Saturday, March 03, 2018

Equality

Equality is one of those virtues so esteemed that we seem not to care that our conception of it is totally contrary to our experience. It has assumed sort of a free-form righteousness that anything other than unthinking deference to it is scandalous.
Equality is of course something, and our western tradition is that it is something desirable. (“…did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” [Phil 2:6]; Liberté,Égalité, Fraternité; and “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.”) But the concept enjoys much greater esteem in slogans than in practice. Evolutionary biology is possible precisely because individual organisms are not equal. The field of metrology exists only because things are unequal, and in fact the only reason to measure and rank things is because they are unequal. The number of ways that humans are unequal to each other are too numerous to list, or even contemplate. Individuality is a consequence of inequality in certain characteristics. "All animals are equal" of course, but some are more equal than others.This witticism would not resonate if the political concept of equality did not carry its own inherent contradictions.
Equality is the very rare exception to the natural rule; yet when it comes time to criticize social and political institutions, confuse sentiment with thought, and look for a cudgel with which to bludgeon social order, equality vaults to the top of the list of virtues. When the reality of inherent inequality makes us tongue tied and confused, we regain our bearings by talking about fairness.
None of this is to say that equality, in those interstices where it is actually found or seriously pursued, is bad or foolish, but those instances are limited. Religious traditions at least postulate an equality that makes sense: that humans are equal in the eyes of God. All persons are endowed with equal human dignity until they relinquish it by their choices.The legal concept that all persons are equal before the law can at least be given the benefit of the doubt. Beyond this, reality demands consideration. People are not biologically equal. They are not equal with respect to fortune and misfortune; they are not economically equal. They are, in general, not equal in any way that can be remedied by social engineering, government meddling or use of force. Decent people and wise governments treat people equally, all else being, well… equal, but they do not make people equal. The moral is that it is not equality itself that it the virtue, it is the way we freely treat each other that is. That is what we should really care about, not how we measure it, not how we enforce it, not how we codify it, but simply how we do it when no one is watching.

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