose list of 17 goals, ranging from good health and personal wellbeing to sustainable cities and communities as well as responsible production and consumption. They are a bit scattered and inconsistent, like most outcomes of international negotiations, but they at least open up space for policy reforms. For the first time in more than a century, the international community has accepted that the simple pursuit of growth presents serious problems. Even when it comes at high speed, its quality is often debatable, producing social inequalities, lack of decent work, environmental destruction, climate change and conflict. Through the SDGs, the UN is calling for a different approach to progress and prosperity. This was made clear in a 2012 speech by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who explicitly connected the three pillars of sustainable development: ‘Social, economic and environmental wellbeing are indivisible.’82 Unlike in the previous century, we now have a host of instruments and indicators that can help politicians devise different policies and monitor results and impacts throughout society. Even in South Africa, a country still plagued by centuries of oppression, colonialism, extractive economic systems and rampant inequality, the debate is shifting. The country’s new National Development Plan has been widely criticised because of the neoliberal character of the main chapters on economic development. Like the SDGs, it was the outcome of negotiations and bargaining, which resulted in inconsistencies and vagueness. Yet, its opening ‘vision statement’ is inspired by a radical approach to transformation. What should South Africa look like in 2030? The language is uplifting: We feel loved, respected and cared for at home, in community and the public institutions we have created. We feel understood. We feel needed. We feel trustful … We learn together. We talk to each other. We share our work … I have a space that I can call my own. This space I share. This space I cherish with others. I maintain it with others. I am not self-sufficient alone. We are self-sufficient in community … We are studious. We are gardeners. We feel a call to serve. We make things. Out of our homes we create objects of value … We are connected by the sounds we hear, the sights we see, the scents we smell, the objects we touch, the food we eat, the liquids we drink, the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the dreams we imagine. We are a web of relationships, fashioned in a web of histories, the stories of our lives inescapably shaped by stories of others … The welfare of each of us is the welfare of all … Our land is our home. We sweep and keep clean our yard. We travel through it. We enjoy its varied climate, landscape, and vegetation … We live and work in it, on it with care, preserving it for future generations. We discover it all the time. As it gives life to us, we honour the life in it.83 I could have not found better words to describe the wellbeing economy: caring, sharing, compassion, love for place, human relationships and a profound appreciation of what nature does for us every day. This statement gives us an idea of sufficiency that is not about individualism, but integration; an approach to prosperity that is founded on collaboration rather than competition. Nowhere does the text mention growth. There’s no reference to scale; no pompous images of imposing infrastructure, bridges, stadiums, skyscrapers and multi-lane highways. We make the things we need. We, as people, become producers of our own destiny. The future is not about wealth accumulation, massive

I realize that some people’s lives are harder than others. If you’ve been dealt a bad hand, I understand. Even in the United States where equality is one of our chief values, inequality is still rampant. But focusing on what you don’t have or the bad hand you were dealt can actually make your life worse. What you think about affects who you become. It affects your relationships and the people you attract into your life. Keeping your focus on what you do have, what you have been given, and the good things in your life will make you happier and more grateful and will empower you to become a generous person yourself.

I wanted to write a book about poverty that didn’t focus exclusively on poor people or poor places. Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor people and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor people and rich people together in mutual dependence and trigger. Eviction was such a process.

