Equal considered harmful
Software Engineers spend a large portion of their time debugging software. One source of bugs is the misunderstanding of some nuanced instructions. Think of how an oxford comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence. One of these hard-to-understand concepts is equality*. On the surface it looks simple. If x = 5 and y = 5 then x is equal to y. It turns out that it’s more complicated. Are two copies of a painting equal? Well they represent the same idea, but they’re different copies, with their own histories. One might have a manufacturing defect the other one doesn’t. Hence x and y might not be equal. Equality always has to be defined.
Equality is hard to define. This also applies to society. Whether it is equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, or equality of condition, I still have to hear a definition that doesn’t contradict itself. equality of opportunity and equality of outcome don’t define when opportunity/outcome happen? At what age do we measure equality? Our current society requires very specialized skillsets. Are a trucker and a software engineer both making $80,000/y equal? Their income is the same but their lives couldn’t be more different. What about equality of condition? If we’re going to have different lives, how can we ever be equal?
Equality is impossible to achieve. Life is so multi-faceted that making all the facets equal for everyone is impossible. We can’t have the same families. We don’t have the same bodies. We can’t all live in the same house. We can’t all spend our time in the same way. A weaker definition of equality would be to find a function V, computing the value of all of these facets of life and try to equal V(life) for everyone. Yet, even that is impossible. We don’t all value everything the same. Some people like the beach, others the mountains. Since it’s impossible to define, it’s impossible to achieve.
Equality is dangerous to try. The foundation of communism was equality. Let’s not forget the crimes against humanity committed in the name of equality. Since you can’t make intellectuals average, Stalin and Mao just killed them. Anyone wanting to stand out, killed. Anyone opposed to the party, killed. Maybe that’s the only way to achieve equality? Kill everyone. Let’s not do that. Equality is dangerous to try.
All hope is not lost. Highly unequal societies aren’t stable either. But let’s not aim for something unachievable, that has proven to cause so much pain. Smoothening differences seems like a smarter goal. It doesn’t imply that we should all have the same lives. Nor that we should all make the same choices. It does mean that we should help people not let themselves be defined by their demographics. That everyone should be given a fair shot at the fullest realization of themselves. Not totally disconnected from their group identities but not totally defined by them. It can be defined, it possible to achieve, and isn’t dangerous to try.
* For those interested, here is a typical java tutorial explaining the difference between value and reference equality. Difference between comparing String using == and .equals() method in Java — GeeksforGeeks
