The following graphic provides us seven different lessons, seven specific lessons about democracy and about how we need to rethink our approach to democracy.
Equity is preferred over equality. That is the lesson on the surface of this meme. We have outgrown Thomas Jefferson's ideal of equality, and equity is preferred. In the US Declaration of Independence, he offered "all . . . are created equal. . . ." and with that, he set for us a goal, a goal to achieve equality by way of this American Experiment in democratic self-governance. Yet we know that he was being dis-ingenuous. His expectation was to have more and more numbers agreeing to pursue equality so that more and more would vote and participate in the revolution to legitimize this new nation. He needed the common shopkeeper to feel empowered to vote and participate and to own this government as much as the wealthy landowner. Jefferson and all the founders of the nation needed the sailors and the day laborers to seek the changes away from monarchies as much as those who were educated in the law and advancing the arguments of the Enlightenment. To call upon all to be equal was emphasizing that all had Liberty, all had the freedom to act and to be responsible for their actions and to see their votes and their contributions as cumulatively building up a new nation.
Jefferson's deficiency was that he did not think that equality included women, nor Black Americans, nor people of the First Nations of America, nor people with disabilities, and so many other groups were excluded from his conceptions of who deserved equality. He, and the systems of governance and the laws that followed only expected property-owning, able-bodied white men to be granted equality with each other. We have obviously outgrown that conception of equality. As we approach 250 years of attempting to reach equality, we can see that equality can never be accomplished (lesson 3). We need to discard that goal for our nation (and all nations), and substitute in another goal, equity.
Equity means that people get what they deserve as fellow humans. Equity provides all with decency and respect as afforded by their nation's highest aspirations and wealth. Equity means that people get what they need in pursuing their "relational life" potential (credit to David Brooks' video at https://youtu.be/iB4MS1hsWXU?si=i06vohQlew16K1PT), more opportunities and greater freedom. Some have called this the American Dream, but we can see that claiming ones own potential through equity can be applied to every Democracy on the planet. From this meme, we understand that equality is not serving us well enough. Equality is not serving every voter because every voter doesn't want the same thing. Every voter doesn't want to achieve the same outcomes for their lives. Equity is a fitting substitute.
Lesson 2: Equality actually leads to wasted resources, government waste appearing high among the wastes from the pursuit of equality. We are producing services and products through our governmental offices that not all people want. What some people find are wastes of time from our government, inefficiencies from governments. Those are "at the moment" wastes.
Lesson 3: Much worse than wasting materials and time in a moment, the quest for equality has created horrible disappointments for numerous citizens of our nations. These types of disappointments lead to wasted futures. In contrast to Jefferson's supposed hope that more and more people would feel empowered through equality, instead people wish to drop out of our systems of government because of the disappointments created and repeated. Our understanding of the importance of equality has led to apathy and fewer people wanting to be involved or be served by governments and their agencies. "Why participate in such systems????"
The models we have for delivering equality are actually delivering disappointments on a regular basis to too many of our citizens. We have been trampling future potentials with our quest for equality, and the systems are delivering a loss of faith in community and governmental efforts. The mandate to offer equality has nearly blinded our agencies from seeing the actual needs of many citizens. Our agencies and the following of our laws requires that all people are treated the same, when individuals need to be seen for their widely varying needs. You would not offer an adult serving of steak dinner to an infant who requires mother's milk or nutritious formula. The call is for equity, not equality.
Meanwhile, people are understanding that equality was never an attainable goal. Equality was always some aspiration to be reached by future generations. If we want to offer more satisfaction in our lives, we need to offer equity so each person can reach short-term goals and actually reach the "relational life" potential that each person sees in their image of their future self. Knowing this, we can more easily scrap the sayings of "Equality before the Law" or "Equality through Affirmative Action" or "Equality is the soul of Liberty." Pretty much all that we have considered the bedrock of our laws and government can be critically reviewed knowing that equality can never be reached. How differently will we pursue the writing of laws and governmental programs if we are aspiring toward equity, and turning the efforts and expected outcomes to the needs of each individual citizen?
