The third building block for sustainable progress through the column of values is equality. In our current human world equality is claimed in many democratic systems but does not at all exist. Our world is bureaucratised and full of hierarchies of power that do not allow sustainable progress to occur. Despite the democratic theory we are slaves to dictatorial rules of finance as determined by the few power positions around the world and seconded by politics and business communities.

True equality starts at home in the family. Everyone is equal. Imagine marrying and asking your spouse kindly who will be general manager of the venture for life? I guess you’ll get weird looks and probably a rapid divorse. Then why is inequality so common around us? Why does anyone else have authority over other people?

One of the key issues in our current system that produces inequality is the fact that we are in debt with eachother. We have created a social structure around debt. We owe money to a bank when we take a credit to buy a house. The bank expects us to work for a life time to pay back the loan. If we don’t we loose our house. This generates a permanent feeling of fear and the thrust to keep going to pay off the debt.

When we work we receive a salary and government claims that this is only possible thanks to the efforts of government to produce a climate of productivity for us. Hence we have to pay tax to the government to continue to produce optimal circumstances to find work.

We pay for everything that we use or intend to use in the future. We pay for our pension, our health security and insurance against calamities. We pay for our food, our water and our fun. The colatoral for all this is our energy to play a part in the system. If we do not do this we are not allowed to share in the benefits.

Now of course there are people who perform better than others. They have more chances to claim something back. But there also very good people who happen to live in surroundings that do not provide them with optimal chances. They do not have the same opportunities as others. Think of people who live in poor or corrupt countries or regions. They tend to try to move to other regions where their options improve. These migrations are not at all of interest of the previliged who tend to feel more wrthy to wealth than the others.

Think of people who receive herritage of their hard working or lucky ancestors? They have a head start compared to yet others who may have more wit, intelligence or purpose than them but cannot perform due to lack of opportunity and equality.

Equality is key to form the basis of a progressive and sustainable community. The inequality is unjustly caused by the perception of value of what people have, not by what people are. The one who has more is more powerful. The way our current society hence is organised is to accumulate as much as one can in order to be powerful through inequality.

We see this in the hierarchies of business structures, the organization of politics in Western countries and the behavior of neighbors in the street. What we forget along the line is that inequality is the basis for distrust, individualisation, jealousy and hatred. These human negative qualities are causing wars and vulnerability of our species.

The only way to break through this lack of  equality is by accepting the giving nature of the being by attaching values to it, abolishing the having in favor of the giving. Instead of being an intelligent and dominant parasite on eachother and our surroundings we should transform in a wise and humble servant, individually, in business and politics. This sounds like a utopia but is indeed the only way to sustain a human species of the size we populate the globe today.

People claim that the competitive nature of the human species needs to be fed by power in order to create innovative progress. That is true and no one would want to change that. The only thing we would want to address is the question of what we truly consider valuable. What is wrong in the competition on sustainable progress instead of vulnerable destruction? What is wrong in punishing those who break up our future potential for selfish interests while honoring those who serve to create a better world?

The equality in the being translates in a distribution of responsibilities that can be commonly accepted and trusted as they are servant to all. This is the only and true basis in the column of values to be able to step up to the next level: trust.