424. Equality

Now a long essay in the New Yorker (1-7-19) about an eminent philosopher who "has built a case, elaborated across decades, that equality is the basis for a free society."  And my wife said long ago — trailed by me — that the concept of equality is a perfect example of a non-starter.

Take any situation where knowledge gives a better outcome than ignorance.  For drama let's make it a dangerous situation, like in a storm at sea or on the edge of a high mountain.  Put a group of people in it.   They are not all going to be equally knowledgeable.  The one who knows best how to get to harbor or down from the mountain will be — what shall we call him or her?  The boss?  The chief?  In any case we recognize a superior and destroy any notion of equality as something to strive for, an ideal.

To broaden the destruction substitute for "knowledgeable" and "ignorant" any pair of terms that identify human traits that influence outcomes — realistic-idealistic, decisive-deliberative, warm-hearted, cold-minded.  Whenever we assess their influence and fit to the occasion and find them pre-eminent in one person we give up on equality.

"Whenever."  Whenever not?  Isn't the major part of our lives, we goal-oriented people, choosing and following the best means to our ends?  And since none of us is omniscient and very few of us are collections of the equally knowledgeable that will mean following a superior.

In a very small part of our lives will we have the freedom —freedom from the link between ends and means — to claim equality.  And unless we define and limit that part very carefully ("Here we must take 'created equal' to mean 'without assignment to nobility or royalty by birth") we are going to be thrown into confusion.  By our bad start  with a basically incoherent concept.