Social Equality: A Concept That Has Been Completely Ignored by the Majority of People

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Thomas Jefferson, United States Declaration of Independence

This single quote can be viewed as the very basis for modern views of social equality. Unfortunately, a very small minority of modern people apply this concept to the positions they take on every single issue our society faces today. This could be attributed to a much larger number of people misinterpreting what constitutes these certain unalienable rights and how they can be determined. However, this doesn't seem to stop these very same individuals from citing social equality while constructing their arguments to support their positions.

In order to determine these rights, we must understand what makes them self-evident. To do that, we first refer to the phrase "endowed by their Creator". The term "Creator" was used in lieu of "God" as a way to accommodate any religious belief (or lack thereof). No matter your beliefs, in some manner, it can be acknowledged that we each are created. It is at this point that we are endowed with these rights. In that sense, these rights are naturally granted to us and, therefore, can be understood as natural rights.

So, now that we know when these rights are granted, we need to understand what they actually are. Once we recognize that these rights are granted to us when we are created, we can also recognize that we would also possess them even in our most natural state absent any external influences. An accurate example of this natural state that we could imagine today would consist of being stranded, alone, on a deserted island. Alone on this island, we could agree that an individual would be absent of external influences and would be absolutely free to perform any action without impunity.

Any action the individual is capable of executing on this island would be considered a natural right. For example, the individual would be capable of saying anything they please, practice the religion of their choosing, collect the unclaimed resources as their property, travel around the island (and even leave provided the resources are available), and more. The possible actions of the individual would really only be limited by the resources available to them. This is absolute freedom. This is the true meaning of liberty.

With our understanding of rights, now we are able to shift our focus on equality. If we are all created equal with these rights, then every person in the world has these rights and no one person's rights outweigh those of another. That would mean that, along with resource availability, the only limitation on an individual's rights are the rights of another individual. Therefore, absolute social equality requires the natural rights of every individual to be recognized and the rights of any single person cannot be considered over the rights another.

This is a difficult concept to accept for a lot of people. The biggest hurdle for most people seems to be accepting that their emotions cannot be recognized as justification for limiting the rights of others. They often ignore that this recognition would require them to be superior to the others. Superiority is not consistent with an equal society. Some emotions can be difficult to accept, and it is understandable when people want to find an easy way to resolve them, but we must always remind ourselves what our rights actually are and the implications of our proposed resolutions if we truly want to remain a free and equal society.