1.5.9.2 Valuing Equality

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

We choose to value Equality.  This means in general that we choose to treat other people as equal to each other, and as equal to ourselves, at least in some respects.

Using Equality as an explicit ethical guideline directly confronts our selfish tendencies, and treats them as matters of consequence rather than as a failure of love.  It is more emotionally healthy to be able to say ‘my love is strong, but I’m selfish – or hypocritical’ rather than to say ‘my love fails you’.

Equality as a guideline removes the notion that we can ignore the suffering of others or treat it as less significant than ours. It removes the option to withdraw our consideration of others, because other people matter and their needs and wants must be taken into account when considering an action.

A belief in equality should minimize controlling behaviour, as we must allow others to decide for themselves and live their lives as they wish.  A belief in equality should also minimize excessive permissiveness as we see that our children, or other loved ones, in a social context (eg school), deserve no special treatment (other things being equal), and even at home, children need to be ‘civilized’ into becoming socially acceptable members of their communities.

The core values of Love and Equality together imply Respect.  Respect is a derived value, inferred from the meanings and consequences of Love and Equality.  If I respect you it means I acknowledge your personhood as a sentient being, subject to emotional responses, who can suffer and can be joyful, and I choose to minimize your suffering and promote your happiness, and I choose to do this to roughly the same degree as I do to others and myself, at least in many ways, accepting but appropriately constraining our selfish desires.  Love Alone does not imply respect as an equal.

In Chapter 1.1 on Epistemology, we clarified the nature of choice, especially in section 1.1.4.  We feel as though we are making a real choice, and we may encourage others to make the same choice.  But we are not here relying on the choice actually being made freely, or that we have free will, only that we in fact hold beliefs, however tentatively or consciously, that alternative actions are conceivable (whether actually possible or not), and we do in fact make choices (or choices are made, perhaps by us), whether they are caused, or random or freely chosen, to go one way or the other, or to do nothing.