Equality

 

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A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

I am older now but I wish I was younger.  What is equality?

The Microsoft Word Thesaurus lists the synonyms for equality as: parity, fairness, equivalence, likeness, impartiality, etc. And this highlights the problem with equality. Equality IS ALWAYS fairness and impartiality. Equality IS NOT ALWAYS likeness and equivalence. It is easy to treat those that are identical to me with fairness. It is much harder to treat those who are unlike me with fairness.

Which begs the questions, what is fairness? That same thesaurus lists the symptoms for fairness, not including equality, as: justice, impartiality, objectivity, etc. Which means that equality is not having your thumb on the scale of justice, letting things truly be random. Being fair is being objective and impartial and NOT favoring one outcome over another. Justice is not the Law. The Law should reflect Justice, but that Law is not perfect, and we can change the Law. We can not change Justice. It is an absolute. We can aspire to absolutes, but we can not be absolutes. A normal distribution of a group, i.e. a fair distribution, has a mean and a standard deviation from that mean. An absolute has a standard deviation of zero by definition. But humans are members of a group. As such, we are individuals, not absolutes. A standard uniform normal distribution of a group has a standard deviation of 1, not 0. Equality is accepting that fact and not insisting that everyone be like you, have a standard deviation of 0 from you

Equality is everyone sharing the same starting line, and letting true randomness govern the outcome. That is why jockeys in a horse race, or boxers in a match, have weigh-ins. It is why in golf there are handicaps, and why in chess there are rankings. If you beat an unequal opponent that is NOT a reason to celebrate. If you have to take actions to ensure that your opponent is equal, then that will be a victory to celebrate. Sometimes that may involve tying your hand behind your back, sometimes that may involve untying your opponents’ hands.