A Demon's Path

Welcome to the Classroom

EQUALITY

What is equality? According to Cambridge Dictionary, it is the situation of all people being in an equal state, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion. An ideal concept if one has to be truthful. A famous quote once said that all beings are born equal under the heavens. However, the quote doesn't end there; it continues as all beings are born equal, but they start to differ and stray away from that same equalness as time passes. Hierarchy, Background, Wealth, and Prestige, these things along with a factor of genetics, upbringing and personality, further exacerbate this gap. Society has always tried to make some sense of this gap since time immemorial, and eventually have come up with an order that distinguishes different people based on these factors. On one side of the spectrum that humanity has created to classify people, we have:

"Um... excuse me, could you please give your seat to this old lady?"

People who are seen as benevolent, friendly.

"My fair lady, but tell me, why should I?"

And on the other side, we have those who are labelled as vile, despicable, selfish.

"That is... this is a reserved seat for the elderly and the pregnant women, so..." the beige-haired girl spoke meekly before shrivelling under the intense gaze of the blonde-haired boy currently occupying one of the seats on the bus. The boy looked well-built, and his unnatural blonde hair attracted a lot of attention as it made him seem like a foreigner. His accent and condescending tone of voice didn't help the matter well.

"But..." the girl started meekly, trying to give him a reason.

"But what, my lady? While it is true that it is a reserved seat, there is not any law that requires me to give up my seat. Furthermore, standing until my stop expends a lot of my energy. So, please tell me, lady, why should I unnecessarily give up my seat and choose to expend my precious peace and energy on something mundane?"

"M-Mundane..."

The entire bus burst out into whispers as a majority of people gave glares to the blonde boy as if he was the lowest of dregs of society.

'Well, in a traditional sense, he could be called as one...' I mused.

"It's all right, little girl." the old lady standing beside the girl said in a frail voice. Any person with a working pair of eyes could see the difficulty she was facing while standing. Every rocking motion of the bus made her jolt as if she would fall down any moment. Seeing such a state of elderly, any normal person's virtue would surely be attacked, prompting them to give any sort of help to the old lady as possible.

In an ideal society, that is.

As I looked around the bus, I could see two types of faces: one who pretended to hear nothing and turned their face away, while the other who looked hesitant to act or speak up.

Truly, this small scenario told the untold raw truth of the world. There was no virtue, and there was certainly no kindness in this world, not without any motive at least. If someone was friendly to someone, or being benevolent, there was a certain reason behind it. It could be to increase one's image, to make someone feel indebted, or something else entirely. If someone were to hear my thoughts now, they would surely say that my outlook on life was too bleak or too pessimistic. However, being through what I have, there was no other way that I would look at life or human society in general.

Not that I would ever express it loud to anyone, lest I be mauled by others.

The commotion brought my attention to the scene unfolding before my eyes. The beige-haired girl had said something about making contributions to the society as its members. In my honest opinion, it was a weak argument. While it was indeed true that giving up your seat to the old lady would surely be a good-natured act, calling it a worthwhile contribution to the society was stretching it too far. Even if looked upon from the perspective of the Japanese economy. The youths who were an integral part of the working sector and were the primary breadwinners were contributing to today's society as compared to the old lad, clearly past the prime of her life and not as much adding to the total economy as compared to an average nine-to-five salaryman.