An Age-Old Story

As everyone knows, or by now ought to know, the only possible explanation of differing outcomes between groups is prejudice, privilege, and oppression by those groups with more favorable outcomes. It follows that the only solution to the anomaly of differential outcomes, and the restoration of the primordial equality that is natural to mankind, is restitution, compensation, expropriation, positive discrimination, etc.

One of the most startling differentials, of course, is that between men and women. It is surely time for it to be redressed.

For example, I was reading in Le Figaro only yesterday that nearly 58 percent of deaths from Covid in France were of men, and only 42 percent of women. This only brings into sharp relief a fundamental injustice that has gone unaddressed for decades, indeed has been largely unnoticed, namely the fact that women live, on average, several years longer than men. For example, women live just over three and a half years longer in Britain than men; in the U.S., the difference is five years; in France, six; in Russia, ten. Overall in the world, men were the victims of 73 percent of fatal road accidents and 78 percent of homicides.

What is to be done about these truly shocking statistics? As we all agree, equality is one of the most precious, if not the most precious, of all political values, for there can be no justice without it.

Let us take homicide as an example. In only two countries, Switzerland and Hong Kong, is the desirable goal of equality of victimhood reached. How have they reached this elevated level of civilization, that is to say a just, fair, and equal distribution of the murdered? I confess that I do not have the answer, and I doubt that anyone else has it either. Could there be a more appropriate subject for an international commission of inquiry? Once it had reached its conclusions, other countries could institute homicide awareness training, to ensure that murderers, or potential murderers, were aware of the social justice implications of their acts.

Of course, achieving equality will not be easy: We shall have to guard against overcorrection, which would be equally unjust. But it must be frankly admitted that it is easier to increase the numbers of homicides than to reduce them, so that, regrettably, if the ultimate goal of equality is to be reached, it may be necessary… Well, I leave it to the reader to draw the conclusion.

But even if the numbers of deaths by homicide and road accidents could be equalized, it would only go a very small way to equalizing the life expectancy of men and women. This is because, regrettable as every fatal road accident and homicide is, such deaths account for only a very small proportion of all deaths, for example in Britain about 2,400 a year in total, whereas the annual number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases is approximately 170,000. A drop, so to speak, in the kicking of the bucket.

Clearly something more drastic needs to be done. Again, it is easier, or would take less effort and expense, to reduce life expectancy than to increase it. The causes of death are cheap, the means to save life expensive, at least in these times when, notwithstanding the Covid epidemic, widespread infectious disease—the main killer of the past—has been largely overcome.

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