Feb 1, 2021
Life Lessons Startup Entrepreneurship
Is Achieving Equality an Impossible Dream?
In appearance it is easy to define a word. It’s natural to think that whoever uses it knows what he is saying and can explain it. But experience teaches us that this is not the case and that very few are able to delineate the meaning of the words they use
We heard in a discussion an unusual wit displayed by the opponents. A hundred times they circle the object of the fight. As enemies in bloody battle, they attack and reject a thousand times. So, if you want to mediate and palpably call the unreason of both, ask each one: «What do you mean by this? What meaning do you give to this word?» It will often happen that the two adversaries will be left without knowing what to answer or will utter some vague, disconnected expressions, suddenly showing that they were not expecting these questions.
They will realize, to their annoyance, that they do not know the meaning of a word that in a quarter of an hour they used hundreds of times and of which they were making infinite applications.
Now suppose that this does not happen and that each one gives the requested explanation easily and promptly: surely one will not accept the definition of the other.
+x-
There are words that, expressing a general idea applicable to many and very different objects and in the most various senses, seem to be deliberately invented to confuse. We all use them, but each one to its own free interpretation, resulting in a fuss:
The equality of men is an established law. We are all born crying, we all die sighing. Nature makes no difference between rich and poor, commoners and nobles, we all have the same origin and the same destiny. Equality is the work of nature, inequality is the work of man. Only evil has been able to introduce into the world those horrible inequalities of which the human lineage is a victim. Only ignorance and the absence of the feeling of one’s own dignity have been able to tolerate them.
-What do you understand by equality?
-Equality, equality… It’s perfectly clear what it means.
-However, it won’t hurt if you tell us.
-Equality is that one is neither more nor less than the other.
-But you see that this can be taken in very different senses, because two six-foot-tall men will be equal in it, but it is possible that they are very unequal in the rest. For example: if one is paunchy, like the governor of the island of Barataria, and the other is dry with meat, like the knight of the Sad Figure. Furthermore, two men can be equal or unequal in knowledge, in virtue, in nobility, and in a million other things; so, it will be good if we first agree on the meaning you give to the word equality.
-I speak of the equality of nature, of this established equality, against whose laws men can do nothing.
- So, you don’t want to say more than that by nature we are all the same?
-True.
-OK! But I see that nature makes some of us robust and others weak. Some beautiful, others ugly. Some agile, others clumsy. Some of clear wit, others fools. To some it gives us peaceful inclinations, to others violent ones… But it would be never ending if I wanted to enumerate the inequalities that come from the same nature. Where is the natural equality of which you speak?
-But these inequalities do not take away equal rights…
- Ignoring that you have already completely changed the subject, abandoning or greatly restricting the equality of nature, there are also its drawbacks in that equality of right. Do you think if the child of a few years will have the right to scold and punish his father?
-You pretend absurd…
-No sir. This, and nothing less than this, demands equal rights. If not, you must tell us which rights you are talking about, which rights should be understood as equality and which ones should not.
- It is very clear that now we are dealing with social equality.
You weren’t just about that. You spoke in general only to go from one trench to other. But we are going to social equality. This will mean that in society we all have to be equal. Now I ask: in what? In authority? Then there will be no government possible. In goods? OK. Let’s divide everything; after an hour, of two players, one will have lightened the other’s pocket and they will already be unequal. After a few days, the industrious man will have increased his capital; the lazy will have consumed a portion of what he received, and we will fall into inequality. Turn to the distribution a thousand times and the fortunes will be unequalized a thousand times. In consideration? But will you appreciate both the honest man and the rascal? Will the same trust be placed in the latter as in the former? Will Metternich take the same business as the rudest jerk? And even if you wanted to, could everyone do it all?
-This is impossible; but what is not impossible is equality before the law.
-New withdrawal, new trench! Let’s go there. The law says: whoever violates will suffer a fine of one thousand reais, and in case of insolvency, ten days in jail. The rich man pays the thousand reales and laughs at his misdeed; the poor man, who does not have a maravedi atone for his lack in jail. Where is equality before the law?
-Well, I would remove those things, and establish the penalties so that this inequality would never result.
-But then the fines would disappear, a non-negligible excise duty for budget gaps and relief for rulers. Furthermore, I am going to show you that this alleged equality is not possible on any assumption. Let us show that for a transgression the penalty of ten thousand reais is indicated; two men have incurred it, and both have something to pay, but one is a wealthy banker, the other a modest craftsman. The banker makes fun of the ten thousand reales, the artisan is ruined. Is the penalty equal?
-No, by the way; but how do you want to remedy it?
(…)
Defining a word and discerning its different applications has brought us the advantage of reducing to nothing a specious sophistry and of showing up to the last evidence that the pompous speaker, either propagated absurdities or did not tell us anything that we did not know in advance.
+Balmes, Jaime. The Criterion (1845)
Complete and exhaustive copy (with minor changes) from Chapter XIII, section 5. It may seem controversial because of the way, time, and terms in which the text was originally written. However, it has an interesting logical sequence that can help exchange, dialogue, and bridge people closer together.
