There are three forms of equality: equality of outcome, of opportunity, and of perception. Equality of perception is the most basic: it dictates that for people to be equal, each person should be perceived as being of equal worth. Equality of opportunity dictates that all people should have the same opportunities open to them if they put out the effort – this is a central tenet of the “American Dream.” The final form of equality, equality of outcome, attempts to “level the playing field” by forcing people into certain roles and dictates that all individuals should tend towards the mean – this form of equality is evident in socialist theory.

America has enacted laws that are based on equality of outcome to attempt to ensure that “minorities” and women have access to equal pay and to remove glass ceilings, but while these programs have repaired some of the damage, paraphrasing Milton Friedman, equality of outcome leaves most people without equality and without opportunity. This is because forced equality is not equality and only hides the real issue of inequality based on perceptions.

Equality is not saying that all people are physically and mentally equal, nobody would bet an average teenager could win a game of basketball against a professional player, nor can every six-year-old be a physicist because human beings are not inherently equal. However, “true equality” says that potentially everyone should have the same opportunities, that is to say, that potentially the toddler could play professional basketball and potentially the six-year-old could become a future Einstein regardless of superficial characteristics. While these two people may not actually be able to achieve their dreams, this does not mean they should be limited by what people perceive they are capable of. This is equality of perception.

Unlike equality of outcome, equality of perception creates equality of opportunity by dictating that all people should be allowed the same opportunities even if they aren’t capable of realizing them. This allows people to reach their own plateaus without unfair external pressures. However, when one attempts to use equality of outcome to create opportunity, one must take away opportunities from one person to give them to another, rather than allowing both individuals to reach their own, personal, peaks. This is not always a bad thing, during the civil rights era it was an important move to integrate America’s divided society; however, it was a first step, and only a first step. America must move beyond this first step to continue to answer its call as the “land of opportunity.”

Of course, many factors come into account throughout individual lives that change an individual’s capacity for different activities. Equality of perception requires that one realize the way we perceive people based on bias should not limit their opportunities because it does not reflect their abilities. This means that with equality of perception no human being is artificially kept from achieving their goals based on skin color, religion, national origin, or class. Equality of perception cannot be legislated, it can only be taught, but it will create freedom and lead the way to equality of opportunity, but focusing on equality of outcome just limits the freedoms upon which America was founded.

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For example, let us examine a boy who steals a toy at a store. A matter of fact about this situation is that a young human male has taken an item from a store. This is what happened. The senses and reason tell us a few other things too: the toy was a plastic squirt gun; the boy used his hands to take the toy; it took only a second for the boy to do this. Hume argued that no matter what we find about the situation with our senses and our reason, we will never find the actual existence or quality of vice. So then, if morality is not intrinsic to objects in a situation, what is morality?

Hume said that morality can be found within. When you observe an immoral act, you do not find any right or wrong about the situation when you consider only the objects involved in the act. “Only when you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation” will you find a right or wrong about the situation. Hume said that this was only a feeling or sentiment though.

Therefore morality is not something of our reason, for we could not find the existence of good or bad while examining the situation with our reason. Our reason only told us facts about what happened and how it happened. Morality then must a sentiment or feeling. Hume uses the example of the philosophical view of colors, heat and other such “qualities”. Hume says that modern philosophy considers such things as colors, heat and sound as simply perceptions and not definite qualities of any object. Colors and heat are objects of our observation, to be sure, but it can not be said for sure that such things are properties of an object. Take an apple for example. We see red, but red is our perception and is not necessarily an actual quality of the apple. To go even further we cannot even say for fact that an apple exists, and if the apple does not exist than surely red can not be a quality of it. All we really know is that we perceive an apple and in our perceptions it is red. This does not also imply the existence or qualities of the apple. Hume compares this type of thought to morality. Hume is trying to show that like observations of color and heat, morality is not something that can be found, for us, in an object, but instead morality is something which only exists within our world and comes from the sentiments in us.

