Are We All Equal?

It's been a while since I have written something.

Making time during the quarantine has been difficult. As ironic as it sounds, it's true. When the lockdown was announced I had 2 good projects with different companies going on and the lockdown impacted both of them.

I had never felt this anxious in my life before. I had planned out the next 1 year of my life because I was truly going to be free (graduated) and could do whatever I liked. I wanted to go on a year-long vacation and learn and understand new things through my experience. All of these plans are tossed off currently.

The whole pandemic situation has bought out a very different side of the world. A side which we pretended as if it never existed but deep down we could see it in everyone. It was like the Earth and the Humans had gone through a break-up and Humans were in the denial stage where they couldn't accept the reality.

One such side was INEQUALITY.

It was very apparent how unequal each human being is. We couldn't hide it anymore. We saw how the world system collapsed for the lower segment of the society while the upper segment could sit at home and tweet and post about their new cooking recipe online.

I am not writing this to bash the upper segment. I am writing this for 2 reasons:

Many people were surprised to see the world was a jungle and where we were living animals and the rules of the game didn't change - "Survival of the fittest".
People with privilege felt guilty about being privileged.

Survival Of The Fittest

When we were Chimpanzees, fitness was defined by your skills to hunt and feed your family and keep them safe.

Today, we don't have to hunt. We have to prove that we are worth having food and a good life. You can't decide your worth. The world decides this for you, the place you're born decides for you, the country you live decides for you. As the food and good lifestyle came closer and accessible to humans, the worth to access it became farther and difficult.

Today, a piece of paper validates the kind of life you lead for the next 50 years. It sounds like a great security net but, what if you don't have the means to afford this piece of paper?

You end up slaving your way on daily wages - to save up - to buy a ticket for your kid into the system.

Privileged Guilt

As one of my friends says - "Humans thrive on the differences"

Competition is so much ingrained in us that we can't stand someone's success. If we can't succeed, let's pull them down to make them feel bad about their success.

A lot of my friends in my friend circle come from financially well off families and most of them feel guilty about being privileged. It surprises me each time when I see this guilt. One of my friends shared on Instagram - "My mother wants to buy me an XYZ (something expensive) and I feel like I don't deserve it".

It has almost become a norm to share the wrongdoings from the world news to show their solidarity and question - "Why *social animals* are behaving like animals?". They forget that given any individual from the wrongdoing would switch their place with them if given the choice.

Because remember - even they are looking for the ticket into the system which you already have.

Those were my 2 cents of realisation about inequality in our existing system. I am sharing a short story which I had written a while ago. I hope you enjoy reading it.

If you have a bat, you could form your own team and your team could bat first. ⁣ It felt so unfair but everyone complied with it because playing a match was more important to us than the inequality because of owning a bat.⁣ ⁣ All this starts very early in our lives. These differences. These differences is never accounted when you win or lose. You don't get extra runs or points in the game just because you never had a bat to practice. You have to play and win, only then your words will even be heard. If not, your difference will become an excuse that you are giving to escape the shame of failure. ⁣ ⁣ Isn't it very brutal? How we have build a system where everyone competes in a race of equality but from inequal starting points. The differences will always exists, inequality will always exists. ⁣ ⁣ Don't get me wrong, thinking inequality is bad. For many people it's a sense of purpose, sense of benchmark that they work hard towards and get through it on their own efforts, just to show others - If they could do it, you could do it too. ⁣ ⁣ So, we all will face inequality in different forms but remember you didn't stop playing cricket just because it wasn't your bat. Play the match with someone else's bat until you win it. Later you can thank the inequality for making you a "match winner" and not a "bat owner".

I am not a writer. I just write to express and document my thoughts and realisations. So when you read and find any edits, please drop me a DM.

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Thank You