Lesson 4: The drive for equality leads to over supplies in our economy, over supplies of things that people do not even want. Think of all the substandard housing projects standing inside of major cities, or training and dead-end jobs offered to the unemployed, or platitudes offered to those who are economically destitute. Think of the services from unemployment offices, when people need better counselling and appraisals of the hiring markets and career futures. What equality efforts create are products that are valued less than the cost to produce and distribute them. The term of "underwater" has recently come into use for people who own houses that are worth less than the mortgages that financed those purchases. For how long have government agencies been "underwater," costing more to serve the public than the value of what results?
Lesson 5: The very idea of equality rests on a way of thinking, a paradigm that says people can be divided into groups. Then if we deliver equal services and goods to each group, then our government services have done enough to fulfill its roles. These classifications of groups seemingly exist regardless of the needs of the individuals, regardless of the problems being solved. This is the error of Identity Politics.
With Identity Politics, if the Blacks wish to achieve equality, that equality is measured against what the majority race is achieving. But wait! In our nation, there is too much of a belief in the zero-sum game. If Blacks advance in comparison to whites, then by the zero-sum game's rules, that means that whites have lost something: status or standing or something in comparison to the Blacks. The same thinking would apply to women advancing in comparison to men, or for people with disabilities advancing with comparison to people without disabilities, or with Gen Z advancing when compared to older generations, or when rural citizens advance in comparison to urban and suburban citizens. And worst of all is the expression of Partisan Politics as a form of Identity Politics. The Republicans see a win for the Democrats as an automatic loss for their party. By all means available, the Republicans must thwart the efforts of the Democrats at scoring any win. And the Democrats can think the same and act the same towards Republicans. This is tearing apart our experiment with self-governance.
The problem with Identity Politics in applying the ideal of equality is the actual mentality of Identity Politics. If the public is led to believe in the idea of 'us against them', then we can not advance as a nation. Instead we can merely pivot in place like a person trying to walk while standing on a pogo stick: right foot advances only by pushing back the left foot, then when the left foot advances, the right foot falls back, repeated over and over through successive legislative sessions of pivot and pivot.
If Identity Politics bleeds over to the application of equity, over to systems meant to deliver equity, then equity too will fail the citizens/voters/people. The systems needed to face today's challenges can not simply group people together based on some external markers, regardless of the people's needs and desires, and then call it equity when offering equality within the Identity Groupings.
We must give up on the concept of Identity Politics. We must stop ourselves from identifying one's own success with the success of a group, or possibly more importantly, thinking the defeat for a group as being a defeat for oneself.
These are five lessons of rejection, lessons that tell us what not to ascribe to, what not to aspire to. We can reject equality, and we can reject Identity Politics as it applies to equity. Can we find in this graphic a positive lesson? Can we discern some directions and understandings about what democracy can be aiming to achieve?
Lesson 6: If we wish to rule out the quest for equality, then historians and sociologists tell us we must replace such a central promise with some other promise. Individual Equity can be such a replacement promise. We have the intelligence and we have the technology to offer Individual Equity. Examples are available from commercial businesses, and from some government initiatives, just as IEPs (Individual Education Plans) are offering in our school districts.
My own family shops at one grocery chain, mainly. That grocery chain no longer expects us to clip coupons out of the newspaper. Instead, they use our purchasing history to understand unique features about our household and future buying patterns. With that individualized data, mixed into the big data they collect on thousands of customers over millions of shopping experiences, the grocery chain can deliver to our household the coupons and the special announcements that meet our equity, individualizing what our household receives as different from the services provided to other customers.
