Equality

 Wow what a loaded word when one thinks of how it is used - in a mathematical meaning it means “a symbolic expression of the fact that two quantities are equal; an equation.” That is to say the two sides of the equation are the same . The meaning in philosophical terms is different “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities.”

Herein is the paradox that most people cannot compute - social status would be equal in a mathematical way if the rights and the opportunities were the same . That is to say if two individuals had the absolute same starting point and were allowed to grow with the same rights and opportunities and made the same decisions then the outcome of that equation would always be the same i.e they would be mathematical equals 

The life of two people doesn’t resemble a mathematical simultaneous equation where the outcome would be the same - the equations differ because of the choices one makes and the cognitive bias that governs the choice. 

I cannot be the equal of someone who is physically an athlete.. I would never run a sub 12 second 100mtr dash and I know it . But in terms of opportunities that person and me should have had the same options . I chose to be less athletic than him/her . Then how does one compute this inequality in terms of a mathematical equation ?  People don’t and that is the problem with the word and how people understand it. An abstract idea of opportunities is far difficult to understand as compared to simple math 1 + 1 = 2 . 

Human ..scratch that Life rights would mean that all living things have an equal opportunity to die a natural death. However humans are still meat eaters and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. 

I digress back to human equality. The news these days is full of “x or y life matter” and rightly so especially if you consider that the starting points were not the same;  the reality is that affirmative action is needed to overcome the injustice of history and that the affirmative action has also to be time bound . If for example the affirmative actions are allowed to continue in perpetuity then the imbalance will be created again . But these are things that governments are supposed to do and make corrections to policy at the right times. 

What about the average individual- is it possible to overcome cognitive bias and truly believe that someone else could be your equal? It’s not a simple mathematical equation as there is the abstract idea of opportunities and choices that complicates the equation. The majority of people don’t understand the complexity or chose to ignore it. So while they might believe in equality they could have an attitude that could easily be termed as privileged , narcissistic or elitist. So difficult is this concept of opportunities and choice that the concept gave birth to entire political movements of democracy and communism. Where one affords the individual the freedom of choice with equal opportunity and the other eliminates the choice all together while maintaining the opportunity. 

I know I try - might be unsuccessful too at times when my bias shows . But it would be a better world if we could suspend bias due to colour, creed, cast , country etc. and truly believe that he /she is “me” just in different circumstances . My own philosophy constructed after years of reading ( philosophical, scripture, political, physiological texts) and observing points to this. 

For us to survive we have to get rid of old dogmas and truly believe that we are equal ... if we tend to see and observe the difference we need to remember the difference is due to choices made in the past and that the choices made in history are not necessarily right. Everyone should have the same opportunities and the same treatment 

C