Noah and I are dining together. This sounds grand, but it really isn’t. Dinner in our house, when tête-à-tête, is really supper: a bowl of soup or a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, plus a loaf of bread and thou.
We sit opposite each other at the dining table. This, too, can sound grand, but it is not. The table is small, the setting modest, and the chairs few. Sitting face to face enables us to see each other nicely. Each is willing to stomach the face of the other, a matter important as we ingest. Oh, and at other times too.
Non-grand the seating may be, but at least we reject the practice of eating in front of the television. In my not-so-humble opinion, it is barbarous to guzzle and gawp at the same time. Dinner is a time to talk, exchange pleasantries, parade achievements, bemoan failures, and generally rub along together.
“Only connect” is the theme of E. M. Forster’s Howards End, and connecting is best done by conversation. No doubt there are other ways of connecting, but I am not talking about them now. I am talking about talking. And talking cannot sensibly be done while viewing endless iterations of car chases and murders – or anything else, for that matter. If our minds are to receive pabulum, it should not be while we pabulate.
At this point I realise I must concentrate. I really must. I am waffling on – pleasantly, perhaps – but unconcentrated, dispersed, diffused, and disaggregated. Despite a firm promise to the contrary, I bang on as though Time and Tide had turned over a new leaf and decided to wait for everyone.
There is, after all, a point to this article. The point is that I think the professor is right. Equality is indeed “an empty idea”.
Positively sexy
Noah agrees, and he is saying as much over our scrambled eggs and bacon. He does so in the ponderous diction so beloved of lawyers. Some people find this tone top-down, even repellent. I find it not just attractive but positively sexy. Perhaps I like top-down – or at least perhaps I like it when Noah is on top.
[Now, now – ed.]
“I have done some research,” he says, “and I conclude that equality is and remains meaningless unless we populate it with criteria essential for the purpose. Let me remind you. Who is to be made equal to whom, in what respects, and over what period? And why, moreover, are they to be equalised?”
“To decide these matters,” he continues, “requires an evaluation of the end to be pursued and the means by which to do so. Every decision, if not purely intuitive, requires such an exercise. Absent such an analysis, the decision will be arbitrary, irrational, and flawed.”
We pause to butter bread.
“We can’t have that, now, can we?” I say, sardonically. “Who wants a perverse world in which people are driven by passion? Who wants the exhilaration of the Romantic era, the languid sophistication of the Pre-Raphaelites, the angular challenge of the Cubists? Who wants a Campbell’s soup tin lifted from the kitchen cupboard and displayed on the living-room wall?”
This is, admittedly, a cheap shot.
Noah is not deterred.
“Never explained”
“Invoking equality is a trick people use to bypass the demands of good decision-making. It works by setting a standard – the Insider, whether thing, person, or group – and then requiring everyone else, Outsiders all, to conform to it. The Insider is marketed as appropriate, even desirable. Why that Insider was selected is never explained. It is simply assumed.
“‘The capitalists eat three meals a day. You are no different from them, so you should eat three meals a day too. Three for one, three for all.’”
“Free for all,” I interject.
“Yes – a real free-for-all. The rhetoric is beguiling because it begs the question. By treating the standard as axiomatic, the decision-maker avoids the hard work of analysing ends and means. That is why equality is the darling of politicians and corporate heads alike. Why strive for accountability when you can skip down the yellow-brick road of equality?”
“Gullible’s Travels down Equality Street?” I ask. I know my puns irritate Noah because he never shrinks from saying so.
“That’s very irritating,” he says, obligingly.
There is only so much of a lawyer one can tolerate. His ponderous verities make me want to cry “bullshit!”. I do not, of course. I am prim. There was a game called Bullshit, featured in a rom-com on television some time ago. I cannot remember the title, but I cannot forget that a geriatric player farted noisily at intervals throughout the game. The farting had no relevance – farting seldom does – but I found it extremely funny.
Schoolgirl humour, I fear. If I were less prim, I would buy fart cushions for Christmas.
Legend on the links
But I am prim. In matters of vulgarity, I share the standpoint of an elderly female golfer with whom I once played at an unfamiliar course. When she asked her caddy for his name and was told he was universally known as “Fuckface”, she replied, in a voice honed by years of elocution lessons, “Would you mind if I called you Charles?” His answer is unrecorded, but she is now a legend on the links.
So: no “bullshit”. But substance remains.
“Come, come, Noah,” I say. “On matters of outcome – money, for example – you may well be right. We cannot demand equality without justification. Ends and means will do the work here, and equality can be dispensed with.
“But what about procedure? Surely here equality has a role. Equality before the law, for instance. No one doubts that this is a good thing.”
“Do they not?” he replies, with that lawyerly air that suggests a trap has been sprung. “Procedural rules may fall within a narrower range, but they still require justification. Ends and means determine which rules we create and how we implement them. Equality does not do this work.”
He goes on – briefly now, mercifully – to contrast adversarial and inquisitorial systems. Gladiatorial contests versus judicial truth-seeking. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Choosing between them is a matter of judgement. Chanting “equality before the law” does not assist that judgement. Nor does “due process”, since what is due depends on what one decides should be due.
I try one last time. “What about equality of application? Surely no one should be above the law.”
“Carries no weight”
“Yes and no,” Noah says. “Mostly no. Rules are general, but they admit exceptions and discretion. Prosecutors must still decide whether to act. Equality helps not at all. Accused persons often complain that they should not be tried if others are not, but that argument carries no weight.”
“And equality of opportunity?”
He takes a sip of wine. We are, improbably, still at the table.
“All it means is that rules should not create unwarranted barriers or preferences. But deciding what is unwarranted still requires ends-and-means analysis. Remember Eileen’s birthday party? The staggered start was not equality of opportunity. It was simply a sensible decision about aim and method. Equality is irrelevant. It always is.”
That, finally, is the point.
A character in a play by a German dramatist is made to say, “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.” I begin to feel the same about the word “equality”. Not because it is dangerous in itself, but because it pretends to do work it cannot do.
Fortunately, I do not own a gun. If I did, I might need to think very carefully about my ends and my means.
Noah reaches for the bread.
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