Bell Curve

5 28 Living Together A Place for Everyone 529Such arguments make sense to us, as far as they go. After the experienceof the twentieth century, it is hard to imagine that anyone still disagreeswith them. But there are other issues, transcending the efficiency of aneconomy. Our central concern since we began writing this book is howpeople might live together harmoniously despite fundamental individualdifferences. The answer lies outside economics.The initial purpose of this chapter is to present for your considerationanother way of thinking about equality and inequality. It representsan older intellectual tradition than social democracy or even socialism.In our view, it is also a wiser tradition, more attuned to the way in whichindividuals go about living satisfying lives and to the ways in which societiesthrive. The more specific policy conclusions to which we thenturn cannot be explained apart from this underpinningTHINKING ABOUT EQUALITY AS AN IDEALFor thousands of years, great political thinkers of East and West tried toharmonize human differences. For Confucius, society was like his conceptionof a family-extensions of a ruling father and obedient sons, devotedhusbands and faithful wives, benign masters and loyal servants.People were defined by their place, whether in the family or the community.So too for the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers: placewas all. All the great religious traditions define a place for everyone, ifnot on earth then in heaven.Society was to be ruled by the virtuous and wise few. The everydaybusiness of the community fell to the less worthy multitude, with themost menial chores left to the slaves. Neither the Greek democrats northe Roman republicans believed that "all men are created equal." Nordid the great Hindu thinkers of the Asian subcontinent, where one'swork defined one's caste, which in turn circumscribed every other aspectof life. The ancients accepted the basic premise that people differ fundamentallyand importantly and searched for ways in which people couldcontentedly serve the community (or the monarch or the tyrant or thegods), rather than themselves, despite their differences. Philosophers arguedabout obligations and duties, what they are and on whom they fall.In our historical era, political philosophers have argued instead aboutrights. They do so because they are trying to solve a different problem.The great transformation from a search for duties and obligations to asearch for rights may be dated with Thomas Hobbes, writing in the mid-1600s about a principle whereby all people, not just the rich and wellborn, might have equal rights to liberty.' Everyone, said Hobbes, is entitledto as much liberty in gratifying his desires as he is willing to allowothers in gratifying theirs.'" People differ, acknowledged Hobbes, butthey do not differ so much that they may justifiably be deprived of libertyby differing amounts. In the modernview that Hobbes helpedshape,individuals freely accept constraints on their own behavior in exchangefor ridding themselves of the dangers of living in perfect freedom, henceperfect anarchy.14' The constraints constitute lawful government.Hobbes believed that the only alternatives for human society are, ineffect, anarchy or absolute monarchy. Given those alternatives, saidHobbes, a rational person would choose a monarch to ensure the equalityof political rights, rather than take his chances with perfect freedom.His successor in English political thought, John Locke, did not acceptthe Hobbesian choice between despotism and anarchy. He conceivedof people in a state of nature as being in "a State also of Equality, whereinall the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more thanan~ther,"~ and sought to preserve that condition in actual societiesthrough a strictly limited government. What Locke propounded is especiallypertinent here because it was his theory that the AmericanFounders brought into reality.But with Locke also arose a confusion, which has grown steadily withpassing time. For most contemporary Americans who are aware of Lockeat all, he is identified with the idea of man as tabula rasa, a blank slateon which experience writes. Without experience, Locke is often believedto have said, individuals are both equal and empty, a blank slateto be written upon by the environment. Many contemporary libertari.ans who draw their inspiration from Locke are hostile to the possibilityof genetic differences in intelligence because of their conviction thatequal rights apply only if in fact people at birth are tabulae rasae. Withthat in mind, consider these remarks about human intelligence fromLocke's An Essay on Humn Understanding:Now that there is such a difference between men in respect of theirunderstandings, I think nobody who has had any conversation withhis neighbors will question. . , . Which great difference in men's intellectuals,whether it rises from any defect in the organs of the bodyparticularly adapted to thinking, or in the dullness or untractablenessof those faculties for want of use, or, as some think, in the natural dif-