Practical Utopias

Equality and Achievement in Humanity

by Steven Saus

It's classic Socrates. Take a common - but important - word like "courage", and attempt to define it. It won't take long until the hemlock-sipping sage has shown the inconsistencies in your statements, and you're left wondering why the smart guy's getting executed. Words such as equality are especially hard to protect from such arguments. Equality is used in such a wide range of situations that determining a universal definition is fiendishly difficult. Even in its most amorphous state, equality encompasses at least two axes - equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Many ideologies have attempted to define equality - and all have significant shortcomings. While we can learn from their failures, we cannot simply adopt any single ideologies' view.

The primary element of equality - though not its synonym - is fairness. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff has demonstrated that human concepts of fairness are closely related to our concepts of economic transactions. This tie to economics gives us a tangible handle with which to begin examining equality.

It is through economic reasoning that we see the logical trap of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. In that society, equality is reckoned by using the term in its literal, mathematical sense. Such a view is patently ludicrous; no two people are completely identical. However, two dissimilar items can have an identical value. Equal worth is not the same as equal substance. A can of soda and 1/5 of a gallon of gas are very dissimilar, but have approximately the same value.

Recognizing that we speak of equal value resolves many difficulties instantly. A simple example: a doctor's office requires a doctor, nurse, receptionist, and janitor. Removing any of these positions will cause the entire office to fail in short order. As a finite set, they are all of equal value in the operation of the office, despite the wide range of skills and experience.

So far in this quasi-Cartesian thought experiment, we have determined that equality encompasses fairness and refers to value rather than substance. Much ideological grandstanding is driven by how we determine the worth of an individual. Neither "nature" or "nurture", or any other ideology gives a satisfactory answer. To avoid their pitfalls, we must sketch out an independent model of human worth that acknowledges both actual and potential conditions.

All humans have inherent value, both in concrete and immaterial goods. The components of a human body have considerable value of themselves. Immaterially, each human individual has an independent and diverse point of view - which is inherently good for a modern society ¹. Finally, there are the potential achievements of each individual, which cannot be predicted or assessed.

In non-economic situations, such as the judicial system, this is enough. Even ideologies tend to agree on this point. Since all humans have the same inherent value, they should all receive the same treatment by the system. This, unfortunately, is not sufficient to address inequality of outcome in economic and social systems. Pure mathematical equality of outcome is inherently flawed, as illustrated in Harrison Bergeron. However, we can still draw two general conclusions. There must be a socially supported lower bound of outcome reflecting an individual's non-zero worth. Secondly, in societies with scarcity the existence of a lower boundary dictates the existence of an upper boundary. Yet there is still massive variation within these bounds.

Determining human worth simply by the outcome achieved in our current society is confounded by the existence of "luck" - that is, the influence of elements beyond our control. These uncontrolled elements, demonstrated most effectively by the Great Depression, put the lie to the simplicity of the Horatio Alger² myth that dominates American culture today. The traditional alternative to the Alger mythology has been to seemingly concentrate on equality of opportunity. This approach has historically carried two major flaws. Assessing inequality of opportunity has often been attempted by measuring and adjusting an easily quantifiable standard: equality of outcome. This approach creates further injustice by ignoring merit while allowing the underlying inequality of opportunity to continue. The second flaw is the presumption that all individuals are equal - in the mathematical sense. This, again, is simply folly. The challenge is to determine a just way of providing equality of opportunity with as little injustice as possible to the rest of society, recognizing both existing inequality of opportunity and the differences between individuals. To do so we must create a model of human worth by briefly assessing the characteristics of humans that lead to differing outcomes.

Humans have primary characteristics that are biological in origin. This includes such physical things as pigmentation, predisposition to heart attacks, eidetic memory, gender, manual dexterity, adult height, and ease of building muscle mass. Physical primary characteristics are frequently latent, requiring training or environmental conditions to cause them to manifest. Primary characteristics also include mental characteristics and ideas that are biological in origin. These instinctual memes³frequently manifest in complex ways, e.g. the manipulation of our reproductive urge by Victoria's Secret advertisements, or our tribal instincts manifesting as nationalism or classism. The defining element of primary characteristics is their internal biological origin.

