The Persistent Failure of Civilisations

History offers a sobering truth—despite millennia of social progression, humans have never created a truly equal society. From ancient empires to modern democracies, inequality remains as entrenched today as it was in the time of the pharaohs. The pyramids of Egypt stand as literal monuments to hierarchy—built by slaves for rulers who believed themselves divine.

The 20th century’s grand experiments in equality all failed spectacularly. Communist revolutions promised classless societies but created new elites in Moscow and Beijing. Western democracies preach equality, yet tolerate CEOs earning 350 times more than their workers. As scholar Elena Petrov notes, “Every system claiming to value equality eventually recreates the same hierarchies it sought to destroy.”

Biological and Psychological Barriers

Neuroscience suggests our brains may be wired for inequality. Studies at Harvard University show people instinctively categorise others by status within milliseconds of meeting them. Primatologist David Chen’s work reveals that even monkeys protest unequal reward distributions—but only when they receive less.

The “just-world hypothesis” explains why people tolerate inequality—we desperately want to believe the world is fair. When seeing homelessness, observers often assume personal failure rather than systemic causes. This cognitive bias allows inequality to persist generation after generation.

The Self-Perpetuating Nature of Power

Wealth and power concentrate with mathematical inevitability. The Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) governs everything from land ownership to academic citations. Today, 62 people hold as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion—a disparity that has worsened since the 2008 financial crisis.

Elites actively maintain these divides through:

• Legal systems that protect property over people
• Education barriers that replicate class advantages
• Political capture ensuring policies favour the wealthy

As historian Marcus Wright demonstrates—“No ruling class in history has voluntarily surrendered its privileges. Why would ours be different?”

The False Promise of Progress

Modern cheerleaders point to reduced extreme poverty rates, forgetting most “progress” comes from China’s economic rise—an authoritarian system creating its own inequalities. Global metrics obscure how:

• The wealth gap between nations has tripled since 1960
• 85% of humanity lives on less than $30 per day
• Climate change disproportionately harms the global poor

Technology, rather than being the great equaliser, has created new digital divides. The algorithms governing our lives often encode racial and gender biases—Amazon’s recruitment AI famously discriminated against women.

A Species Addicted to Hierarchy

From playgrounds to boardrooms, humans constantly recreate status games. Social media has merely digitised our ancient impulses—turning likes into social currency and influencers into a new aristocracy. Anthropologist Sophie Müller argues, “We don’t want equality. We want to believe we deserve our position, whatever it is.”

Even revolutionary movements develop their own hierarchies. The Black Lives Matter protests revealed class divisions within marginalised communities. Feminist waves splinter over who gets included. As Lagos University professor Amara Okeke observes, “The oppressed dream not of destroying hierarchies, but of climbing them.”

The Inescapable Conclusion

After 5,000 years of recorded civilisation, the evidence is overwhelming—equality contradicts fundamental aspects of human nature and social organisation. We are a species that builds pyramids, literally and metaphorically. The best we can hope for is slightly ‘fairer‘ inequality—but true equality? That remains a beautiful fiction—or does it?

As the ruins of failed utopias remind us, the more passionately humans pursue equality, the more ingeniously we reinvent inequality. Perhaps we should stop lying to ourselves about what we’re truly capable—or incapable—of achieving.