This strategy, together with the partial dismantling of measures to fight poverty, partly explains the continuous rise of inequalities in India. However, some of the rich have become richer for other reasons as well, including the close relationship between the Modi government and industrialists. FROM CRONY CAPITALISM TO COLLUSIVE CAPITALISM While the Modi government is not responsible for the enrichment of Indian tycoons, which began in most cases prior to the BJP victory in 2014, it continued to help them. In Gujarat, the Modi government had apparently granted unwarranted advantages to industrialists, including the sale of land below market prices, dispensations from environmental standards, unjustified tax rebates, interest-free loans, and so on.136 After forming the central government, the NDA government allegedly shielded Indian industrialists from banks to which these men owed billions. Such collusion has contributed to destabilizing a banking system undermined by dubious debts—particularly those held by these big investors, who do not pay back their loans.137 Even if the problem began under the previous government, it has persisted in part owing to collusion between businessmen and the ruling class. The government’s cronies continued to receive huge loans from public-sector banks (whose heads have trouble disobeying the government),138 which they proved unable to pay back. In May 2018, nonperforming assets (NPAs) vested in public banks—in other words, loans for which the borrower had not made payment on either the interest or the principal in at least ninety days—accounted for 12.65 billion dollars, or about 14 percent of their total loans (compared to 12.5 percent in March the previous year139 and only 3 percent in March 2012).140 A small number of borrowers were largely responsible for this evolution, among whom were prominent large industrialists.141 In 2015, in a fifty-seven-page document, Credit Suisse gave a detailed analysis of the astounding level of debt of ten Indian corporations that continued to borrow even though all the red flags had gone up.142 In 2018, 84 percent of the dubious loans were owed by major corporations, and twelve of them accounted for 25 percent of the outstanding NPAs.143 Among them is the group owned by Gautam Adani, a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2002.144 In 2015, the group increased its debt level by 16 percent to acquire a seaport and two power plants. Consequently, its debt soared to 840 billion rupees (11.2 billion USD), compared to only 331 billion rupees (4.41 billion dollars) in 2011.145

Team Obama joined the fight against teachers unions from day one: the administration supported charter schools and standardized tests; they gave big grants to Teach for America. In Jonathan Alter’s description of how the administration decided to take on the matter, it is clear that professionalism provided the framework for their thinking. Teachers’ credentials are described as somewhat bogus; they “often bore no relationship to [teachers’] skills in the classroom.” What teachers needed was a more empirical form of certification: they had to be tested and then tested again. Even more offensive to the administration was the way teachers’ unions had resisted certain accountability measures over the years, resulting in a situation “almost unimaginable to professionals in any other part of the economy,” as Alter puts it.15 As it happens, the vast majority of Americans are unprofessional: they are the managed, not the managers. But people whose faith lies in “cream rising to the top” (to repeat Alter’s take on Obama’s credo) tend to disdain those at the bottom. Those who succeed, the doctrine of merit holds, are those who deserve to—who race to the top, who get accepted to “good” colleges and get graduate degrees in the right subjects. Those who don’t sort of deserve their fates. “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of a disequalizer,” Larry Summers told journalist Ron Suskind during the early days of the Obama administration. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.”16 Remember, as you let that last sentence slide slowly down your throat, that this was a Democrat saying this—a prominent Democrat, a high-ranking cabinet official in the Clinton years and the man standing at the right hand of power in the first Obama administration.* The merit mind-set destroyed not only the possibility of real action against inequality; in some ways it killed off the hopes of the Obama presidency altogether. “From the days of the 2008 Obama transition team offices, it was clear that the Administration was going to be populated with Ivy Leaguers who had cut their teeth, and filled their bank accounts, at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup,” a labor movement official writes me. The President, who was so impressed with his classmates’ intelligence at Harvard and Columbia, gave them the real reins of power, and they used those reins to strangle him and his ambition of being a transformative President. The overwhelming aroma of privilege started at the top and at the beginning.… It reached down deep into the operational levels of government, to the lowest-level political appointees. Our members watched this process unfold in 2009 and 2010, and when it came time to defend the Obama Administration at the polls in 2010, no one showed up. THE

The Chinese people and the American people are not each other’s enemies. Rather, the main conflict in both countries is that between the elites and their wider populations. This has been driven by fiscal, industrial and monetary policies that have pushed widening wealth and income inequalities within both countries and led to significant imbalances in the commercial and financial relationship between them.