Secondary characteristics primarily exist in the internal world of ideas, consisting of learned skills and mental states. Learned skills refer to a broad range of tasks, from sitting upright to performing brain surgery. Internalized mental states refer to mental aids or obstacles to fulfillment that are self-enforced. For example, a woman who internalized the meme "A woman's place is in the home" would have significant resistance to achieving goals outside the home even if external social reinforcers are no longer present. These mental states include broad classes of memes such as "motivation" and "self-confidence". Secondary characteristics do not correlate to any category in the "nature vs. nurture" debate. Like "nurture", secondary characteristics are variable after birth, but like "nature", they are a wholly internal process.

Tertiary characteristics are those external to the individual, but that affect their success. If all other things were equal, a child placed in a substandard school would have more difficulty succeeding than a child who had all the tools for success available. Stressed home environments, adequate food, shelter, and safety are other examples of tertiary characteristics. These correspond roughly to the concept of "nurture" or "environment".

None of these sets of characteristics exists in a vacuum; there is significant interaction between all three. Humans learn internal mental states (secondary characteristics) from their peers and superiors (tertiary characteristics). Our physical development (primary characteristic) has a strong correlation with diet and environment (tertiary characteristics). These are only a few examples; although each set of characteristics has relatively few variables, the possible outcomes from different combinations are nearly infinite.

This model of human worth - or achievement⁴ - includes and surpasses the naivety of both the nature and nurture concepts. It allows us to see the role that the individual human mind has in the process. It allows us to see that only the tertiary characteristics can be directly influenced by others. Finally, it allows us to account for a range of outcomes, and can serve as a guide in determining how to best create equality of opportunity with minimal damage to equality of outcome.

The specifics of such implementation are far beyond the scope of this paper, yet we can still sketch an outline of its benefits and its dangers.

The maximization of human potential - and the potential of society - can only be achieved by allowing all individuals to have the best opportunity to succeed within the limits of their primary characteristics. Quantifying primary characteristics must be determined individually, rationally, and impartially.⁵ This allows resources to be effectively utilized to allow each individual the ability to maximize themselves with minimal impact on others, regardless of the tertiary characteristics one finds themselves in.

There is a danger to this "better world". Such a degree of information gathering and control was attempted (albeit poorly) in the USSR. Instead of increasing efficiency, both individual fulfillment and societal efficiency decreased. Further, this concept contains the possibility of a Brave New World, where meritocracy becomes entrenched in class warfare.

There are several obstacles to such totalitarian visions of the future. The first - and perhaps most important - is contained within our initial inquiry regarding human worth: All humans have an inherent, positive, and equal value. Maintaining this standard apart from our consideration of economic systems results in a system where the life of its chief executive is of the same value as its lowest citizen. Such a society - with true equality under the law - would help to forestall a totalitarian or authoritarian government. Applying this standard to economic systems also provides a system where all should have the necessities of life. In such a system, depriving others to achieve excess individual gain - as happened with the nomeklatura in the USSR – is an evil afflicting both the deprived citizens and the society as a whole.

This entire framework is based upon a rational viewpoint. To adopt this framework would require a re-emphasis on ways of thinking and critical self-analysis, rather than prizing the rote memorization of factual data. Totalitarianism appears to arise from a drift within a set of ideas when self-reflection and critical evaluation cease. Emphasizing critical self-evaluation and encouraging it among the citizenry reduces the likelihood of a totalitarian regime. An emphasis tying liberty to responsibility will further to prevent the meddling specter of totalitarianism while engendering a socially beneficial viewpoint. Through this variety of education - and by teaching how to learn - the reins of government could be lessened, moving us towards an enlightened libertarianism or anarchist system. This leads us to consider: Could one ease the restrictive and enforcing aspects of government without a descent into chaos?