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Total social equality is neither possible nor desirable. I explain why this is true with arguments from mimetic theory: desire is imitated, and so it always and everywhere creates celebrities and outcasts. On the other hand, I think it's true that "all men are created equal," as the Declaration of Independence proclaims. I explain how the sense of violent sacred allowed societies throughout history to hold to the idea of essential human equality while being highly stratified and practicing all forms of oppression. Finally, I discuss how the recession of violent sacred means that we no longer know how to establish peaceful differences. 

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