Given the obvious “will to power” (as Friedrich Nietzsche called it) of the human race, the enormous energy put into its expression, the early emergence of hierarchies among children, and the childlike devastation of grown men who tumble from the top, I’m puzzled by the taboo with which our society surrounds this issue. Most psychology textbooks do not even mention power and dominance, except in relation to abusive relationships. Everyone seems in denial. In one study on the power motive, corporate managers were asked about their relationship with power. They did acknowledge the existence of a lust for power, but never applied it to themselves. They rather enjoyed responsibility, prestige, and authority. The power grabbers were other men. Political candidates are equally reluctant. They sell themselves as public servants, only in it to fix the economy or improve education. Have you ever heard a candidate admit he wants power? Obviously, the word “servant” is doublespeak: does anyone believe that it’s only for our sake that they join the mudslinging of modern democracy? Do the candidates themselves believe this? What an unusual sacrifice that would be. It’s refreshing to work with chimpanzees: they are the honest politicians we all long for. When political philosopher Thomas Hobbes postulated an insuppressible power drive, he was right on target for both humans and apes. Observing how blatantly chimpanzees jockey for position, one will look in vain for ulterior motives and expedient promises. I was not prepared for this when, as a young student, I began to follow the dramas among the Arnhem chimpanzees from an observation window overlooking their island. In those days, students were supposed to be antiestablishment, and my shoulder-long hair proved it. We considered power evil and ambition ridiculous. Yet my observations of the apes forced me to open my mind to seeing power relations not as something bad but as something ingrained. Perhaps inequality was not to be dismissed as simply the product of capitalism. It seemed to go deeper than that. Nowadays, this may seem banal, but in the 1970s human behavior was seen as totally flexible: not natural but cultural. If we really wanted to, people believed, we could rid ourselves of archaic tendencies like sexual jealousy, gender roles, material ownership, and, yes, the desire to dominate. Unaware of this revolutionary call, my chimpanzees demonstrated the same archaic tendencies, but without a trace of cognitive dissonance. They were jealous, sexist, and possessive, plain and simple. I didn’t know then that I’d be working with them for the rest of my life or that I would never again have the luxury of sitting on a wooden stool and watching them for thousands of hours. It was the most revelatory time of my life. I became so engrossed that I began trying to imagine what made my apes decide on this or that action. I started dreaming of them at night and, most significant, I started seeing the people around me in a different light.

The relationship to age is an expression of social inequality.

despite the growing average life span, the age at which one becomes old depends upon one’s social origin and type of occupation. The relationship to age is an expression of social inequality.

They need each other, but theorists and experimenters have allowed certain inequities to enter their relationships since the ancient days when every scientist was both. Though the best experimenters still have some of the theorist in them, the converse does not hold. Ultimately, prestige accumulates on the theorist’s side of the table. In high energy physics, especially, glory goes to the theorists, while experimenters have become highly specialized technicians, managing expensive and complicated equipment. In the decades since World War II, as physics came to be defined by the study of fundamental particles, the best publicized experiments were those carried out with particle accelerators. Spin, symmetry, color, flavor—these were the glamorous abstractions. To most laymen following science, and to more than a few scientists, the study of atomic particles was physics. But studying smaller particles, on shorter time scales, meant higher levels of energy. So the machinery needed for good experiments grew with the years, and the nature of experimentation changed for good in particle physics.

MICHAEL CRONIN: My three main concerns can, I suppose, be summed up as follows: (1) How can we find a space in the current public conversation for a perspective that is critical of the marriage campaign but from a queer, gay-affirmative and anti-homophobic perspective? As Pantigate demonstrates, once the referendum campaign gets going, that will become even more difficult, probably impossible. (2) How can we manage to engage in a political discussion while acknowledging that this is an issue in which people are so deeply invested emotionally and affectively? For instance, I find it very uncomfortable and challenging to express my opposition publicly as someone who, firstly, is a potential beneficiary of the change, and, secondly, am opposing something that is deeply important to individuals who I respect and love, and opposing subcultural organisations that were very important to my own formation. (3) How can we develop a perspective on this that acknowledges that this is simultaneously a victory and a defeat? It is a progressive development that will make our society more inclusive, tolerant and affirmative of loving relationships and different families. But it will also entrench inequality – between the married and the unmarried, the secure and the precarious – and is another indication of how the utopian hopes of 1970s gay liberation and lesbian feminism have been thoroughly defeated.

(Not), in my view, is all hierarchy or inequality inherently negative. Inequalities or differences in ability and experience, provided they are not reified or assigned on the basis of biological category, can usefully complement one another in relationships, and can also foster mutual learning.

Both the client and therapist are not primarily seen as human persons in relation to each other and the socio-cultural world around them. Instead, they are viewed as defined by their intersecting group identities and, importantly, the differences and inequalities these identities create. Dynamics of oppression are at the heart of the CSJ-driven therapy relationship.

