I feel unsettled. Besides being unpleasant, this condition is inappropriate for a woman of a certain age. I should be in a state of feeling secure – even a trifle complacent or smug. Socrates may have thought that an unexamined life is not worth living, but as the old boy discovered, there’s no life to live if you examine too much. The grave beckons those who are too grave.
So, at least, I think – indeed, so I think I know. But I fear the only way to recover my equilibrium is to dig deeper. Dig, dig, dig. ‘The hole will make you whole’ is now my mantra.
I mutter it in my head. Sometimes, I confess, I mutter it audibly, albeit sotto voce. Noah hears me, looks worried, and mentions “early-onset Alzheimer’s”. I tell him it’s his job – by helping me dig – to put my mind at rest. He looks even more worried, and now we’re both unsettled.
The words we exchange are over the breakfast table. For me its eggs that are scrambled (aka ‘scramble’, as though constantly on the move through tough terrain). For him, it is a large bowl of a special cereal he concocts from nuts, raisins, oats, and the like. I tolerate the molar-crunching it produces when we’re at home, but I hate his geriatric habit of bringing it with us on holiday. Too bad, he says, as with no effort at concealment, he bears into the B&B dining room a tall Tupperware container filled with his hominy grits, which he places solemnly on our table. He’s – if you’ll forgive me – a cereal offender, but one whose behaviour I can’t prevent. Facing an obdurate Noah, it is my teeth that must now do the grinding.
Oh dear, I must get to the point. Digressing is, of course, a form of digging – but off course. Instead of aiming for Australia, you’re spading toward New Zealand, if you get my drift. This just won’t do.
“Our discussions on equality have distressed me,” I say.
“Oh, why?” he asks through a mouthful of muesli.
“I’ve always believed equality is a good thing. Children should be treated equally, and so should adults. Now I’m told it’s – what’s the word? – a shibboleth, and that equality is actually an empty idea.”
“Correct. Equality means nothing until given content. Who must be equalised? In what respects? For how long? And, most importantly, for what reason? The interests and values we use to select these parameters are what really matter – and equality does nothing to help us choose them.”
“A benchmark”
“Come off it!” I exclaim. “Equality at least provides a benchmark. Say Bloggs has pots of money, and Jones only a little. If we redistribute so each has an equal amount, Jones escapes poverty, and Bloggs is still just fine. Bloggs sets the benchmark, and through redistribution, we empower Jones to reach it. Surely that’s good?”
“No, it’s a very bad thing. Absent consent, redistribution requires coercion and force. Right-thinking people deplore force. But, my dear, tell me how you feel about the coercion and force necessary to secure equality?”
“Bad, I suppose. As a liberal, I deplore force unless absolutely necessary.” (Though, I think silently, voluntary giving could bridge that gap – but I let it pass.)
“Yup. The French revolutionaries demanded ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity’ – their holy trinity. People loved the slogan, and in fact the revolution itself. As Wordsworth versified: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!’ Many agreed with him, but in losing their hearts, plenty lost their heads too. Mme Guillotine saw to that.
“The slogan, so far as Liberty and Equality is concerned, is stuff and nonsense. What about Fraternity, you ask me?” I didn’t, but still. “Let’s leave fraternity aside – it’s like the Holy Ghost: elusive and hard to pin down. More importantly, it is wholly irrelevant here, for our focus is on liberty and equality.”
“Fair enough.”
“Liberty and equality can’t coexist without the one affecting the other. Liberty demands freedom from coercion, but coercion – absent consent – is the only path to equality.
“They’re antithetical: you can’t have full equality without curtailing liberty, or full liberty without inequality. Of course, you can strike a balance – a mix of a measure of liberty and some equalising constraints. But the more you have of the one, the less you will have of the other. Demanding both as absolutes, as the slogan does, is plumb absurd.”
“But back to Bloggs and Jones. Why, we should ask, do we choose Bloggs for deprivation and Jones as recipient?
“The answer lies in naked passion. The naked passions of envy and jealousy.”
“My, my, now who’s being absolute? Such a bold claim needs support, and doubtless you’ll supply it with your customary brevity. Before you do, though, please say why you treat envy and jealousy as distinct? I thought they were synonymous.”
“Well, you thought wrong. When Jones (the poor) wants what Bloggs (the rich) has, that’s envy. When Jones (the poor) wants Bloggs (the rich) to have as little as him, that’s jealousy. Same green-eyed monster, different visions.”
Bears Noah out
I’m not so sure, so we Google the distinction. Give or take a little, it bears Noah out. The way he defines them will do, at least for now.
“In general, people are envious – they are not egalitarians. They want equalisation only upward: more for themselves, but not less for others. Downward levelling to a state of equal poverty? Uninterested, totally UN-INTERESTED. It’s more stuff that they truly want, not more of the stuff of equality.
“Sometimes, though, they are jealous instead – or as well. Seeing Elon Musk’s wealth, they become resentful and demand he be taxed to the hilt. His very success is a reproach to them in their poverty; it makes them feel inadequate.
“So it is with rioters. They are failures and know as much. That’s why they burn down rich people’s buildings – they feel less like no-hopers when they act this way. But no-hopers they still are, and hopeless to boot.
“If decision-makers want greater welfare, they should legislate it – but when they do, they must be transparent about objectives and methods. They must tell people what they’re doing, for whom, and why. Explain the ends, means, and rationale.
“By all means, say they are striking a balance that is reasonable or fair. Sound judgement and all-round fairness is precisely what the good decision-maker should be pursuing. But please, don’t invoke the canon of equality.
“Banging on about equality – equal treatment, equal opportunity, or equal outcome – is empty rhetoric. It obscures rather than illuminates, marking you out in the mind of the well-informed as just another charlatan (‘huckster,’ for those who prefer transatlantic abuse).
“Thank you,” I say feelingly. I’ve listened carefully, but my ears are tired out. Breakfast is over. Noah has finished masticating and, in the process, finished me off.
I feel even more unsettled now. Noah has done nothing to soothe my troubled mind.
They say when you’re in a hole, stop digging. I should have heeded that injunction. Instead, I’ve dug deep down under, reached the shores of the Antipodes, and now feel utterly Bruced.
One settler, indeed, with one bulletin in my head.
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