I’ve talked before about nonsensical ideas we repeat as mantra – “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me” and “Time heals all wounds” are two of them. There’s another one, an American favourite, floated on momentous occasions: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” Okay, the verbiage is impressive, dignified and stirring, but unless you’re a hermit in a cave in Afghanistan, you see every day how hypocritical a statement that is. An Englishman, whose name eludes me, put it nicely: “Americans hold to the proposition that all men are created equal; it had better be self-evident, for no other evidence for it exists.”
Indeed, although there are few challenges to the proposition – except perhaps from Martin Luther King or Jesse Jackson – it jumps up in our faces, every single day, how blatantly hollow those high-sounding words are. Much of what we have come to know about mankind, either empirically or anecdotally, reinforces more and more the unique qualities of each individual and refutes the contention of equality.
If you think all of us are created equal, get a good quality stereo and play a recording, any recording, of Andrea Bocelli, or play the
