At some point, as social movements progressed in the West, “equality” became the holy word. Every movement, every cause, every speech since the French Revolution seems to orbit around it. Equal pay, equal rights, equal opportunity; and sure, all of that sounds noble enough.
But somehow, it feels like equality has mutated into something else entirely. Not equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome. And that, I think, is where we started to lose the plot.
It’s as if we’ve decided that everyone must have the exact same light, burning at the same wattage, pointed in the same direction. No one too bright, no one too dim. Just a society of perfectly average bulbs, humming along in a kind of soft, bureaucratic glow. And the result of something like that isn’t fairness; it’s flattening.
We’ve seen this play out in schools, workplaces, even community programs. The goal stops being to help each person reach their potential, and instead becomes keeping everyone at roughly the same level of mediocrity. Because if someone shines a little brighter, someone else might feel dimmer by comparison. And we certainly can’t have that.
But here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as a “lesser” gift. There’s just differences. Some people are built for precision, others for chaos. Some for logic, others for laughter. The janitor who knows every kid’s name and remembers their birthdays adds more to a community than half the CEOs of the world. But that doesn’t mean the CEO’s gift doesn’t matter too. It just means they’re different kinds of light.
What we really need (and I say this knowing full well how messy it is) is equity, not equality. Equity isn’t sameness; it’s fairness with a little bit of wisdom mixed in. It says, let’s make sure everyone has the space and the chance to bring their best into the world. But it doesn’t demand that we all bring the same thing.
Simone Weil once wrote that “equality is a kind of mathematical statement about quantities, but the soul doesn’t measure itself in numbers.” She was right. Human value doesn’t sit neatly in spreadsheets or quotas or standardized tests. It lives in the messy space between us; in what we give to one another that can’t be tallied.
Of course, the idea of equity gets complicated fast. The word itself has been hijacked by think-tanks and HR departments to dish out whatever serves the day’s agenda. But in its purest form, equity is about giving each person what they need to flourish, not what someone else has. It’s about saying: we don’t all have to climb the same mountain, but everyone deserves a path worth walking.
There’s a beautiful sort of humility in that; and maybe a touch of grace too. It asks us to see people not as competitors or victims, but as co-participants in something larger than ourselves. To look at someone else’s gift without jealousy, and at our own without shame.
The fact of the matter is; we don’t all have to shine at the same strength. But we do all need the chance to shine without someone coming along with a dimmer switch labeled “fairness.” That kind of fairness doesn’t lift anyone up; it just keeps everyone comfortably dull.
Maybe that’s what we’ve lost most in this age of equality: the simple reverence of noticing. Seeing someone for what they are, not what they lack. Letting their gift be their own, without needing to make it yours.
We don’t need everyone to be the same. We just need everyone to be seen.
Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.
Cheers, friends.