inequalities

• provide opportunity for altruism

3:5.72. Is al­tru­ism—ser­vice of one’s fel­lows—de­sir­able? Then must life ex­pe­ri­ence pro­vide for en­coun­ter­ing sit­u­a­tions of so­cial in­equal­ity.

• none in light and life

55:5.2The ad­vanced stages of a world set­tled in light and life rep­re­sent the acme of evo­lu­tion­ary ma­te­rial de­vel­op­ment. On these cul­tured worlds, gone are the idle­ness and fric­tion of the ear­lier prim­i­tive ages. Pov­erty and so­cial in­equal­ity have all but van­ished, de­gen­er­acy has dis­ap­peared, and delin­quency is rarely ob­served. In­san­ity has prac­ti­cally ceased to ex­ist, and fee­ble-mind­ed­ness is a rar­ity.

• mistakenly attributed to social injustice

86:7.4Mod­ern civ­i­lized races are just emerg­ing from ghost fear as an ex­pla­na­tion of luck and the com­mon­place in­equal­i­ties of ex­is­tence. Man­kind is achiev­ing eman­ci­pa­tion from the bond­age of the ghost-spirit ex­pla­na­tion of ill luck. But while men are giv­ing up the er­ro­neous doc­trine of a spirit cause of the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, they ex­hibit a sur­pris­ing will­ing­ness to ac­cept an al­most equally fal­la­cious teach­ing which bids them at­trib­ute all hu­man in­equal­i­ties to po­lit­i­cal mis­adap­ta­tion, so­cial in­jus­tice, and in­dus­trial com­pe­ti­tion. But new leg­is­la­tion, in­creas­ing phi­lan­thropy, and more in­dus­trial re­or­ga­ni­za­tion, how­ever good in and of them­selves, will not rem­edy the facts of birth and the ac­ci­dents of liv­ing. Only com­pre­hen­sion of facts and wise ma­nip­u­la­tion within the laws of na­ture will en­able man to get what he wants and to avoid what he does not want. Sci­en­tific knowl­edge, lead­ing to sci­en­tific ac­tion, is the only an­ti­dote for so-called ac­ci­den­tal ills.

• due to heredity, environment, degree of spiritual unification

133:7.11The hu­man mind early be­gins to man­i­fest qual­i­ties which are super­ma­te­rial; the truly re­flec­tive hu­man in­tel­lect is not al­to­gether bound by the lim­its of time. That in­di­vid­u­als so dif­fer in their life per­for­mances in­di­cates, not only the vary­ing en­dow­ments of hered­ity and the dif­fer­ent in­flu­ences of the en­vi­ron­ment, but also the de­gree of uni­fi­ca­tion with the in­dwelling spirit of the Fa­ther which has been achieved by the self, the mea­sure of the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the one with the other.