copypasta

I saw this infuriating meme again in 2024 so I will put down a response in case anybody will see this late reply. My answer would be no, at least probably not under the assumption of an evil guy in relation to capital exploitation and consequent violence. Of course ontology means different thing across different areas of study, so if you're speaking theologically then sure idk whatever. But when talking a aspects of social science: society, class, race, or things in relation to being in those things like capital or when people say "black and brown bodies" (a term often butchered) then you have to, bare minimum, separate the job of "nestle executive" (relating to class and capital) and the individual. IIRC I think the easiest and common example to approach ontology might be indentured servants vs slavery in the Caribbeans during the slave trade. Despite these 2 classes being treated similarly in labour on the surface, the important aspect of their difference is that indentured servant receives some pennies and the slave, none. This minute difference cyclically reinforces and shapes the difference of the slave class, in this case reinforcing+shaping the very big ontological difference of how the slave is (not my words of course) lesser than human (this already existed obv, but now another additional reinforcing reality being created), and the indentured servant still human. From a modern perspective we might be tempted to think "then wouldnt they be pretty similar?", but from within that world it would bethat they can only be closer, the difference of that one penny and zero is an infinite, unpassable, boundary. The ontology would be all that encapsulates the essence of being something and in many cases that something might be purposefully related to a physical attribute but it doesn't necessarily have to actually be that attribute itself. For example, again in the caribbean during slave trade. Does being an African mean you are a slave? No, never, absolutely not. But in some point of that slave-trading society, somehow the truth was Yes, absolutely within that world. It might be said that the understanding of ontology is used as a tool to understand and study things while giving proper context to these "truths". A indentured servant or a slave isn't gonna just stand up and be like "hey I'm free now" out of nowhere at least, as these "truths" are ingrained into everyone and everything in that society. Someone thinking shallowly might say like "isn't that just the same as social construct" or whatever and yes these also fall under the vague definition of social construct. But the focus of this is that because these ideas are "true" within that society, this kind of subliminally (probably not the best term to describe but im tired) influences the production of knowledge, of how people understand and, in some ways, literally see the world and consequentially everything that they do as well. Like when people talk about looking at a chair, but its just a thing that you're deciding whether or not to assign the concept of a chair on without much conscious thought, there's an entire "real" imagined social world that we see in everything. The ontologies lie in that imagined yet real world attached to the physical one. So probably no if you're talking from a social philosophical perspective about the nature of a violent money grubbing individual which I think most people are imagining. For the reason that its just that guy that sucks, maybe even all of them drawn into that position suck, but it's not by some unique and immutable position of social existence the guy inhabits that makes him such a way. is he evil? yes. Is he ontologically evil? no, not necessarily.