With Individual Education Plans, a classroom teacher, or a diagnostic specialist, or a parent/family member can call for special attention for an individual student. The IEP calls together a support group for that one student, including the student as a fully endowed member in one's own support group. With diverse information and with promises of specific roles being fulfilled by the support group members, the student receives an insightful assessment, plans for effective services and instruction tailored to the student's needs and goals. Equity can be achieved in short-term measures and in reaching for long-term visions.
In another striking example from our governments, the America's with Disabilities Act provided for equity in the building of public spaces and buildings. When public servants and officials finally realized that our buildings were creating barriers to people who were living in wheelchairs, then we could see that the barriers were the problems! Disabilities are not causing problems, the barriers we erect as a society are causing the problems. By providing appropriate and dedicated parking, by designing ramp access, automated doors, and wide doorways as the norm, when providing bathrooms with adequate space, the ADA compliant buildings were actually serving all people better, not only advancing the needs and opportunities of the people with disabilities. Parents with children were better served. People temporarily dealing with painful joints were better served. People walking hand-in-hand were better served. Security measures were better served, and those working to serve the public were better served.
So many of the instances where people need equity are about looking to see what barriers are keeping them from their potential. Delivering services of equity improve the lives of all people. We need not aim to serve the majority and let the others catch up -- no, we can serve all when we think through the lens of Individual Equity.
Lesson 7: The ideal of equality from the 1770's seems to be well served by the assembly line that was adopted in the 1920's. The model of the assembly line became the way of approaching many issues throughout our society. Materially, the assembly line that Henry Ford incorporated into his car manufacturing provided equality to each vehicle: equal attention, equal parts, equal service. Analogously, for vast majorities who went through education systems, basically as children moved along the assembly lines in grades, the expectation was to have the same curriculum poured into their minds. If the education did not take, then the system supporters could blame the children for failing. The supporters could excuse themselves from seeing that the system was failing the children. Might similar types of self-imposed blindness have occurred for systems that delivered drivers' licenses, unemployment services, housing assistance, vaccinations; in government services and bureaucracies widely?
The seventh lesson is that we need a complete change to our way of thinking, and systemic changes throughout our society if we are to divorce ourselves from those first numbered five false promises that have formed a basis for democracy over the past 250 years. Each of us needs to stop thinking of people in their manufactured Identity Groupings, and stop ourselves from characterizing every challenge as 'us against them'. We are not living out a movie of bad guys versus good guys. We are not attempting to walk while standing on a pogo stick. We are in community with each other and we need to see that our community lives are very complex and each individual has potential and barriers that are absolutely unique from other individuals.
To lead us into this Systemic Change, I believe we need Anti-Partisan business and agency leaders, and elected officials. To define the Anti-Partisan, let us first give examples from our elected officials. Currently, the major parties are a refuge for politicians. They can find safety in numbers, and can turn to national leaders to layout some overarching platforms and legislative goals for their followers. Then the parties compromise with each other. This system works to build the power of the parties, and each candidate and elected official needs to commit to building the power of the parties. Party Politics is a subset of Identity Politics and relies upon Identity Groupings.
The Anti-Partisan candidate would not contribute to building up the power of any national party, but would rather work to build up the potentials of the individuals living in ones district. Driven by the goal of reaching Individual Potential, the Anti-Partisan candidate would work to set up systems of big data to understand how best to serve the individuals. Part of the data collected would be in understanding the barriers that intersect in people's lives, and design programs and legislation that better allows government services primarily to serve people who are living behind those intersections of barriers. No longer would programs be designed to serve the majority first (as defined by identity groups), but rather the primary aim would be programs that reach behind the barriers. If programs can genuinely and successfully serve the people who are "outliers" from the majority, who are living behind multiple barriers, then those programs will succeed in serving all citizens, all people. With the support of such systems, within community settings that amplify individual potentials, then each person can aim to reach ones goals, within individually determined time-frames, and we can see the rising tide in the rise of all individuals.
Similar outcomes can be extrapolated to workplaces and employment, and to the services provided by the non-profit world and by the government agencies.
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