The Case for an Equitable Society
Chapter One: A Brief Examination of History
In the course of human history, violence has plagued mankind. Whether from the ancient Egyptian nomarchs through the conquests of Roman emperors to the magnates and civil unrest in post-Domesday England, human against human violence has been a common theme in the West. The problem of mass conflict follows through the entire history of Eastern Civilization as well. If we look backwards through time in a limited effort to determine causes of such continual conquests, then it is difficult to enumerate exactly why that may be. Humans, it has been shown, are in the relatively small company of animals on the planet who will kill one another with impunity. Is war just a variation of this human aggression, writ large? The question is still open on the cause of war, and is not something we will discuss to great detail here. We will only take a shallow step in a brief exploration of what it means to be human.
We focus on the United States for the purpose of explanation given our generally more comprehensive understanding of the internals of that nation, though the principles here extend into other cultures as well. From time to time, we draw inferences as well from western civilization, being the history most applicable to the United States present day, and those the most informative to review from this perspective.
The United States has been at near constant war since after World War 2, though we choose to call it by other names. Skirmishes abound, military actions, and the list of non-war terms continues to grow with every determined necessity. This isn’t unique to the United States. In ancient Egypt, we witnessed a very similar cycle to human social evolution. The old kingdom made use of militias provided by multiple nomarchs. This Egypt was, as the United States currently is, constantly at war. Greek nation states often were at intermittent conflict with each other, forming and dissolving alliances as was necessary, until the rise of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Infighting among the Greek dynasties led to the rise of Rome and the establishment of Roman control. Rome, like the United States, was also constantly at war. Pax Romana was a time, briefly, when Rome had conquered its major enemies. This “peace” however, was only a redistribution of massive violence during conquest to more strategic continual violence internal to the empire, and open conflict around the edges of the empire. Aside from the term, there is nothing inherently peaceful about Pax Romana.
Fast forward through history in western civilization, we see the conquest of Normandy in 1066, followed by the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudors, through the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire directly into World War 1, followed shortly by World War 2. There was never a lengthy period of actual peace in all of human written history.
Regarding individual violence, in recent United States history, we see a continual fluctuation between 3 to 10 murders per 100,000 citizens. This trend spikes in the 1930s (Great Depression and Prohibition) and then spikes again during World War 2 and even higher during the Vietnam War. In subsequent years, e.g. during the dotcom boom of the late nineties, we see the murder rate fall to its lowest level in the last few decades to 6.9, with a continued downward trend, after a spike during the late 1980s.
It’s telling, looking at these statistics, that the murder rate is increased in times of scarcity, such as during the Great Depression. This is not a fluke. In fact, all criminal activity increases generally when opportunities are diminished. In 2015, a report by the World Economic Forum indicates that not only is there such a link, but also that criminal careers are formed with higher frequency during global recessions.
Recessions mean scarcity. Scarcity is a contributing factor to increases in individual and organized aggression. This isn’t specific to the United States, as the World Economic Forum paper reveals, nor to individual aggression. The Roman acquisition of Greece was driven in part by a motivation to protect the flow of grains. Wars have been fought over control of trading routes for millenia. It seems that states and individuals have a similar problem: when scarcity abounds, or even the fear of scarcity abounds, then we see violence and unrest increase.
If peace is the absence of violence and civil unrest, then to produce truly lasting peace, (real peace, and not the faux-peace of imperialism which we always seem to gravitate toward) then we must address the problem of scarcity. First, we ask the question of how there can be such a thing as scarcity when, in several nations including the United States, farmers are regularly paid not to grow certain crops in the interest of limiting impact on the market. Today, I can order from Amazon and have fresh food fruit brought to my home within an hour or two. In many other countries, no amount of hoping will produce fresh fruit on millions of tables. In San Francisco, for example, there are five homes for every person in the same country who is considered homeless. Yet, there are still homeless people in the San Francisco streets.
