🎧 Field Note 4.2 — An Ontology of Equality

Why authority collapses when it forgets the ground that made it possible.

What does it mean to say that all beings are equally real—and what changes when we take that claim seriously?

In this Field Note, we pause along the trail to reflect on the conceptual ground crossed in Waypoints 4.1 and 4.2, moving from questions of knowledge and language into questions of ethics, authority, and care.

The reflection begins with description itself—how words order the world, how power flattens language to secure obedience, and why slowing down to notice and describe for ourselves is an act of resistance against epistemic capture.

From there, the piece turns toward equality—not as a moral slogan, but as an ontological claim: that all beings participate equally in Being, even when their roles, capacities, and responsibilities differ.

This Field Note explores how hierarchies become distorted when they forget this fact, and how authority—when grounded in ontological equality—is transformed into custodianship rather than control.

Together, we consider:

• How language shapes reality—and how authoritarian power narrows description to maintain dominance.

• Why ontological equality must precede ethics, if authority is to earn consent.

• The difference between equality of being and equality of value.

• Parenting and teaching as custodial roles grounded in care rather than ownership.

• Why not all lessons are equal—and why denying children access to shared knowledge is a failure of responsibility, not neutrality.

• How imagining the future adult a child will become clarifies what care requires in the present.

This Field Note asks what kind of authority can be trusted—one that remembers the conditions of dependency, care, and shared reality from which it arose.

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