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And what is equality?

Updated: Jun 20, 2020

The other day I attended an online event about quality, asking if equality is even possible.


It was fairly good timing as the first chapter in the Peter Singer book I have on my reading list (Practical Ethics) was on that topic. Singer doesn't say whether he believes equality is possible, but he does say that equal treatment should not be dependent, fairly uncontroversially, on race, gender, sexual preference, intelligence, moral reasoning capacity and so on. He offers a guiding principle for the equal consideration of interests (needs, desires and wants) that one should give equal weight in moral deliberations to the like interests of all affected by one's actions. the addition of the word 'like' is relevant: if X stands to lose more than Y is to gain by something, then it is better not to do the action. Essentially one has no basis to determine action because the interests of X matter more to one than the interests of Y.


His position is pretty nuanced and takes into account the particular needs of individuals: if X has suffered a broken leg, Y has a gash on the thigh and the doctor has just two shots of morphine, for example, it is better to give both to X and none to Y rather than claim that an equal distribution is the rule.


What all this does is to underline that a system of ethics has to be considered, it can't just be about laws. It has to be based in reason, rather than emotional biases. He does not discount emotion - a powerful sense of outrage can illuminate a real act of injustice and fuel action to counter it, but emotion has to work in alignment with reason.


The situation is complicated, of course. How can one ensure equal opportunities, let alone equal outcomes, when certain people have suffered from bad schooling or difficult parenting? When some have inherited extreme intelligence along with high levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness combined with low levels of neuroticism? What about if one's parents are well-connected? What about if one prefers to work as a gardener despite having all the qualities that would make her a brilliant corporate lawyer?


Marx promoted the concept of from all according to his ability, to all according to his needs. Which sounds wonderful. But so far the socialist experiment hasn't worked. Though professionals were far better off than workers in communist states, they knew they'd be better off still in the West. So emigration was restricted and in some places and times guards at the borders operated on a shoot to kill policy. Do we want to live in a prison? Or what if the whole world operated on that basis, if a system could be found that did work?


Singer says that private enterprise and private greed would always find a way. He is far from an idealist. And so a certain amount of inequality seems inevitable, if you take his view of human nature, which - despite Rutger Bregman's best efforts - is hard to discount.


I haven't read Bregman's new book, Human Kind: A Hopeful History, yet, so my criticism should not been taken too seriously. However, yesterday I listened to him converse with Steven Pinker on the Panpsycast podcast. Bregman was saying that there were no wars before hunter-gatherers started to settle down; Pinker said, that's far from evidenced in the fossil record. But let's say that for 265,000 years humans didn't fight wars. Then they start settling down - this is before agriculture - say 35,000 years ago - the blink of an eye in the lifespan of the species - and that is what poisons their lovely Rousseau-ian egalitarian natures and leads to lives that are a Hobbesian nightmare, nasty, brutish and short. Right. So where does that leave us? That we are quite pleasant if allowed to live in tiny groups roaming Africa? But as soon as we have a roof over our heads, forget about it? How is this meant to be encouraging in a vastly populated world where most of us live in large communities?


Besides which, just because there was no warfare, it doesn't mean there was no killing. We've seen from Christopher Boehm that those, yes, egalitarian, nomad groups were not exactly idyllic. I mean, sure, Donald J, Trump would not, it seems, have got very far, but perhaps someone just a wee bit eccentric would be ostracised too. And in hard times, well, it was definitely not a case of one for all and all for one.


I've expressed my concerns about the morality of those small tribal groups, with the shame and blame ethos, so I won't rehash all that. Though maybe Bregman would feel some shaming and blaming of the mega-rich would not go amiss. And maybe there's some validity in such a claim.


Anyway, in the online group, few seemed to share his positive view of human nature - mind you, none had yet read his book, perhaps we'll all be persuaded. The evidence was sketchy and anecdotal and, in all honesty, not strictly relevant, but suitably dispiriting nonetheless. 20,000 people queuing to get into IKEA when it opened (supporting, maybe, Sweden's different handling of the pandemic? I doubt it); queues for MacDonald's and the feeling that we're doing something morally beneficial by applauding NHS and frontline workers when, in reality, what they really need is better pay and conditions - and are we willing to pay for that if it means foregoing a new settee or twenty double cheeseburgers with fries?


So, they asked one another, will the world be better after the pandemic? Will we recall smiling at our neighbours from a safe distance, or rush off to buy, buy, buy? Will we have new value for shop assistants, or treat them again with disinterest? Will we stop supporting from Amazon? And Kindle and Audible! Will we consider how badly the poor and deprived in our societies have suffered and will suffer both through the virus itself and through the economic shutdown, while the relatively financially secure come through moderately well, and thus fight for their rights? Will the homeless, who've been homed during the pandemic, be turfed back out onto the streets?


Me, I don't believe things just happen. There needs to be more that general and evanescent feeling. There need to be exemplars and leaders. I believe that the time is ripe, could be ripe, for those with a message of solidarity for the workers and the poor, with a message of community feeling and greater compassion, to try to mobilise those reactions through a well-considered and rationally determined campaign of new policy goals. I believe that were there people capable of forming a movement based on ethical values, they could take the public mood by the scruff of the neck and make the world better. But I fear that no one is ready - no one has that plan - not as a group. There are small organisations and there are the main political parties, who will wrest the narrative from the hands of the more ethically spirited and use it to further their own ends.


It is a shame that no alternative movement to national populism had been waiting in the wings. Now would have been the time to come onto centre stage.


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