Scarcity is the absence of access to a resource, and is a result of violating the principle of equality (which we will explore in more detail in chapter 3). There would rarely be scarcity except for the fact that humans have created it artificially. This is in part because of the successful globalization of capitalism, which fundamentally drives inequality. I must make a distinction here. Capitalism is a tool. It is only the manner in which we have employed and evangelized capitalism that has produced inequality from it. This, too, will become clear in a later chapter.
Humans generally organize into a hierarchical social structure. This reinforces the mistaken idea that there are worthy (those who lead) and unworthy (those who build). This persistent myth has allowed false generalizations of the worthy over the unworthy, which has led to the justification of denial of access to resources, which I call artificial scarcity, of the common human.
Despite our loftiest ambitions, the world has devolved according to the shared history and understanding of humankind. We witness at the time of my writing this document a return to the strong-man and the might-makes-right mentality we will be addressing further in this document. We have defaulted again to the Pax Romana mentality, grasping to the romantic notion that such a peace actually meant peace. If we continue on this path, millions will die. This series of essays (eventually to be published in a book) is a seed of hope.
There is a better way, if we can address the underlying cause of scarcity.
What underlying cause do I speak of? Is it an end to capitalism I seek? No. What I seek to end, and what the next age of humanity requires of us to end, is the persistent hierarchical thinking which we have too long taken for granted. Without such an idea, how can there be haves and have-nots? Those with resources must have a mechanism for rationalizing their acquisition and hoarding of such resources, and this always takes the form of denigrating those without. This is, you might suggest, only the nature of humankind.
Have I not just spent an entire essay of text describing the nature of violence in human history?
You would be right to question this, and you would also be correct in pointing out such a thing. However, at one time, we were hunter-gatherers. Eventually, through concerted effort and many, many years of focus, humanity shifted to an agricultural basis for providing sustenance, which allowed the rise of empires. Significant, impossible-seeming change has been proven possible in the past. The Equitable Society really only requires enough people who believe in the principle of equality to come together in support of the work that would be required to make such a change possible.
We can move toward a more equitable society. Sadly, most of our existing government structures are built on the premise of inequality. Such a significant shift in mentality will require the courage to revisit the structure of many institutions. But the proximate step toward such change begins with you. Without believers in equality, there is no hope of making the widespread change we require. As mentioned before, equality is something that humans impose on nature. Without coordinated work, an equitable society can never be realized.
How close we are to an equitable society? My answer is that we are closer than we had been in the middle ages. In fact, equality is such an enticing concept, and we have so many empathic humans (remember the bell curve) that we do make some slow progress over time. After all, slavery and indentured servitude are generally frowned upon at least in western civilization, which leads the world in power and influence at the time of this writing.
That said, the United States was built according to an unequal vision. We have only to look to the Three-fifths Compromise to understand how significant an influence inequality had in the forming of our nation. This is not an indictment, as the United States democracy emerged leagues ahead of the rest of the world, which existed under some form of imperialism and feudalism. The point is that though we are closer to equality than we ever have been historically, we may never achieve it without some fundamental and significant changes.
I don’t want you to believe me yet.
Follow me on this journey, and by the end, if I haven’t convinced you, then I have failed at my job. These steps toward understanding were the same for me, and I hope that they are as convincing to you as they were for me.
The first tiny step we must take, and this one is absolutely non-negotiable, is to understand that from the perspective of the common human, we have traded the divine right of kings for something equally nefarious: the affluent right of kings. The mechanisms for control are not as direct as in the past, but they are still there — and still effective. Such a dubious right is directly contrary to an equitable society.
This is where we begin our journey.
To continue, see the next chapter where we define some foundational concepts necessary for the exploration of an equitable society in The Principle of Equality.
This essay is part of a series. Search on the tag “equitable society” for related essays. The evolution of society should always be pushing forward, always toward the most equitable solution for us all. There is a way forward that doesn’t involve violence, but it may involve a reimagining of the world we must create together.