It should have been impossible. No one should have been able to dream any of these things, much less all of them. But Adam had seen what Ronan could do. He'd read the dreamt will and ridden in the dreamt Camaro and had been terrified by the dreamt night terror. It was possible there were two gods in this church. Ronan crouched by the pew again, studying the list, his fingers running idly over his stubble as he thought. When he wasn't trying to look like an asshole, his face looked very different, and for a tilting moment, Adam felt the startling inequality of their relationship: Ronan knew Adam, but Adam wasn't sure he knew Ronan, after all.

Candyman is a monster created from vigilante justice, but his sin—being in a romantic relationship with a White woman—was deemed immoral by an immoral society founded on racial inequality.

the declining economic gains from marriage highlight the nonmaterial reasons for marriage, including mutual love and respect. But for the relationships in which these break down, divorce more easily results.

motherly love (Hebrew: rachamin, from rechem = womb) the relationship between the two persons involved is one of inequality; the child is helpless and dependent on the mother. In order to grow, it must become more and more independent, until he does not need mother any more. Thus the mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, and yet this very love must help the child to grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. It is easy for any mother to love her child before this process of separation has begun—but it is the task in which most fail, to love the child and at the same time to let it go—and to want to let it go.

Among the leading intellectual proponents of Roosevelt’s form of liberalism were the three brilliant young founders of The New Republic, Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl—all slightly older friends of Adolf Berle’s. In 1909 Croly published a Progressive Era manifesto called The Promise of American Life. “The net result of the industrial expansion of the United States since the Civil War,” Croly wrote, “has been the establishment in the heart of the American economic and social system of certain glaring inequalities of condition and power … The rich men and big corporations have become too wealthy and powerful for their official standing in American life.” He asserted that the way to solve the problem was to reorient the country from the tradition of Thomas Jefferson (rural, decentralized) to the tradition of Alexander Hamilton (urban, financially adept). Weyl, in The New Democracy (1913), wrote that the country had been taken over by a “plutocracy” that had rendered the traditional forms of American democracy impotent; government had to restore the balance and “enormously increase the extent of regulation.” To liberals of this kind, these were problems of nation-threatening severity, requiring radical modernization that would eliminate the trace elements of rural nineteenth-century America. Lippmann, in Drift and Mastery (1914), argued that William Jennings Bryan (“the true Don Quixote of our politics”) and his followers were fruitlessly at war with “the economic conditions which had upset the old life of the prairies, made new demands on democracy, introduced specialization and science, had destroyed village loyalties, frustrated private ambitions, and created the impersonal relationships of the modern world.” A larger, more powerful, more technical central government, staffed by a new class of trained experts, was the only plausible way to fight the dominance of big business. The leading Clash of the Titans liberals were from New York City, but even William Allen White, the celebrated (in part for being anti-Bryan) small-town Kansas editor who was a leading Progressive and one of their allies, wrote, in 1909, that “the day of the rule of the captain of industry is rapidly passing in America.” Now the country needed “captains of two opposing groups—capitalism and democracy” to reset the

The most obvious explanation for explaining black-white inequality, especially historically, is racism and discrimination. African Americans first arrived in the United States in large numbers in colonial times via the slave trade and were heavily concentrated in southern states, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, where they often worked on plantations. They had few rights and could be bought and sold at will, meaning that families were frequently broken up at the discretion of their owners. Each state had its slave code that regulated the relationship between the slave and owner. The South Carolina slave code, for example, stated, among many provisions, that no slave should be taught to write and that slaves were forbidden to leave the owner’s property unless accompanied by a white person or by permission. Masters who killed their slaves without justification were subject to a fine, but all types of punishments (including those leading to the death of slaves) for infractions were allowed.

