Don't You Want To Live in an Equal Society?

This is what someone asked me when they read one of my criticisms of the left in these pages. It's a reasonable question because a common notion is that the left fights for equality and fairness while the right is only interested in perpetuating privilege. This is a very one-sided appraisal, of course, but it is not totally without substance. Nonetheless, even taking it at its own estimation, it has serious problems.

There is the idea that somehow a society in which everyone is equal would be a more 'spiritual' society. But actually, it would only be more spiritual in the sense that materialistic people think of spirituality. That is to say, as something that pertains and relates to human beings primarily as they are in this world. We say that an equal society would be a fair society and that is good. But this is judging the purpose of human life as being fulfilled in a material world, and disregarding the fact that there may be another, higher, purpose behind life as we see and experience it in three dimensional, phenomenal terms. That life should be fair is the plaintive cry of the child, but adults know that it is just not fair. This doesn't mean that we should not try to make it more just, but it is a recognition that God has more important matters in his project for humanity than making things fair and equal here and now. There are deeper issues involved. To make something a priority which God has apparently not made a priority could be a mistake. Of course, a response to this might be that it is not God but man who has introduced inequality into society, but that is an assumption. The degree of inequality has surely been influenced by men but not the basic fact of inequality which exists throughout nature.

Generally speaking, it seems to be the case that the more equal a society is nowadays, the more atheistic it becomes. Why should this be so? I would say it is because when you abolish hierarchy, you also start to abolish the sense of higher and lower or even high and low. You reduce everything to a level playing field but that means there is no feeling of greater or lesser. The very idea becomes offensive. So God, as the archetypal greater, becomes less easy to accept. And this has ramifications beyond the loss of transcendence, ramifications which a society devoted to equality cannot fail to bring about. Virtues that relate to hierarchy are lost, virtues such as nobility and honour, the very ideas of height and depth, all these are lost or, at least, greatly reduced in their meaning and significance. Cultural relativism becomes the norm because hierarchical distinctions are no longer tolerated. Everything's equal, after all. And then the sense of truth as an absolute begins to fade. It must because this again demands a hierarchical understanding of life, and the appreciation that some things really are better than others because they correspond more to reality. Reality is not equal. It is there as a fact and you either accommodate to it to a greater or lesser degree or you don't. Right there, like it or not, is superiority and inferiority.

An equal society becomes one where mediocrity is the order of the day. It is one opposed to excellence of any sort and any condition, and where greatness is discouraged unless it is totally conformist which, of course, almost by definition, it is not. If everyone is fundamentally equal, this is the inevitable consequence. Such a society becomes one where people don't seek to transcend themselves in a vertical sense because the horizontal plane of being is given full priority. In fact, the vertical plane, necessarily hierarchical, is just denied. It doesn't really make much difference if you say that the equality you want is only one of opportunity. Once you introduce the idea of equality as a dominating principle of your society, it extends everywhere, and everywhere it beats all things down to its own level.

Now, clearly none of this means that a society should be ordered with rigid castes in which no one can rise, however exceptional they might be. Balance is required in all things, and hierarchical quality must be balanced with a sense of the essential oneness of humanity. But, and here's the point all egalitarians need to understand, if you make equality the cornerstone of your system, as we increasingly do today when it has become the default assumption of what is good and right, and to oppose it in any way is the sign of an immoral person, then you are condemning your society to flatline mediocrity. You are going to bring the higher down to a level that is manageable by everyone. You are going to damage quality and ratify the medium and the average. Today we have reacted to a perceived excessive hierarchy of the past by rejecting hierarchy altogether as a fundamental principle. This has resulted in the impoverishment of culture and understanding. It goes hand in glove with materialism and the rejection of higher levels of truth and being. It is the reduction of human beings to their most basic elements.

It's worth bearing in mind that those who are most insistent on equality are often those who feel themselves inferior in some way or another. Their motive is an unadmitted resentment and envy. From such impure beginnings no true system can be built.

Everyone wants to live in a just world. That is a true and worthy aspiration, and probably a long way off. But to confuse this with a world of equality is a mistake. Equality is undue focus on the horizontal plane but human beings to be true to their essential humanity must live on both the horizontal and vertical planes with the latter seen as ultimately primary. There is equality of being but not of realised being. Even some of the saints stand closer to the throne of God than others though all have their fullness of the divine.