Who said we're equal?

A question left over from the introduction

In the introduction we looked at a house with three floors. The first is the heart: the strong inner pull to find joy in giving love. The second is norms: how we treat others and what place we take among people. The third is skills and work. And we saw that people put far too much effort into the third floor. Then they wonder why the house shakes.

But it wasn't always like this. People once set their priorities in a different way. And, as I mentioned, they took them from the same place the modern idea of equality grew from.

In his Second Treatise of Government (1689), John Locke wrote that even in the state of nature — with no state and no police — a law of nature applies. That law is reason. And it teaches that all people are equal and independent, so no one should harm another. Why are all equal? Because all people are the work of one Maker.

So equality, norms and the idea of what love should be all rested on one shared “higher” thing. Then came secularisation. The formula stayed, but what it stood on disappeared. “Equal before God” became “equal before the law”.

And together with the “higher” thing, we lost three things:

1. A reason why we are equal — which also gave us order and humility.
2. Norms that don't depend on a vote.
3. A model to measure our own love against.

I'm not suggesting we go back to blind faith. I'm suggesting something else: let's see if we can find this “higher” thing without asking anyone to take it on trust.

1. Why the old proofs don't convince

The classic proofs of God have holes in them. And if they didn't convince you, that's not your problem.

According to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, Americans who don't belong to any religion most often explain it by doubts about the teaching itself. Not scandals, not church politics. At least, that's what 6 in 10 of them said. So people are pushed away less by believers than by the arguments.

What do all these proofs have in common? They work well for people who already believe. They support a believer and don't convince a sceptic. Everyone stays where they were, and there's no real conversation.

2. Why and how to study what we can't see

Why do we need such a philosophical, seemingly impractical topic as the First Cause at all? An imperfect comparison will help: a visit to the doctor.

You come to the doctor with a fever. The doctor can't see the virus. He guesses: looks like flu. If it's flu, there should be certain other symptoms, and certain medicine should help. At the same time, he compares your state with a model of a healthy person and prescribes something. It helped — the diagnosis was right. It didn't — he looks for another explanation. A mechanic, a detective and any scientist work the same way. None of them says “first, believe”. They all say “let's assume, and check”.

So when we look at problems in ourselves, in our relationships or in society, we compare — knowingly or not — what we have with a picture in our head: “how should it be?”. Then we guess at causes. Without asking about the model, and without checking in practice, our problems are very hard or impossible to solve.

There's one more reason. Separate facts about life don't add up to a picture on their own. A worldview has to be whole, not a set of disconnected observations. And it becomes whole when it includes a view of the First Cause, because that is what decides how all these facts connect.

That's why I suggest asking “where did everything come from?” — to look for that model. Or we can start with “what would the Source of everything have to be like?”. Then work out what the world and humans would have to be like. And compare it with what science already knows.

A warning straight away: if a hypothesis holds up, that's not yet proof. Sometimes several models explain the same thing. So we'll compare models with each other and see which one explains more.

3. What the Source would have to be like

Let's start with the world itself. It is amazingly reliable. If the kettle doesn't boil, you check the socket. You don't think physics took the day off. The same laws work in your kitchen and on the Rosetta probe, which reached a comet after ten years in space and put a lander on it. Unlike state laws, nobody voted for these. We didn't create the order in the world. We only discover it.

If everything that works has its own patterns, it makes sense to ask: what would the thing everything comes from have to be like? The logic is simple. Whatever shows up in an effect had to be in the cause, at least as a possibility. An oak looks nothing like an acorn, but everything in the oak was already in the acorn as potential. So if the world has a certain structure, the Source would have to contain these features — or at least the potential for them.

So let's do what the doctor does. Let's look at the “body” — the world itself — and try to understand what stands behind it.

Inner and outer

The first thing I see: everything has something invisible and something visible. Say you decide to make tea. You can't see the decision itself, but your hand is already reaching for the kettle. You have thoughts, character, a mind. You can't weigh or count them. And you have a body, through which all of this shows up in actions — and those we can see. The inner side is about quality, the outer side about quantity. The same with a plant: its genetic programme and its leaves. And with a company: its culture and its office. And you can't separate them.