In summary, this book proposes the following prescriptions for resisting social fragmentation. First, an expansion of contact zones between multiple public spheres that enables diverse people to interact with one another is needed. Second, while communication continues in these contact zones, conclusive definitions of 'right' and 'wrong' must be deferred in order to prevent further moralization of politics and maintain politics at the level of interests. Third, to construct an order of mutual life-support, a 'soft' mutuality must be nurtured enough through care-based relationships and spontaneous compassion for the vulnerabilities of life.

the impulse to act like a man in order to be heard risks reinscribing precisely those structures that perpetuate gender inequality. A better approach, Beard argues, is to think critically and self-reflexively about our rhetorical operations. “We need,” she argues, “to go back to some first principles about the nature of spoken authority, about what constitutes it, and how we have learned to hear authority where we do. And rather than push women into voice training classes to get a nice, deep, husky and entirely artificial tone, we should be thinking more about the faultlines and fractures that underlie dominant male discourse.”39

In terms of organisational models and human relationship models, humankind has not evolved much over the last millennia.

There is one further attribute of language that places it at a higher level than any existing technological organization or facility; and that is, to function at all, it demands a reciprocal relation between producer and consumer, between sayer and listener: an inequality of advantage destroys in some degree the integrity and common value of the product. Unlike any historic economic system, the demand for words may be limited without embarrassing the supply: the capital reserves (vocabulary) may become huger and the capacity for production (speech, literature, sharable meanings) continue to increase without imposing any collective duty to consume the surplus. This relationship, embedded in the special form of language, the dialogue, is at last being undermined by a new system of control and one-way communication that has now found an electronic mode of operation; and the grave issues that have thus been raised must now be faced.

The analogy between infertile heterosexuals and same-sex couples misses the point. The extension of marriage to infertile heterosexual couples serves not to deprecate same-sex couples, but to preserve the equal status of women in marriage. A test for fertility would be unfair to women because all women spend most of their adult lives in a state of infertility. Fertile women are infertile most days of a month, and postmenopausal women are always infertile. A fertility requirement would also render women susceptible to enormous abuse by men, providing a ready excuse for men who would trade in older women for nubile brides. The status of women in marriage would be intolerably diminished through this practice. Infertility is less common among men, as they can sire children into old age. Moreover, men, like women, typically do not discover that they are infertile until they attempt to sire children, at which time they ought already to be married. A measure that serves primarily to protect women and to preserve their equal status within the institution of marriage is not a measure that is an appropriate basis by which to judge that the same should go for same-sex couples. One of the great challenges men and women face in marriage is in coming to terms with their differences while respecting the status of the other as an equal. Acceptance of infertility is a measure promoting this end. A measure to accommodate the reality of sex-based difference in marriage is no reason to extend marriage to same-sex couples. Moreover, accommodation for infertility in no way diminishes the reality that the inequality of the parent-child relationship is what differentiates marriage from other contractual relationships. It is the parent-child relation, as it emerges from sexual difference and procreation, which elevates marriage above a mere contract, and renders it a sacred duty.

In terms of organisational models and human relationship models, humankind has not evolved much over the last millennia. In fact, most organisations still heavily rely on strong hierarchical models, where power, greed and internal competition are the main driving forces.

Finally, the third reason for concern about inequality of outcome is that it directly affects equality of opportunity—for the next generation. Today’s ex-post outcomes shape tomorrow’s ex ante playing field: the beneficiaries of inequality of outcome today can transmit an unfair advantage to their children tomorrow. Concern about unequal opportunity, and about limited social mobility, has intensified as the distributions of income and wealth have become more unequal. This is because the impact of family background on outcome depends both on the strength of the relationship between background and outcome and on the extent of inequality among family backgrounds. Inequality of outcome among today’s generation is the source of the unfair advantage received by the next generation. If we are concerned about equality of opportunity tomorrow, we need to be concerned about inequality of outcome today.

Shalom is meant to be both personal (emphasizing our relationships with others) and structural (replacing systems where shalom has been broken or which produce broken shalom, such as war-or greed-driven economic systems). In shalom, the old structures and systems are replaced with new structures and new systems.

