Equality is a very tricky subject. On one hand, I personally believe that all members of humanity are born with equal capacity in regards to fulfilling and realizing their own freedom or self-autonomy. Moreover, in realizing self-autonomy we can produce our own worth. But, on the other hand, many people are born into atrocious circumstances and never even have the prospect to realize their own autonomy. Sadly, they are unable to even be aware of the capacity they are granted by birth. Equal capacity is often viewed as interchangeable with equality but it should not be, for this view is a fallacy.
As long as one single person is being suppressed, not allowed to fulfill their function as a human being, to be self-autonomous and self-determining, our entire species can never be truly free. If we posses freedom, then we know the sadness we feel when it is violated. How can we allow others to suffer this way and stand by idly as a person’s autonomy is violated time and time again? Even worse, how can a person violate another’s autonomy without realizing the damage they are doing to that person and there self? An equal capacity for freedom is not and cannot be enough. It cannot be the standard in which we base equality on. Equal capacity is a given, the most important factor is equal education and a decent enough circumstance to realize equal capacity, to grasp self-autonomy, and from this create self worth. This is true equality.
I am often accused of hating my own society. For the most part this is true. People born into western political states, especially North America, take freedom for granted. We stand by idly as other’s are violated and even do some suppression of our own through our economic systems and the environmental pressures we produce. We even commit malicious and shameful acts to the members of our own society. We are viewed as the pinnacle of freedom – the irony in that. Devastatingly, our autonomy is consciously willed and transformed into individualism. We are giving up our self-autonomy, a prize that should be viewed to be greater and be more cherished than any other, in order to receive temporary happiness. A kind of happiness that can’t truly last. A kind of happiness that requires giving up more of our own and other’s autonomy to sustain. What does it take for a person to give up his or her own autonomy willingly? I am not entirely sure, but I believe it comes from failing to realize the true happiness that can come from everyone being self-autonomous, realizing and fulfilling their capacity, and creating their own self worth. The happiness that could come from this would be indescribable.
It is my hope that the conversion from self-autonomy to individualism will stop. That people will begin to realize the fruitless happiness they are cultivating by choosing a life of ignorance. I hope people will begin to regard the affect of ignoring, or worse being responsible for, the violation of another’s autonomy on their own being as extremely detrimental. It is extremely disheartening that those born with the capacity for and the appropriate circumstance needed to realize self-autonomy fail to do so. Freedom and equality are a right, but they are not granted, they must be fully realized in order to be fulfilled.