Then the question comes up: where did this come from? If everything in an effect had to be in the cause, at least as potential, then I think the Source must have something similar too. Some inner structure of quality, and an energy from which form — including material form — arises.

Pairs

Second. When I lived in Asia, people drew my attention to the fact that everything exists in pairs. Plus and minus in the atom, stamen and pistil, male and female. In the East they're called yang and yin. Westerners for some reason often take this as a balance between good and evil. But in Eastern philosophy, good is harmony between yang and yin, and evil is disharmony between them. That's a slightly different topic, but an important one.

And again the same question: where does this pairing come from? If the Source had only one side, where would the other come from? So it makes sense to assume both were in it from the start.

Nothing repeats

Third. For all these shared laws, nothing in the world repeats exactly. Even identical twins, with the same DNA, have different fingerprints. And when the first cat was cloned in the US in 2001, the clone came out with a completely different coat from its genetic “mother”. Now think: a factory makes identical parts, because it's simpler and cheaper. So why would the Source make something different every time? A sceptic will say: it's just chance in the cells. Maybe. But another answer comes to my mind: that's how someone behaves who loves each one separately.

Why create at all?

And here we reach an even deeper question: why create anything at all? Let's look at people. A mother cooks a festive dinner, a friend spends a week making a present, a musician writes a song for the one he loves. We create most when we want to make someone happy — and are happy doing it ourselves. Of course, this is an observation about people, and carrying it over to the Source is only an assumption. But as a hypothesis it seems the strongest to me: at the very depth of the Source lies the heart. The same pull to find joy in giving love that I spoke about at the start.

And as we saw in the introduction, love without order soon turns into chaos. So the Source needs reason and law. That's where the reliability of the world's laws comes from — the kettle, the socket, Rosetta. And for love to have someone to go to, creativity is needed. The very fact that the world exists already says: the Source creates.

A symbol and an image

One more observation is left. Everything that exists reflects the Source, but in different ways. A stone obeys laws. A plant grows. An animal feels. But only humans, as far as we know, ask “why?”, love consciously and create what didn't exist before. It's a bit like a painting and a painter's child. In the painting you see his hand; the child looks like him. So the world reflects the Source as a symbol, and a human as an image. That's why a human ends up at the centre of everything created.

What to call such a Source is up to you. Some will say God, others the Universe, the First Cause or the Absolute. I don't want a word to get in the way of our search. For me it's God, so that's what I'll say from here on, and you can put your own word in your head. You don't have to take anything on trust here, because next we'll test all of it.

4. Four laws of living things

A warning first. We drew the features of the Source from the world itself. So we can't test the hypothesis on that same world — that would be going in a circle. The real test comes in Part 7, on data we haven't touched yet. Here we look at something else: if these features really are built into everything, how do they work in our lives? Four laws follow from them.

The law of pairs

We already spoke about inner and outer, and about pairs, so here is just a reminder. The invisible leads, the visible expresses, and together they are one whole. And two sides complete each other, like initiative and sensitivity in every character.

So a nice front with nobody behind it, and a rich inner world that never shows outside, are two ways of breaking the same law.

The law of exchange

Nothing alive exists on its own. You breathe out what trees breathe in. In any healthy exchange, one side starts and the other responds. And there is a third part, just as important: a shared purpose. Exchange without a shared purpose loses its point and its value.

Think of one of your days. You open your phone to find something specific — you start. You open it “for a minute” because you had nothing to do, and come to your senses two hours later. Why? Because the algorithm started, and you responded to its purpose — and lost your energy and time. Same phone, but you feel completely different afterwards.

The law of four positions

When two sides come together around a shared purpose, something new appears — some result. And the result resembles those who made it. The purpose, the two sides and the result: four positions. Two parents come together for some reason and have a child, and the child resembles them in more than genes. Paul Amato's study followed American married couples and their adult children for almost two decades. It showed that children whose parents divorced were noticeably more likely to divorce later themselves. And the children took on the very way their parents built relationships.

