A circle is not a line: there must be a difference

I watched the news today with dismay. Raising the finger in class should be banned. After all, it promotes inequality. It is always the strivers, the strongest, who provide answers and therefore stand out above the rest. This would by definition be at the expense of the weaker. However, the difference must be eliminated.

The fact that the reverse is at the expense of the strongest is a consequence that no one considers unjust. That strange phenomenon of envy leads to strange redistribution mechanisms. We envy people who can do something better and we always want to limit that. Tall trees catch a lot of wind, so we better keep it short. It is easy to forget that the strongest trees are actually created by catching a lot of wind and withstanding storms.

Our society has changed enormously in just a few decades. From a society of inequality (which I also despise) we have moved to a system of equality, which was soon replaced by a system of equal rights and is gradually sliding towards a doctrine of absolute equality.

For example, I absolutely agree that men and women are equal, but not that they are equal. Just look at the biological differences and you know that equality is a utopia. Yet you hear more and more voices calling for gender-neutral toilets, a gender-neutral education for complete equality in the choice of gender. Not satisfied with your gender? No problem, it is exchangeable. Maybe it will even become normal not to remain one and the same gender your entire life? Now that's equality. Do we accept that this may jeopardize humanity's reproductive capacity?

We forget that equalization de facto always means a leveling down. The highest nails are hammered in to the level of the lowest. I never hear anyone talk about “everyone a maximum wage”, but “everyone a basic salary”. It is "to their credit" that representatives of extreme left parties earn "even" 1,700 euros. By the way, there are many people who have to get by on less, let alone have the “extra perks” that parliamentarians, even those on only 1,700 euros, have.

I think you already see this very strongly in our education. Where 30 to 40 years ago it was still a struggle to give everyone an equal right to a chance to obtain a diploma, this has declined to everyone having an equal right to a diploma, although there is a huge difference between the chance to obtain a diploma and the diploma itself.

At the same time, our education is already working on the next level. The waterfall system of ASO, TSO and BSO must disappear, they say. A broad first degree, in which everyone learns both Latin and woodworking. The clincher is a few hours of choice to stimulate the strongest with a few extra hours of mathematics or Latin. In higher education, people have already moved from annual exams to semesters and trimesters now seem too long. A few weeks of course and hop, immediate exam. To give everyone a better chance of success. The fact that diplomas are devalued in this way, especially on the international market, is tacitly accepted.

It is no wonder that the far left is on the rise. They are the perfect example of an equal society. Everyone equal. But everyone forgets that in an “all are equal” system, there is no freedom of choice anymore. An equal system for everyone has no choice but to produce mao-gray suits that, of course, must be gender neutral.

That's why you keep hearing calls for laws that limit bankers' bonuses, impose maximums on CEO wages and overtax the unbridled profits of entrepreneurs. Collective envy culture, that's what I call it.

Man is a strange creature in that respect. Everyone strives for respect. Now that respect is often tied to standing out just above the parapet on certain points. Research has already shown that given free choice, someone would rather have a bad wage than theirs peers, than a good wage that is less than his peers. Man therefore strives for equality for others that is preferably just a little lower than what we have ourselves. This immediately explains why communist systems also fail: those who have the opportunity escape equality, but impose it all the more on the rest. The fear of receiving less respect creates the urge for equality.

Man is a barrel full of contradictions. Because those who argue during the day for more equality in the form of flattening the tops, are the ones who cheer in the evening for the sports idols who can do more and strangely but who get ridiculously more for it than others. I find it striking that the two go hand in hand. We don't cheer en masse for the bobsledders who are better than others. We only cheer for those who are better and are rewarded disproportionately better for it. At least in sports.

If we were to treat sports the way we currently treat education, there would be regulations stating that the goal should be at least 16 meters wide, that the bar should always be a maximum of 10 cm lower than the height of the shortest high jumper and that the racket should be inversely proportional to size versus ranking.

However, if we create an entire society where it is not done to be better than someone else, we ignore the fact that we all have average progress that was achieved by people who were above average. That such an equality is as odious as a spartan society in which only the strongest are allowed to survive, is now like swearing in a church.

The latter is, by the way, an institution that is always quickly dismantled in an equal society. After all, the Christian faith is based on free choice on the basis of equality and is therefore at odds with the mandatory choice-free equality society. A religion can only exist through a choice between good and evil, which by definition are not equal. In my opinion, a society that opts for complete equality will always slide into a society in which norms and values ​​are flattened into a gray porridge that everyone can agree with and no contradictory behavior is considered unequal.

I don't choose the gray matter. I want to draw a line under the downward leveling, a line through the urge to level out all choices equally. Let us allow there to be differences. If humanity becomes a gray mass, it will always be my choice to be the colored dot in it. I'd rather go out alone to make a difference than be lost in a gray world. I choose a world with choices, equality but a difference between good and evil.