Many people believe in the idea that if any section wants equality in society, then they should start treating themselves as equals and don’t utilize or expect any affirmative action provided to them based on that that inequality. Proponents of this idea always argue that many feminist, who are fighting for equal rights ends up enjoying benefits given to them based on their gender(Like seats in public transport, benefits in any queue, etc.) or the people for underprivileged section uses their section’s identity to avail benefits like reservations, scholarships, etc.
Being a mechanical engineer, I tried to analyze this using one of the engineering concepts, Control theory. I tried to draw an analogy between the dynamics of society and the control theory used in engineering. There are many assumptions made that many people can argue and reject.
Before going to the theory, I should state the assumption I made.
First assumption: – our society as a dynamic system and the state of equality as our desired/reference trajectory that we want to achieve. The error is the difference between the desired value and the measured value, in our case, it is the level of inequality in society.
The second assumption: – Our Society is an unstable system, i.e. even with a slight disturbance, the inequality will go on increasing.
The third assumption: – To make our society we need corrective measures which we call feedback system in control theory.
I am considering three types of control feedback, Proportional controller (the corrective measure is proportional to the error), Derivative controller (the corrective action is proportional to the rate of change of error) and Integral controller (the corrective measure is proportional to the summation of error). If we just use a Proportional controller, then we can end up with an oscillating system i.e. both the section will try to push the bar to another side. Meaning the section will keep on changing the role of oppressor and oppressed one.
With the addition of a derivative controller, the inequality level will decay over time. The derivative term takes into account the current rate of change if there is already a very high rate of change in the society and the response is predicted to overshoot to another side this term will reduce the speed to avoid significant overshoot. In this, we can expect three types of damping(decay). Under-damped system, where the society will oscillate with a decaying level of inequality; Critically damped system, the society will achieve steady-state within minimum possible time without oscillation; and Over-damped system, where the corrective effort will be prolonged, and society will take a long time to reach steady state. But with the addition of derivative controller the society may achieve a steady-state but there may remain an offset at the end i.e. there will always remain a finite inequality in the society (This can be very small but finite).
So, to eliminate offset, we must add an integral term i.e. we have to take summation of minor incidents of inequality and sum them up to apply a corrective measure. We cannot neglect these minor cases by stating that these are just a few in number and are not very significant.
In summary, if we take corrective measures just based on the level of inequality without considering the rate of change of society, then we would end up with oscillation that would just keep on shifting from one side to another. Hence, we should consider the rate with which our society is changing. Our measure should be strong enough so that society is not overdamped. It should be between underdamped and critically damped. (In engineering we prefer critically damped but in society, some people can argue that free the oppressed section asap even if that results in some oppression of other section).
Now with this theory developed, I would like to address the initial critics of benefiting from favors in the name of being underprivileged section. In robotics, when we use a control system, we take the error to calculate the corrective measure. But at the time of defining the system, the current state is used and not the reference one. If we use just the reference state, then there would be no change in the system because the corrective measure would be zero. In society, If we do not consider the present state of inequality and impose equality in policies, then there would be almost negligible corrective force deriving the society and we would not be able to achieve the state of equality. So, we need to accept the existing state of inequality and treat the society with a conscience that the inequality is there and then exert corrective measures depending on the error. So, if a woman believing in feminism asks for favor for being a woman or a person from the underprivileged section asks for support for being from that section, this may be justified because of the already present inequality. In an unequal environment, people will need some form of favor (affirmative action to correct this difference.)
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