And Rand Conger's long-term study followed three generations of families. Children whose parents treated them harshly and aggressively later treated their own children the same way. So we pass on even what we couldn't stand as children.

So if your child, your team or your project took on your worst habit, that's just what was supposed to happen: what you create resembles you. And the best way to change something is to change yourself.

The law of growth

Everything alive grows in stages: seed, sprout, fruit. You can't skip a stage. But humans have one difference: the body grows up by itself, and character doesn't. A forty-year-old body is ordinary. Forty-year-old maturity is much rarer.

Inner growth depends on the conclusions you draw yourself and then live by. Others can hold the ladder, but you have to climb it. So, as we see, time itself hardly changes our inner world. What changes it most are deep experiences and the life lessons we actually take in.

5. What a human would have to be like

The second consequence is about humans. If God (or the Universe, if you prefer) has a heart, reason and law, and creativity, then the human who reflects him most fully would have to be:

• a being of the heart, who wants most of all to love and be loved, not to have;
• a being of norms, who feels bad breaking them even when no one is watching;
• a being of creativity, for whom simply existing is not enough.

Notice: these are the same three floors from the introduction. And their order matters. Norms are needed so that love can be relied on. And a profession or skills are the way your love reaches people.

So what about equality? In the introduction we said a human always holds two positions at once, and the first is the one who receives. Language, body, love, knowledge — you received them first, and only then began to give. And if we all receive first of all from one Source, and from the laws of nature that this Source brought about, then equality has a basis again. It's the equality of those who receive first. And it gives us both order and humility.

6. Who am I? Three answers

So equality has something to stand on again. But remember, that's not all we lost. There were also norms that don't depend on a vote, and a model to measure our own love against. And here's what's interesting: if we all come from one Source, then both norms and the model of love have to be looked for in something universal. So the question about equality turns into a question about each of us: who am I?

Now we can go back to the question the introduction started with, and ask it differently. Forget the tired “What do you want to be?” and replace it with “Who are you, and who are you called to become?”

Let's bring together everything we found. If a human reflects the Source, then “Who am I?” sounds different: what in the Source has to unfold in me?

And we found three things. Inner and outer, which can't be separated. Two sides that complete each other (yang and yin). And creativity, from which the world came. Each gives one side of our identity. And uniqueness shows that each person finds these answers in their own way. And there is an order to them.

You may have noticed we have two sets of three. In Part 5 — heart, norms and creativity: what a human is like inside. Here — the relationships in which this has to unfold: with yourself, with another person and with the world. It's really the same person, seen first from the inside and then through their relationships.

The first answer: a whole person

The most basic pair is inner and outer. So the first step of our growth has to be for mind and body to become one whole. The inner side matters more, and the body should be a strong and respected partner, but not the master. The inner side here means our longing for something higher — for truth, beauty, goodness. And at the centre of this unity there can't be mood and gain. There have to be the same laws the world rests on — or God.

The body has its needs: food, sleep, safety, pleasure. They're loud, but once met, they go quiet. The fifth slice of pizza doesn't please you like the first. But truth, beauty, goodness and meaning don't wear out over time.

Maturity, discipline, responsibility — every self-help book talks about them. The difference is what they're for. Not for productivity, but so that the inner and outer in you become one whole.

And this can be measured. The Dunedin study (New Zealand) followed 1,000 children from birth to age 32. Self-control in childhood predicted health, money and even criminal records in adulthood — regardless of intelligence or family wealth.

The second answer: a person in a couple and a family

The second pair is two sides that complete each other. In one person, it's the balance between initiative and sensitivity, firmness and gentleness. But this pair fully unfolds between people — in the unity of a man and a woman.

And here order matters. A strong family isn't two halves waiting for the other to complete them. It's two mature enough people, each with inner and outer already grown to the point where they can live for the other's good and care without expecting anything back. From both sides. And they come together around a shared centre higher than both — again, God. Then, by the law of four positions, new life appears, and the children inherit not only genes but the very atmosphere of that unity.

You could say the family is the first school of the heart. This is where a person learns to love as a child, as a brother or sister, and later as a husband or wife, and as a father or mother.

