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3b. More on Equality
In my previous post I introduced the general concept of equality as the next key level in the column of values after “identity” and “safety”. This subject is too important to just leave at a general statement. We have to dig deeper and make it personal. We perceive the world as one big mass of different people. People who look different, people who behave different and people who have different power positions. We have men, women, children, disabled, elderly people, etc. How can everyone be equal? Or more importantly: How can I be equal to everyone else?
To answer that we have go back to the “identity” and purpose in life. When you look in the mirror what do you see? You see an individual who has been blessed with the miracle of life by birth and the challenge to make the best of it. Do you see anyone else in that mirror? Do you see a boss? A wife or husband? A prime minister? Or doctor or priest? A parent?
You may see such qualification only if it can be connected to your identity, i.e. if you ARE a doctor or prime minister or wife, or whatever. You certainly see no other person standing next to you to tell you what you have to do, how you should behave or who gives you what you need. You see just you, your living self, with all the goodies and the badies you may attach to it, but in essence that what you see is all you have to live the adventure of life.
Do you really think that anyone else who looks at him or herself in the mirror sees something else? No, of course not. When one looks and sees a profession does that have anything to do with the living creature that stares back at you from that mirror? No, not at all. The individual is the same as anyone else. Equality!
When do differences occur that may challenge that equality? They occur when the individual starts addressing the ability to live a life from the perception of doing it with a PURPOSE. Purpose is a drive that takes you away from that mirror and start interacting with your surroundings. People may all have a different personal purpose in life which in itself is again a huge challenge for the individual as well as for those with whom one interacts.
Here I refer again to the basic 3 x 8, the three basic responsibilities in life of every individual on earth as explained in one of my previous blogs. In this we see that personal survival is of course the key condition for a sustainable individual life. Survival does not only mean that one cares for one’s safety but also health and vitality. In animal life the unhealthy and unvital are easy prey for preditors. In the human world this is not much different despite the social care system in rich regions around the weaker people of a community. This can be a topic for another post.
In certain moments of a life survival could be the sole purpose of an individual. In such situation one depends on oneself and the assistance of others who share the same objective. No differences are perceived as the higher purpose is clear to everyone. Only that counts and the competences of each to make it happen. When a group makes better survival chances than the individual the choice for all involved will be clear.
When physical security and survival is not an issue we see that other purpose drives appear. And that is where the complexity starts as we are asked to distinguish between the morality of the purpose that we persue or our personal greed. How greedy or selfish is survival? And how greedy or selfish is the accumulation of wealth at the expense of someone else? How can you justify immorality? And why would anyone be better or more important than anyone else simply by having more or showing more greed?
The constant reflexion between the moral (to be) and material (to do) complexity is a given for a prosporous welfare society based on sustainable progress (see diagram).
The column of values starts with self awareness in the center of the picture of the complexities. Self awareness is the very first step to the acceptance of one’s own unique identity among all the possible other human identities that surround us. Our identity is equal by birth. And equal by spiritual and carnal significance. If we create inequality it is imposed by others and accepted by us. On the other hand, if we feel unique, at the center of our own universe equality is beyond dispute. Inequality may be achieved by our particular behaviour challenging our spiritual, intellectual and relational morality.
It must be clear that equality in this deepest sense of human identity and meaningful existance does not distinguish in sexe, culture or religion. Everyone is equal in uniqueness. Any posible perceived inequality is a human invention and hence disputable by humanity.
So whatever the complexity of our surroundings the sense of equality is one that is derived from our own sense of identity, self awareness and purpose in life. The one who feels equal never will have to fear anyone or anything. This sense of personal security is key to feel equal from within and never look up or down at anyone else. The sense of purpose will allow the individual to conduct a voyage in life guided by self awareness and the equivalent evolution of morality to connect with others in pursuit of a meaningful life.
People who reach this point will define meaning into a servant attitude feeling truly liberated from a sense of competition. The modern meaningful higher purpose will always be the drive to leave behind a better world than one found upon birth. Anything else would challenge the column of values and hence our genuin identity as unique, meaningful, purpose driven member of the human species in sustainable evolution within our universe.
That then become the basis of the next layer of the column of values: Trust.
3. Equality
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.
2. No sustainable society without safety
The second key building block in the column of values is “safety”. Safety is a very broad subject that involves not just the physical but also spiritual aspects of security along the line of sustainable progress.
Very clear is the situation in Japan or Libya these days when the physical integrity of the population cannot be guaranteed due to the sum of natural disasters or the failure of human made systems. When one is in danger the very first thing that occurs is the attempt to save one self, the identity we spoke about before. Every one is on its own.
Only when the danger disappears one can think of working again along the line of creating a society and develop organizational complexities. Still, in times of physical danger we see people helping eachother. This is obvious in Lybia were people have suffered the man made dictatorship for many decades and manage to overcome their fear by joining forces along a vision of a new future. What is really happening is that the individuals break loose from the situation of total lack of individual identity with the regime of a dictator and stand up to show that they have universal rights. They first discover that they “are” and find relative safety in the brotherhood of those who think alike and are willing to fight for their identity.
In a modern society without the dictatorship or natural disasters the danger will not mainly be on a physical level, despite of course the problems of criminality and traffic accidents that occur in such countries. The problems reside much more in the spiritual safety. We refer her to the psychological, mental and behavioral integrity of the population. If one is safe to have an opinion, freedom of speech, to be self sufficient and creative, the society will be able to progress. On the other hand, if the population is deprived from individual identity due to accessive care and external securities it will become lazy, uninterested and eventually little productive.
For a physically safe society it is a challenge to see how far one needs to go with the creation of social welfare programs and what pressure remains on the population for self sufficiency. Creativity is highest when people feel safe and motivated or a need, either by dissatisfaction of sense of desired progress. It needs room for inspiration to florish. Progress is achieved by applying learning with purpose driven experimentation. Within this word “purpose” we find the secrete of a stable or unstable organization or society.
If the purpose is defined around money or what ever material system of having, the community will grow identity less and with the continuous fear of loosing out on chances. The individuals and government will experience the feeling of lack of security and safety as they develop a sense of greed out of fear of shortage. We see this in Western society all the time where fear is related to all the problems that society faces around child care, elderly care, infrastructure, housing, whatever. It is a fear driven society that cannot possibly live up to sustainable speculations as it is not capable to see the abundance it gathers but focusses on the chance of losing it all.
If purpose is defined on higher goals than a society develops a sense of security to be able to deal with everything that arises. The higher goals that are defined are seen as challenges that bind people around the common purpose. Purpose driven societies donot compare with others but look forward with the drive to improve continously. In such community money is never a goal, nor is external forms of security and glamour. They concentrate on sustainable happiness, togetherness, warmth, safety, health, vitality, love, etc. People in such societies only see opportunities, chances for progress and the desire to work for it.
So safety, in a physical and psychological/spiritual sense is the key, on top of authentic purpose driven identities, to progress in a sustainable way. Only then we can go to the next step in the column: equality.
