When people in my experience argue for equality, they generally make their argument too broad. They don’t necessarily confuse equality with sameness. They instead treat equality the way that banks treat equity.
Equity is the value of a company. After a company calculates the consistent cost of company debts, resources, the cost of the employees, the mortgage, the telecom bill, etc., and determines its past and future profit, over time, the company is evaluated for an overall company value. This value becomes the company's equity, what the company is worth. Banks and external financial institutions “value” the equity of a company; companies, outside of creating this “value”, have limited say in what outside powers determine is the company’s “equity”.
Equality is sometimes given a similar treatment. After a person has understood the idea that they have more/less money than others, more/less food or water, more/less mental or social qualities, more/less human characteristics of various kinds, are they “equal” to everyone else in their society? Does society rate the individual’s “equity” as “the same” as all other individuals?
This question is frustrating and impossible to answer. It’s also not the point of equality in my opinion.
Equality, real equality, is when one individual considers, as best she can, how her behavior is going to impact another individual, given her knowledge of the other individual’s circumstances. This consideration, putting myself in the position of another person—not a hypothetical stereotype of a person, but a real individual that I know—is how I can best treat another individual as my equal.
Caveat: I know that I will never really know the world as another individual knows the world. I can’t. I will never be able to be any person other than myself; just as every other individual is, inevitably, limited to his or her personal experience. But before I act in such a way as to impact another person that I know, I can think about life as he or she might see it.
I can draw on my personal experience, my knowledge, what this and other individuals have told me about themselves and others, what I’ve read, watched on TV or seen in the news. I can take all this information and try, really try to consider how my behavior will affect this person.
Here’s where a little business savvy is helpful—time management. I can’t agonize for hours and days about how this person will be affected. I am limited, remember, and no amount of agonizing will detract from my limitations. I am only me. But I can do my best to make sure that I am thinking about how my behavior will impact this other individual.
Another caveat: Often we do consider others, but only in respect to how they impact us. What is the position of this person in my universe rather than how do they position me in their universe? This is natural; my life is about me, it is my life and my life is, essentially, the only real “property” that I will ever own in totality. My life is pure equity—my equity.
But if I believe in equality, and I do, then I must respect the equity of others. I must give the life of each other individual that I impact due consideration before I impact that individual. I may, after all, through my behavior impact the value that another individual places upon his or her life, his or her true equity. I must, as a person who values equality, recognize this possible impact and respect it.
In my experience, the best method for treating another individual with equality is to not consider how that individual assesses his or her own life (his or her equity). It is instead for me to assess the external factors, the debts and bills and outside payments owed by or owed to the individual. After assessing the value of these externalities, I can determine how I am able to best behave for the benefit of both. I’ve done my best assessment, the only real assessment that I can manage, of the external factors impacting us both. I’ve considered, as I constantly must, my own equity. I’ve been as “equal” as I can be.
So equality is treating a person the way that you would want to be treated if you were that person, given what you know about the person, the world in general, and yourself.
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