Equality and Evolution: Looking Back to My Preschool Education

A standard preschool education ensures that most children acquire an understanding of what it means to share. A turn is taken with reasonable time to enjoy and that turn is transferred to a classmate. With the exception of a little patience being tested, everyone ends up equal and happy. Nap time resolves all grievances, if any.

It's a shame that so many different forces work to corrupt this foundational lesson. As we mature, the realization sets in that the world simply doesn't cater to equality. Religion, geography, racial and socioeconomic prejudice, political affiliation, gender, sexuality; all of these and more have been the catalysts for the denial of equality from one group of people to the other for almost as long as humans have been in existence.

I blame evolution.

There is a reason why preschool teachers must teach the lesson of sharing and this is because being selfish comes naturally to human beings. If you happen to lay claim to what you believe to be a good thing, there is an instinctual reluctance to giving that good thing away.

Tens of thousands of years ago, humans were generally evenly matched across the board. Everyone was simply doing their best to stay warm, eat and not get eaten. Resources changed everything.

With access to more resources, early geographically privileged people were able to spend less time worrying about survival and more time advancing culturally.  This is why early European and Egyptian societies were able to grow and become so prosperous--all while conquering and enslaving others along the way--and the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea remain some of the most primitive people on earth.

With resources came power. As history illustrates, power is something humans have exploited for a very long time to maintain preferential advantage over other people.

In America today, gay marriage is the present struggle for equality being waged. Clearly we've come a long way if this is what we're arguing about now, but it personally insights a reaction of, "Really?"

Globally, people who have denied other people equality under the law have always been viewed as being on the wrong side of history. But, we are human. Again, a huge part of being human is that we are programmed to be selfish. If one group of people refuses to share with another group of people, regardless of their reasoning, a metaphorical preschool teacher ultimately steps in to remind us of what we learned when we were four.  

I go back to the theory of evolution as it relates to equality. Again, if you happen to lay claim to what you believe to be a good thing, there is an instinctual reluctance to giving that good thing away, especially to a group of people stereotyped as perversions, deviants or rampant sinners.

Over thousands of years we have evolved to protect that which we believe ensures our survival and protects our preferential advantage. There is only one problem with this way of thinking today.

It's 2012.

Next to some viruses, humans are the fastest evolving creatures on Earth yet, for many, keeping up with the progression of thought and understanding is simply something that cannot be expected. Instinct and belief systems overrule.

I am grateful for people who have transcended their belief systems to stand in the face of inequality and say, no. For as difficult as it may be, what is right is right and giving preferential treatment to one group versus another is and forever will be wrong.


Stand on which ever side you choose, but remember the history that has already been written.