her imperative to “think dialectically”—a maxim drawn from her study of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Because reality is constantly changing, we must constantly detect and analyze the emerging contradictions that are driving this change. And if reality is changing around us, we cannot expect good ideas to hatch within an ivory tower. They instead emerge and develop through daily life and struggle, through collective study and debate among diverse entities, and through trial and error within multiple contexts. Grace often attributes her “having been born female and Chinese” to her sense of being an outsider to mainstream society. Over the past decade she has sharpened this analysis considerably. Reflecting on the limits of her prior encounters with radicalism, Grace fully embraces the feminist critique not only of gender discrimination and inequality but also of the masculinist tendencies that too often come to define a certain brand of movement organizing—one driven by militant posturing, a charismatic form of hierarchical leadership, and a static notion of power seen as a scarce commodity to be acquired and possessed. Grace has struck up a whole new dialogue and built relationships with Asian American activists and intellectuals since the 1998 release of her autobiography, Living for Change. Her reflections on these encounters have reinforced her repeated observation that marginalization serves as a form of liberation. Thus, she has come away impressed with the particular ability of movement-oriented Asian Americans to dissect U.S. society in new ways that transcend the mind-sets of blacks and whites, to draw on their transnational experiences to rethink the nature of the global order, and to enact new propositions free of the constraints and baggage weighing down those embedded in the status quo. Still, Grace’s practical connection to a constantly changing reality for most of her adult life has stemmed from an intimate relationship with the African American community—so much so that informants from the Cointelpro days surmised she was probably Afro-Chinese.3 This connection to black America (and to a lesser degree the pan-African world) has made her a source of intrigue for younger generations grappling with the rising complexities of race and diversity. It has been sustained through both political commitments and personal relationships. Living in Detroit for more than a half century, Grace has developed a stature as one of Motown’s most cherished citizens: penning a weekly column for the city’s largest-circulation black community newspaper; regularly profiled in the mainstream and independent media; frequently receiving awards and honors through no solicitation of her own; constantly visited by students, intellectuals, and activists from around the world; and even speaking on behalf of her friend Rosa Parks after the civil rights icon became too frail for public appearances.

I woke one night to find him staring at the ceiling, his profile lit by the glow of streetlights outside. He looked vaguely troubled, as if he were pondering something deeply personal. Was it our relationship? The loss of his father? “Hey, what’re you thinking about over there?” I whispered. He turned to look at me, his smile a little sheepish. “Oh,” he said. “I was just thinking about income inequality.

One way to identify a relationship of inequality is to determine whether or not the couple can set mutual goals and discuss them together. In an abusive relationship, the couple does not really plan together. Planning together requires mutuality and equality.

Alexis de Tocqueville admired the laws that formally established America's democratic order, but he argued that voluntary organizations were the real source of the nation's robust civic life. John Dewey claimed that social connection is predicated on "the vitality and depth of close and direct intercourse and attachment." "Democracy begins at home," he famously wrote, "and its home is the neighborly community.

infrastructure" is not a term conventionally used to describe the underpinnings of social life. But this is a consequential oversight, because the built environment -- and not just cultural preferences or the existence of voluntary organizations -- influences the breadth and depth of our associations. If states and societies do not recognize social infrastructure and how it works, they will fail to see a powerful way to promote civic engagement and social interaction, both within communities and across group lines.

People often point to the London Metropolitan Police, who were formed in the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel,” Vitale said when we met. “They are held up as this liberal ideal of a dispassionate, politically neutral police with the support of the citizenry. But this really misreads the history. Peel is sent to manage the British occupation of Ireland. He’s confronted with a dilemma. Historically, peasant uprisings, rural outrages were dealt with by either the local militia or the British military. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, in the need for soldiers in other parts of the British Empire, he is having more and more difficulty managing these disorders. In addition, when he does call out the militia, they often open fire on the crowd and kill lots of people, creating martyrs and inflaming further unrest. He said, ‘I need a force that can manage these outrages without inflaming passions further.’ He developed the Peace Preservation Force, which was the first attempt to create a hybrid military-civilian force that can try to win over the population by embedding itself in the local communities, taking on some crime control functions, but its primary purpose was always to manage the occupation. He then exports that model to London as the industrial working classes are flooding the city, dealing with poverty, cycles of boom and bust in the economy, and that becomes their primary mission. “The creation of the very first state police force in the United States was the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905,” Vitale went on. “For the same reasons. It was modeled similarly on U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines. There was a back-and-forth with personnel and ideas. What happened was local police were unable to manage the coal strikes and iron strikes. . . . They needed a force that was more adherent to the interests of capital. . . . Interestingly, for these small-town police forces in a coal mining town there was sometimes sympathy. They wouldn’t open fire on the strikers. So, the state police force was created to be the strong arm for the law. Again, the direct connection between colonialism and the domestic management of workers. . . . It’s a two-way exchange. As we’re developing ideas throughout our own colonial undertakings, bringing those ideas home, and then refining them and shipping them back to our partners around the world who are often despotic regimes with close economic relationships to the United States. There’s a very sad history here of the U.S. exporting basically models of policing that morph into death squads and horrible human rights abuses.” The almost exclusive reliance on militarized police to deal with profound inequality and social problems is turning poor neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago into failed states. The “broken windows” policy, adopted by many cities, argues that disorder produces crime. It criminalizes minor infractions, upending decades of research showing that social dislocation leads to crime. It creates an environment where the poor are constantly harassed, fined, and arrested for nonsubstantive activities.

