On Equality

This article reflects on true freedom as the noble act of giving honour, not claiming it. In embracing our smallness before the Vast, we reclaim awe, gratitude, and rightful hierarchy.

On Equality: The Smallness That Crowns Us

What I wish to explore with you begins in the familiar terrain of our human attention. Of all that we possess, it is our capacity for attention that places us in a peculiar station within existence. We are that part of creation which turns, which sees, which witnesses. We stand before the vastness and, in that standing, a miracle unfolds: the vastness turns to face itself.

To stand thus — aware, awake — is the root of our nobility. It is the birth of awe, and awe is the root of worship. We have been made for this: to witness, to know, to stand small before the One Who is Vast.

Yet in this same attention lurks a twin possibility. When we stand before the immensity, we may behold it with wonder — or recoil from it in terror. What makes the difference? Trust. When we trust that the vastness means us no harm, we find awe. When trust collapses, we are left with fear.

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Behind trust lies gratitude. To be grateful is to know that all that I am, all that I have, came to me from other than me. It is to see the other not as rival but as benefactor. Gratitude gives birth to trust; trust gives birth to awe; awe returns us to our place: small before the Vast, subordinate before the Greater.

This station — subordinate, small — is not a curse but a blessing. It is the soil in which gratitude ripens, the ground from which awe grows. The Prophets came to remind us of this blessing: to stand as the small before the Great, to see the vastness not as threat but as sign.

But something has gone awry. Since the Enlightenment, we have grown suspicious of subordination. We have raised ourselves — first mankind, then the individual — until we imagine we owe no allegiance to anything higher. We speak of equality but mean sameness. We flatten hierarchy not to protect the weak but to make ourselves unanswerable.

From Marx to Freud to postmodern thought, we have learned to see every hierarchy as oppression. We imagine there is nothing sacred, nothing higher, nothing to which we must bow. In our homes, our schools, our places of worship, we deny honour where honour is due. The small ones — the young, the inexperienced — seek to make themselves large by refusing to see any greater.

Yet the backlash to this suspicion has been no better. In answer to the flattening came the reactionaries: loud, clumsy voices calling for hierarchy’s return but forgetting its heart. They wish to restore authority without recalling that authority must serve, must shelter, must uplift.

There is truth in the suspicion. Hierarchies have indeed been misused. Privilege has dominated. Men have oppressed women; the rich have exploited the poor; empires have trampled the weak. So our scepticism is not without cause. But the cure is not to level the landscape until there is neither mountain nor valley. It is not justice to make child equal to parent, pupil to teacher, follower to guide.

To destroy distinction is to rob both the small and the great. The small must be grown; the great must cultivate. When each denies the other, both wither.

Submission — the yielding of self to something higher — is not our enemy but our path. The eye is not made to look inward at itself; it is made to see outward. To live absorbed in our own significance is a perversion of our nature. Our gift is to find the other significant — to witness, to grant honour, to give place.

Who is greater: the king or the one who crowns him? The giver of honour is greater than the one who wears the crown. To grant significance is the sign of true nobility.

So do not be stingy with respect. Call your elders by titles of esteem. Greet your teacher with due courtesy. Name the learned one ‘doctor’, the master craftsman ‘ustadh’, the elder ‘sidi’. In this there is no diminishment of you. By giving honour, you affirm your own smallness — and that smallness is your crown.

If we wonder why our homes fracture, why our schools decay, why our worship grows cold — we may find the root here: each one demands their own significance and refuses to grant it to the other. We stand alone because we will not bow.

Yet we were not made to stand alone. We were made to give significance, to find the other significant, to stand before existence not as lords but as witnesses. The vastness is not there to crush us but to astonish us.

May we have the courage to stand small before the Vast.
May we find the generosity to grant significance where it is due.
May we find our place by giving others theirs.

Reflection: Who in your life deserves to hear from you a word of honour today? Who do you call ‘sidi’, ‘ustadh’, ‘teacher’? Who could you make significant by a simple gesture, a simple word? Grant it — and see what it returns to you.