ASPECTS OF EQUALITY

George Orwell writes somewhere about an incident during his time in the Burma police.  A British plantation owner, while drunk, had run over and killed a Burmese peasant.

     The District Commissioner (or equivalent) – new to the post – seemed disposed to find the driver guilty.  The DC was duly taken to one side, and the rules were explained to him.  A Briton could not be found guilty against a Burmese: only against another Briton. (For that matter, a plantation owner could not be found guilty against a peasant).   The DC, unable to accept the logic of this, was quickly moved on.  (Or out; I can’t remember which).

     I can understand the ideal – however difficult to achieve in practice – of equality before the law.  I can see that a verdict ought to depend on the facts of the case, rather than on who or what you are.  (Thomas More made himself unpopular by judging a case on its merits, and by his refusal to accept a bribe to influence the result.)

     Equality-wise, education is rather more problematic than law.  Suppose there are twenty candidates for ten places at a top university, and they compete against one another in open competition.  On the face of it, the ten with the highest scores ought to get the places: otherwise, what is the point of the examination?   It would be unfair to say that although you came eighth, you must give up your place to the candidate who came twelfth because he is the son of a city banker and you are only the daughter of a rural grocer.

     But suppose the position is reversed?   You came eighth because you are the son of a banker and had the advantage of good preparation.  You must give up your place to her, although she only came twelfth, because she is only the daughter of a grocer and did not have your educational advantages.  What is being assessed in this instance is not the evidence of a tangible result, but the hypothetical evidence of potential. 

     What do you go by?  Informed guesswork as to what people might achieve in the future; or the actual hard evidence of where the candidates are now, regardless of how they got there?  The guesswork, for preference; since the modern world hates being confronted with hard evidence.  Because some things are a matter of opinion, everything must be a matter of opinion. (No one, of course, actually believes this in practice.  If you think you have cancer who do you consult?  A specialist or someone at random in the street?). Because some things – like law – should be subject to equality, so should everything else, including education.

     The Americans, I believe, had a recent  educational initiative called ‘No Child Left Behind’. It sounds wonderfully humane, with its implication of an educational journey for all. On an actual journey, however, if no one is to be left behind then progress must be at the pace of the slowest.  One thinks of a convoy, or a wagon train.

     It’s fine, if the purpose is to ensure that everybody arrives, and if time is not an issue.  But what if time is an issue?  What if you have to arrive before the winter, or before supplies run out?  What if there are rival wagon trains and the best land will have gone if you arrive after they do?  It sounds horribly competitive, but sometimes life is.  If someone else gets the job or the contract, you don’t.  What if you, as an industrial nation, are competing with a rival that believes in putting educational emphasis on the most able?

     In a NATE[1] pamphlet from the 1960’s, exception is taken to an illustration for a children’s book: worried-looking chickens, and an assertive-looking rooster.  If you redraw it to show assertive hens and a worried rooster (one that’s read the NATE pamphlet) then you are merely exchanging one form of inequality for another.  You can draw them all assertive or all worried to your heart’s content, without changing the actual reality of nature one iota: as the most cursory glance at an actual farmyard will show you.

 

We are frequently told that we are all equal before God.  We may be; although some people seem to think they are quoting the Bible when they are actually quoting the American Declaration of Independence.   I am more struck by what the Bible seems to say about our inequality.

     In the obvious sense, of course, I can see what the advocates of religious equality are getting at   When the Ethiopian official in Acts hears about the gospel, he goes on his way rejoicing.  He is given the good news on the same basis as everyone else.  He is not told it does not apply to him because he is an Ethiopian. 

     On the other hand, consider the Parable of the Talents.  It exists in two versions.  In Matthew, one servant (servant: what about equality?) is given five, another two, and the third one[2].   That makes it anathema to the modern mind from the start: they should all have been given two.  Luke’s version, in which ten servants are given a pound apiece, is much more germane. Allowing for inflation, it fits in much better with our modern notions. 

     As Luke’s story progresses, however, it is hardly better than Matthew’s.  One servant makes a fortune, and another makes nothing.  Even starting from a baseline of equality, differences will still emerge.  An intolerable conclusion: however much rooted in the way things actually are.

     James and John quarrelled as to which of them would be greater in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Christ duly rebuked them, but not by saying that everyone will be equal in Heaven.

     There seems to have been a hierarchy within the twelve disciples.  Only three of them were chosen to witness Christ’s transfiguration.  Of those three, one was chosen to be future leader of the Church. 

     Paul speaks of believers as being parts of one body.  There must be different parts for the body to function.  All parts of the body are important, but they do not have the same importance.  You can still survive without an arm, but not without lungs, or a heart. 

     Angels are depicted as having a hierarchy: seraphs, archangels, angels etc.  The same applies to their demonic counterparts: who are divided into thrones, dominions, powers and so on.  (I am not arguing here as to whether or not angels and devils actually exist; I am merely trying to illustrate the Biblical sense of status.)

     As to the modern syncretist notion that all religions are equal paths to God, Christ will have none of it.  “No one comes to the Father but by me.”  He even suggests different destinations for people after death.  Liberal theologians, bishops etc have two ways of dealing with this sort of thing.  One is to deny that Christ said it.  The other is to concede the statement, and portray Christ as a victim of the attitudes of his time.  What is absolutely forbidden is to allow the statement any validity. 

     Christ is also called ‘King of Kings’ and – God excepted – you can’t really have a more inegalitarian concept than a monarch.  Somebody from the French Revolution said that we won’t be free until we’ve hanged the last priest with the entrails of the last king.  (Or the other way round; I forget which, but it comes to much the same thing.)  But once you’ve disembowelled your priest or your king and established your secular republic, who’s going to run it?  Appoint a premier, president or whatever, and you’ve immediately violated the principle of strict equality.  And rule by a committee of everybody means an extended quarrel, until somebody emerges as leader to bring things back to order. 

     In Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses makes a speech about Degree, based on the concept of the Great Chain of Being.  It is a magnificent defence of hierarchy, with everything, animate and inanimate, knowing its place.  That’s fine, if everything is in the right place to start off with, or is allowed to find its appropriate level.  Otherwise, if Shakespeare had remained in his place of birth, he would never have left Stratford and never have written his plays.   As it is – assuming one is not automatically in thrall to modern equality – the strength of the concept is that there should be different sorts of roles for different sorts of people, and that everything works if the right people are in the right place.  A distortion of the hierarchy is the problem, not the hierarchy itself.

     Better, perhaps, is Aristotle’s Politics.

     In his Politics, Aristotle says it doesn’t really matter what form of government you have, provided that whatever method you choose is conducted for the common good.  A bad king rules selfishly, while a good king benefits all his subjects with his expertise.  You won’t necessarily avoid tyranny with rule by the people: what if you merely get a tyranny of ignorance?

     When rule by the people succeeds, Aristotle calls it a polity.  When it fails, he calls it a democracy.

     That really ought to make one think!

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[1] National Association for the teaching of English

[2] It could have been eight, five and three; or seven, four and two: the actual numbers involved are not the point.  What you do with what you are given is the point of the parable, and it is not actually about money at all, but about an attitude to life.