Equality

I recently studied the Declaration of Independence of United States. The sentence about the equality awoke my curiosity: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” Together with French motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, I wondered how the Equality concept had evolved with time and what it means today.

I think Equality and the right for Equality is a universal concern that has been debated and will continue to be debated forever as it is in constant evolution.

To me, the main step has been taken by making each human being equal as a citizen – in other words politically equal: “one man, one vote’’. Unfortunately, we know this rule is not universally true particularly in countries where dictatorships still exist. This ontological right is key for the humanity and worldwide organizations continue to strongly struggle to make it applied.

Even if we consider western countries, I don’t think people have reached and will ever reach equality.

At first, the main form of inequality was based on the social class (rich vs. poor). However, this principle had evolved into more subtle inequality concepts. For example, if you live in a polluted suburb and your child suffers from asthma due to the pollution, you may feel an inequality compared to your friend leaving in countryside. If you suffer from a handicap, access to a job will be more difficult.

I think all the efforts deployed for years and centuries to set up liberties and equal rights for everyone have turned into a tyranny for equality with the counter productive result of increasing inequality. What do I mean by that? In this context tyranny refers to what we are kept being said: that we CAN succeed in life even if we start with bad cards in hand. However, do you think, a person will have the same chance to access Princeton or Harvard if he come from the suburb of Bronx or from downtown Boston? Moreover, I think there is a business around equality driven by the wish of people to possess the exterior signs of richness: have a nice car, a big house, play golf, have a Rolex…. To me the main risk is to see our society sacrificing its differences for the sake of equality, forgetting that its differences make its richness.

A perfectly equal society could result in a “flat” society not willing to expand its potential and go beyond its limits to get better. I think we should awake. The race for equality in all domains has turned into the opposite effect. We need to cultivate the differences as a unique source of improvement to keep civilization progressing, while giving more value to the equality in the sense of promoting the right to be different but still having the same chances to make our life unique.