Don't you think that "quality" is an odd word to use for that? I make no apologies for responding to the connotations of a word in context as well as its literal meaning.
My suspicion is that there is a correlation between self-esteem and ones comfort with the word "quality" when applied to people. I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person", so I have no problem with the term. If I was insecure and didn't think of myself as a person of quality, then I might have an issue with the concept.
> I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person"
But then, presumably you wouldn't respect their judgment if they didn't :)
Indeed, but that's the point, isn't it?
>the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society,
The idea that all people have equal rights is deeply ingrained, but I've never met anyone who actually thought that everyone was equal in a dumb, literal sense; that's just a straw man.
No, I meant even more literally--the idea that some people are fundamentally higher or lower quality, that some people have more worth as a human being than others.
Seriously though, the reason describing people as being "high quality" or "low quality" sounds jarring is because on a very fundamental level, it sounds like we're judging people, and judging people is taboo.
No, it wouldn't make you worth any more. To make this more concrete, are you seriously suggesting that given the choice between saving the life of someone with bad skin and saving the life of an otherwise identical person with good skin, you could cite skin quality as your justification for choosing to save the one over the other? Clearly, the dilemma in this case would be just as acute as in a case where you had a choice between saving one or other of two precisely equal people -- it would be grotesque to suggest that skin quality could act as a tie-breaker in such cases.
I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues. (Of course, you can weight their qualities if you like, and you can sum the results if you want to, but the result will serve only as a measure of your callousness.)
Having to choose between any two people in that situation would be difficult. This is getting rather far afield, though.
"I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues."
If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention. Would you suggest a better way of judging people?
No it isn't. It's directly addressing your claim that good skin makes a person worth more. If you really believed that, you would not find your choice in that situation to be difficult at all.
I think that your claim is just hard-headed posing. You don't really believe any such thing, but for some reason you seem to think that you ought to believe it, or that professing to believe it makes you sound objective and rational. It doesn't; it makes you sound crazy.
>If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention.
The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that.
It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.
"The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that."
No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".
Ok, so then I direct you to what I was saying originally:
"the OP has 'good skin' as one of his indicators of quality -- he's clearly not talking about quality in a deep sense, unless you think that having good skin makes you worth more as a human being!"
If you've changed your mind on the issue of good skin adding to a person's worth, then perhaps you'll now agree with me on this point.
>No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".
Not in my experience. I hear people judging others all the time without being called out on it.
However, people are not equal in the gifts they've been given.
But, I agree with your fundamental point. True relationships aren't based on our external qualities, but on the soul. Today's evolutionary stupidity completely blinds many to deeper relationships.