Hume seems to be correct in declaring morality cannot be judge through the senses. We can only know what is afforded to us by our senses and our senses do not tell us when something is wrong or right. Something only becomes wrong or right when someone applies their feelings about certain actions to what they have seen or heard. The evidence for this is the disparity in people’s moral beliefs: what offends one person’s moral sentiments does not always offend another. While many people believe it is morally offensive to commit suicide in any situation, but in many cultures thought it more honorable to kill oneself than to admit defeat in a battle. These people did not see suicide in that situation as immoral. Morality is not something that is intrinsic in the objects or the action, since two different people would come to two different conclusions about the action of suicide. Instead it must be as Hume says; morality must be within us as a personal sentiment

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The spread of the most powerful culture to the rest of the word has been occurring for all of history. Those without power mimic those who have it to improve themselves. The Mayans, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Hindus, Arabs, Romans, French, British etc ad infinitum have all been mimicked at one point in time or another in the past 4,000 Years. At no point did the world’s cultures fuse into a super-organism: coliseums were built and gladiators were trained, but provinces didn’t cast off their traditions and become purely Roman — had they done so the Roman Empire would have lasted beyond 1,500 C.E. As anyone who has listened to Hindi Pop will notice, just because the world mimics American popular culture, it does not destroy the cultural influences. Drinking Coke and eating a Big Mac does not mean a person abandons their culture.

While not specifically stated, it is a subtext of most discussions of globalism. Culture is often seen as a static institution that should not be allowed to change lest some “unique” features of it are lost to history. However, cultures have come and gone for millennium because its practitioners have changed or found a “better” way to live. The spread of the internet and globalism does not damage cultures, but allows them to adapt to the changing world. While one may bemoan the passing of cultures, sociology as a whole should not forget that its origins are based on “rapid social change.” The way cultures adapt reveals far more about a society than the way it stagnates itself.

Globalism has beneficial effects on societies, as information spreads it is able to penetrate all corners of the world instantaneously. It took 5 centuries for the concept of a ’0′ to spread from India to Europe: a distance than can now be covered by a person in only a couple hours. Now it takes an hour for the latest news from Tibet — and most of that is because it takes time to write an article. The negative aspects of globalism are far outweighed by the positives, and although the anthropologist can bemoan the lose, sociologists should revel in it.

Image credit: woodleywonderworks

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Carl Sagan believed this wholeheartedly and this image inspired his book Pale Blue Dot. In response to this image he made the speech that is presented in the video in the next section. This video overlays Carl Sagan’s thoughts with images from movies that most people believe to represent themselves and their history. The power of the words combined with the visuals is stunning and well worth your time.

Okay, first of all I recognized almost everyone of those movies which is a little sad. But beyond that, Sagan’s introduction sets the pace for the rest of the address, and in doing so, steers the viewer into a mindset where they question their own existence before it complete lambastes the efforts of the human species–taking what many people believe to be the greatest accomplishments and showing what they really are: nothing. It forces you to consider, if the human species destroyed itself totally, who would miss us? Would anything or anyone really care? Has the universe actually lost anything?

If you look at this from a religious perspective you may say “yes” just because a god’s “most perfect” creations are now gone. However, take a second longer and really think about this. If a god created intelligent creatures once, what is to stop them from doing it again? Wow. That hurts the ego a bit.

If you look at this from a scientific, artistic or cultural point of view you will also probably say “yes”. You may argue that the universe just lost scientific advances–science is permanent, so anyone else could do it, the human cultures–which accomplished what exactly that is that impressive that it an never be done again, or its art–art by its very nature is impermanent anyway.

So this issue goes beyond who created whom and when it happen. It reaches to the very core of human existence and says “you should have done better.” Now each of us has a choice: we can sit here in our relatively comfortable lives and do nothing, or we can do something. I don’t mean we go and pick up liter and save kittens they are both impermanent and rather pointless in the long run. However, what we can do is teach people, our children, and ourselves the “correct” way to live, and I guarantee you it has nothing to do with nationalism, money, or cultural egotism.

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