What does the data say? The Harvard Study of Adult Development, running since 1938, found that satisfaction with relationships at 50 predicted health in old age better than cholesterol levels. And economists Grover and Helliwell found that marriage raises life satisfaction about twice as much for those whose spouse is also their best friend.

So in relationships that drain you, there are often two people, but no shared centre or purpose.

The third answer: a person who loves the world and creates

Earlier we noticed that the Source creates, and that only a human resembles it as an image. If so, a human inherits its creativity too. Maybe that's why simply existing isn't enough for us. We want to leave something behind.

But notice what position a human ends up in. A human relates to the world roughly the way the Creator relates to the human. From that position, to take the lead means to take care. The way a father looks after a garden his children will play in.

And this brings us to uniqueness. Every person has their own mix of abilities, experience and outlook, so each takes part in this relationship with the world in their own way. Here, at last, a profession appears. And here a profession answers the question: who needs me, and what can I give that no one else can?

If there's a heart behind this creativity, it becomes service. If not, it turns into extraction — and the world pays for it later.

The order of the three answers

You don't go through these answers one by one, like steps, forgetting the last. They grow together, like branches of one tree. But a tree has a root. A family can carry exactly as much as the people in it are mature. Work can be service exactly as much as there's heart in it. So you have to start with the first step: growing a mature person whose soul and body are one. Sadly, that's the step modern education skips most often.

7. The test: three models of a human

Knowingly or not, modern society lives with a different model of a human. Let's call it “the consumer”: a being that looks for as much gain and pleasure as possible. That's the model the question “What do you want to be?” grows out of. Today's hypothesis gives another model: a human as a being of the heart. And there's a third: the evolutionary one. We are social beings, and relationships and cooperation helped our ancestors survive. Where these models predict different things, we can test them.

In short: a long life is linked most strongly to relationships, not money. Spending on others brings more joy than spending on yourself. Basic moral rules are the same in all 60 cultures studied. And people with no sense of purpose live noticeably shorter lives.

Notice the evolution column. The consumer model didn't get a single row right. The evolutionary one, in most rows, predicts the same as the heart model. The authors of the 60-cultures study explain shared norms by evolution: groups that cooperated survived better.

What follows from this? This data doesn't prove God. Most of it is correlation, not direct experiments. But it shows quite convincingly that the consumer model is wrong.

But I don't see a conflict between evolution and the heart model. I think they answer different questions. Evolution explains the process: how life step by step became more complex. That fits well with the law of growth we talked about. But it doesn't explain where, at the very start, the potential for consciousness and love came from. So if beings able to love appeared in the world, that potential had to be in the Source.

So between “evolution without a Source” and “evolution with a Source”, this data doesn't choose. The question here is different: which picture explains more. And each person looks for that answer themselves.

8. Why knowing isn't enough

It's good to talk about these things. But knowledge alone guarantees nothing.

Two people can understand these laws equally well, and one of them will still scroll his feed at two in the morning, knowing how it ends. Will still hurt the person he loves most. Will still repeat the mistake his own conscience warned him about.

To some extent, we know how the world works. We see that a human is made for love. And we still live otherwise. It's not about not knowing. This gap has its own causes, and they are very similar in every culture in the world.

That's the next lecture — [title to be confirmed].

A week-long experiment

You can believe all this or not. But give it a chance and try it in practice.

1. An exchange diary. For seven days, after every meaningful or long conversation, write down: did you have more energy or less? Who started? Did you share one purpose?
2. One gift to someone else. Once this week, spend a small sum or an hour of your time on someone, expecting nothing for yourself. Write down how you felt that evening.
3. The conclusion. At the end of the week, compare: which model of a human explained your week better?

Questions for reflection

1. Where did the rules you live by come from? Could you justify even one of them without saying “that's how it's done”?
2. Where do your inner and outer sides differ the most?
3. Which relationships give you strength? What shared purpose stands behind them?
4. What can you give people that no one else can?
5. Who have you received the most from in your life? Have you told that person?

Sources