"Even those who pursue absolute freedom and dominance initially feel a sense of guilt rooted in equality."
This is a piercing, profoundly philosophical insight. We often think of equality as a "dogma"—an artificial social norm crafted by humanity through long trials and errors. We tend to view it as an artificial brake installed through school education, religion, and morality textbooks. Consequently, it feels as though raw human nature is driven purely by selfishness and the desire to dominate, while equality is merely an artificial construct designed by society to suppress those urges.
However, modern evolutionary anthropology and neuroscience offer a completely unexpected answer: equality is far closer to an "instinct" (biological hardware) than a dogma. Yet, this instinct is not born out of some noble, lofty morality. It is human nature’s most powerful, ruthlessly calculated "survival instinct."
The Inequity Aversion Mechanism Operating Before Education
If equality were merely a socially constructed dogma, then very young children who have not yet been socialized should display pure selfishness and an obsession with inequality. Yet, psychological experiments conducted on three- to four-year-olds reveal the exact opposite.
When rewards are distributed unequally, children protest vehemently. What is fascinating is that they reject inequality even when they are the ones receiving more, collectively insisting, "We have to share it equally!" Even capuchin monkeys, among the primates closest to humans, react with fury—throwing a piece of cucumber back at the researcher—if they see their neighbor in the next cage receiving a delicious grape. The fact that animals and children who have never learned the concept of dogma rage against inequality is definitive proof that this is a biological program deeply etched into the brain through evolution.
In fact, when a research team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scanned the brains of individuals using fMRI while distributing money unequally, they found that even when individuals profited by receiving more money, the insula—the brain region associated with social disgust and discomfort—lit up. It is not because society taught us to feel this way; our brains physiologically perceive the onset of inequality itself as a form of "visceral discomfort."
The Era When We Were Each Other’s Insurance
Why, then, did evolution plant such a powerful "equality instinct" within us? The answer lies in the harsh survival methods of the prehistoric era.
During the hunter-gatherer days, hunting massive mammals was a gamble. Even for an exceptional hunter, the probability of a successful catch on any given day was not very high. What would have happened if a strong hunter, fresh off a successful kill, chose dominance and monopoly, declaring, "I caught this with my own strength, so I will eat it all myself"? The very next day, if that same hunter failed his hunt, he would starve to death.
Conversely, if you freely and equally shared the meat you caught today with those around you (equality), you earned the right to be fed by others when you faced starvation tomorrow. For prehistoric humans, equality was not a moral obsession; it was the most rational survival equation, where everyone acted as each other’s mutual insurance. Groups that lacked this egalitarian bond left individuals to fend for themselves during crises and went extinct, while the groups that weaponized equality as an instinct survived to become our ancestors.
The Violent Clash Between Instinct and Dogma
This is the exact source of that peculiar "guilt" felt deep down by those who pursue raw freedom and dominance. It is an ancient warning siren blaring at the genetic level—an intuitive dread of the existential threat that follows when one breaks the community and becomes isolated.
Equality is not an artificial dogma invented by society. It is the most primitive instinct humans carved into their bodies to survive for hundreds of thousands of years. On the contrary, the massive capitalism and unequal class societies we face today are closer to being the modern "dogmas"—intricately and artificially engineered over a mere 10,000 years since the dawn of agriculture to maximize the human desire for dominance.
When we look at an unequal world and constantly feel sorrow, guilt, or rage, it is by no means because we are weak or naive. It is the most human proof that equality, the oldest survival instinct within us, is locked in a fierce and violent clash against the cold "dogma of dominance" forced upon us by modern society.
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