We often struggle to conceive of and describe the scope and scale of new technologies, meaning that we have trouble even thinking them. What is needed is not new technology, but new metaphors: a metalanguage for describing the world that complex systems have wrought. A new shorthand is required, one that simultaneously acknowledges and addresses the reality of a world in which people, politics, culture and technology are utterly enmeshed. We have always been connected - unequally, illogically, and some more than others - but entirely and inevitably. What changes in the network is that this connection is visible and undeniable. We are confronted at all times by the radical interconnectedness of things and our selves, and we must reckon with this realization in new ways. It is insufficient to speak of the internet or amorphous technologies, alone and unaccountable, as causing or accelerating the chasm in our understanding and agency. For want of a better term, I use the word 'network' to include us and our technologies in one vast system - to include human and nonhuman agency and understanding, knowing and unknowing, within the same agential soup. The chasm is not between us and our technologies, but within the network itself, and it is through the network that we come to know it. Finally, systemic literacy permits, performs, and responds to critique. The systems that we will be discussing are too critical to be thought, understood, designed and enacted by the few, especially when those few all too easily align themselves with, or are subsumed by, older elites and power structures. There is a concrete and causal relationship between the complexity of the systems we encounter every day; the opacity with which most of those systems are constructed or described; and fundamental, global issues of inequality, violence, populism and fundamentalism, All too often, new technologies are presented as inherently emancipatory. But this is itself an example of computational thinking, of which we are all guilty. Those of us who have been early adopters and cheerleaders of new technologies, who have experienced their manifold pleasures and benefitted from their opportunities, and who have consequently argued, often naively, for their wider implementation, are in no less danger from their uncritical deployment. But the argument for critique cannot be made from individual threats, nor from identification with the less fortunate or less knowledgeable. Individualism and empathy are both insufficient in the network. Survival and solidarity must be possible without understanding.

Parenting is not merely about keeping children alive. While children above a certain age no longer need constant supervision, family relationships make a big difference to parents’ and children’s well-being.

This “fertility crisis” has potentially dire consequences for the future funding of the welfare state, and it cannot be disentangled from difficult political questions concerning reforms of pension systems and even whether to allow more immigration. A straightforward explanation would be that women are now having careers instead of children—a view that is popular on the religious right. But while the relationship between female labor force participation and fertility was unambiguously negative thirty years ago, today it is positive: countries where women spend a lot of time in the household tend to have lower fertility rates than countries where women are very active in the labor market. Our contention is that the explanation for the fertility crisis flows from the same underlying logic as the explanation for the political underrepresentation of women or the shift in gender norms.

The social sciences are lagging far behind physics when it comes to theoretical rigor and validity, but physics today has advanced far beyond where it was when the Wright brothers were working on their flight project. The brothers saw the necessity in seeking out the available theories and data and making the best of their material. Within practical politics and political philosophy, the situation is different. Classical philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke did not have the social sciences at their disposal and relied on their common sense, peppered with fragments of stories from abroad. Social scientists have evolved, but philosophy and praxis remain relatively unaltered, by and large proceeding in their pre-scientific state. Keynes once noted that “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist,” and many a political philosopher takes after them in this respect. Political praxis has evolved, in economic arenas most of all, but the focus that economists have placed on the market has led to a serious imbalance in the relationship between social sciences and policy making. Even more than political philosophy, politics suffers from what psychologists call selective perception: decision-makers tend to seek out research that supports (or that they believe supports) their current positions.