Are Some People Better Than Others?

Let’s first start by rephrasing this title.

Are Some People Worse Than Others?

As images of serial killers, rapists, or Charles Manson enter your mind you may think, “Of course, there are some people who are worse than me.” Throughout this post, you’ll notice that it’s actually quite easy to imagine people who are worse than others, but take a moment to realize how the standards are raised to the nth degree when asked to imagine someone who is better than others.

Yet if you can agree that some people are worse than others, you’re inherently agreeing that some people are better than others.

But we haven’t really said anything of substance here. What do we even mean by better? Better is such a broad term.

Profession?

We can certainly say that some people are more effective in certain skills or smarter in some field. But I would argue that being proficient in a certain skill or even a vast array of skills, does not inherently make someone better.

Value can be found in virtually every skill; show me a chief engineer and I will show you a painter selling his work for thousands. Even the person who has excelled in a vast variety of skills may be outmatched by the person who has mastered one skill. A good example of this would be the warrior, who has mastered almost every style of combat, being killed by a kid who’s good with a sling shot.

So I would argue that profession is generally not the best way to measure the value of a person, because value can be found in almost everything. There’s no real common denominator here. The only time we may concede here is if we were to find someone who is indeed better at every skill compared to another; I think it will be quite difficult to find such a pair.

Wealth?

We could try to take this a step further and use wealth as the common denominator. Is a person who has amassed 6 million dollars better than one who has amassed 600? In an ideal world the person who has accumulated 6 million dollars has instilled more than 6 million dollars of value onto the world, because the public valued their services, goods, etc., more than they did 6 million dollars. But of course, this is in an ideal world where corruption, taxation, and coercion do not exist, therefore this is a blurry measurement as well.

Character

I think it is impossible to measure humans by any one variable, but instead it must be done through multiple variables that make up a person’s character.

Character is a common denominator; we may all not be lucky enough to experience wealth, but all of us share the capability to have good character. I would define good character as wisdom in actions. The thing that separates human beings from animals is the ability to reason. We have the ability to calculate our choices, predict outcomes to a certain degree, and act in ways that are beneficial to ourselves and others. But what does this look like in practice? How could you practically measure this?

Humans have various immediate interests, but we all tend to share the same long-term goal: to live in a world that is better tomorrow than it is today — where there is more prosperity, more good feelings, and more long-term interests realized for the greatest number of people. This distinction of long-term interests over short-term interests is important, as it is easy to succumb to our immediate passions, but when we look onward in time, we then act in more considerate ways.

The person with good character is wise enough to help themselves while helping others. One act at a time, they behave in ways that increase the overall well-being of society in the long-run. They ask, will my actions aid my long-term interests, will they conflict with the long term interests of others? If so, how can I create a more common goal with my peers? In the most scientific notation, the person with best character is the person who is able to maximize the realization of his own long-term interests while maximizing the realization of as many other people’s long-term interests as possible.

I briefly mentioned this observation above, that it is often quite easy to determine what is the worse action compared to finding what is the better action. The reason for this is that we have thousands of years worth of proven bad actions. The vast majority of times where we see murder, theft, rape, kidnapping, bigotry, etc., we see an outcome of sadness, pain, distress, mourning, etc. When it comes to what actions are best, it is much more difficult to determine, because we may still see some pain in every outcome, but we can only speculate as to how much of that pain could have been avoided.

This is what we should conclude: There is a vast range of possible worlds; we can say a person has good character as long as it can be reasonably argued that their actions will help create a slightly better possible world —a world in which more interests have been realized compared to before, in which the long-term outlook for the world is more prosperous, in which there is a profit of good feelings over bad feelings, and in which social cooperation has been increased. All of these things must be taken into account to calculate a person’s worth.

So when we see the person who acts before thinking, who cannot be trusted, who creates unnecessary confrontation, who never considers the interests of others, we have found a person who is worse than others. And therefore, we have some people who are better than others.