On Redefining Reality: A Dialogue
By James Jacobs
It is self-destructive vanity to think we can change the meaning of marriage, the foundation of all human society, and it is irrational folly to allow an abstraction like “equality” delude us into thinking that incommensurable realities must somehow be taken to be the same.
As I walked down the street, I noticed in the window of a shop a decal advertising the so-called “Human Rights Campaign,” the organization agitating for a redefinition of marriage to include homosexual unions. I was a little shocked somebody would be proud of that association, for I had heard the news that the founder of the Human Rights Campaign (and a major financial backer of President Obama), Terry Bean, was recently arrested in Oregon for sexually abusing a 15 year-old boy. Maybe that story was not broadcast as widely as it should have been—I can only guess why; if the president of the NRA had shot someone, certainly that would make the news.
Regardless, it also struck me how utterly debased the notion of human rights had become if an entire genus of moral claims could be reduced to a grotesque assertion made on behalf of one-percent of the population. Yet, I also saw that it is the epitome of the contemporary zeitgeist in which a “right” is nothing other than a sentimental imperative, as Alasdair MacIntyre has put it: on the one hand, it is nothing other than a bold and impulsive desire; yet, this is compounded with the tyrannical demand that others submit to your insistence that that desire be satisfied. This meretricious notion of rights debases them by placing individual desire ahead of objective value, a move which ineluctably reduces to nonsense any and all claims to have rights. I thought I might make a test to determine just how dedicated the shop owner really was to this notion of human rights: did he in fact agree that subjective desire implied the sort of right he seemed to claim for himself? In other words, would he allow me to redefine reality to conform to my own desires?
The store was a tidy gift shop full of knick-knacks of no intrinsic value, but it was presided over by a tall, thin man with a penciled beard running the ridge of his jaw line and an imperious aquiline nose. I quickly found a small plaster dog, and presented it to the register for purchase by commenting approvingly, “This looks just like my son!”
Not given to suffering fools—or customers deemed unworthy—gladly, the proprietor grasped the dog with his spidery fingers and superciliously replied, “Your son? Really?”
“Well, I consider him my son. I am planning on being able to claim a child tax credit for him next year—or soon at least. The government has no right to tell me who my child is. After all, I love him like a son! That’s all that matters.”
Not knowing what to make of me, the owner quickly rang up the item without comment, and announced, “That will be $20.”
I pulled out a $10, and giving it to him, reached for the bag. “I am sorry, sir,” he said. “That’s a $10 bill.”
With this, of course, he unintentionally got to the heart of the issue. I protested, “That’s okay—I see this as being worth $20. What I mean is that, to me, that is the same as a $20 bill is to you.” Seeing him hesitate, I insisted, “Please don’t impose your values on me: I have the right to judge the value of things in relation to my money, and you judge it in relation to yours. I consider this to be $20, though you may call it what you will.”
“But you cannot just change the worth of a $10 bill! These prices are meant to be for everyone—changing them according to your whim ruins the whole system.”
“As I said, I am not changing the price. I consider the money I am handing you to be worth $20. You are getting exactly what you ask for.”
Slowly, as if here were explaining this to a child, he retorted, “Sir, you cannot redefine reality. It is an obvious fact that a $10 note is not the same as a $20 note—that would be a contradiction in terms! Simply calling a $10 a $20 does not make it so. Regardless of what you call them, they are not the same. You cannot simply go around changing the value of money. It is a fact that $10 is worth $10, and $20 is worth $20.”
“How can you be so unsophisticated?” I replied. “Isn’t the value of money just a convention anyway? I mean, there is no objective foundation for how much one piece of paper is worth against another—they are all just pieces of paper. If it is all just a convention, I should not be bound by your arbitrary traditions.”
“Price is a number, is not a ‘convention,’ sir. It is what the thing is really worth. $20 is just what $20 is, period. You can’t change that. So you do have to pay what I say.”
“So you think these prices indicate a value independent of what people want to pay?”
“Of course! The value of money is not arbitrary! If that were the case, you could give me a penny in place of $100—if you did that, you would debase even the most valuable things. Why, money would have no meaning at all if we had to redefine it anytime someone wanted to! Sir, get real: you can’t have everything you want unless you can afford it.”
Next Line of Inquiry: “Consumer Equality”
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