What does it mean
to compare one person’s joy
to another’s pain?
One life’s comfort
to another’s loss?
We try.
We are asked to.
In ethics, in economics,
in everyday choices.
But even as we begin,
something in us hesitates.
Because to compare across lives
is to walk a trembling edge—
between understanding and presumption,
between compassion and calculation.
This is the terrain of interpersonal comparison.
Where we ask not just what is good,
but for whom—
and how much more, or less,
that goodness might matter.
The Quiet Assumption
At the heart of many moral theories
—especially utilitarian ones—
is a question hidden in the math:
Can we really compare
how different people experience the world?
Can we say that a child’s laughter
in one corner of the earth
is equal to another’s in a distant place?
Or that the grief of one soul
carries the same weight
as the grief of another?
These are not abstract questions.
They are the background hum
beneath policies, priorities, decisions.
And they ask us to believe
that well-being can be placed
on a single scale.
But the soul resists such scales.
When Numbers Meet Experience
We measure.
We build models.
We try to maximize welfare.
But human experience
is not currency.
It is felt.
In private.
In context.
In language that doesn’t always translate.
Your joy may come from silence.
Mine from music.
Your suffering may come quietly.
Mine may roar.
And even if the shape looks similar—
the depth, the texture, the history—
make it wholly its own.
Why We Try Anyway
Still, we must try.
Because to ignore differences
is to risk injustice.
And to pretend we cannot compare at all
is to abandon the hope
of fair distribution,
wise choices,
shared compassion.
So we walk the line.
We ask carefully:
- Who benefits here?
- Who suffers quietly?
- Are we counting those who go unseen?
And we remember—
comparison must never become reduction.
It must never flatten the fullness of a life
into a statistic.
The Role of Empathy
Interpersonal comparison
should not begin with judgment.
It should begin with empathy.
With the slow work of asking:
What does this feel like to them?
Not: How would I feel—
but: How do they feel?
It’s not a perfect science.
It’s not meant to be.
It’s a moral act.
A reaching.
A willingness to let someone else’s experience
matter as much as your own.
That, too,
is a kind of comparison—
one that honors,
rather than measures.
A Closing Reflection
If you find yourself in a moment
where you must weigh choices
that affect others,
pause.
Ask:
- Am I assuming their experience is like mine?
- Have I listened deeply enough to their truth?
- Am I letting empathy inform the comparison—
not just data?
Because people are not points on a graph.
They are stories.
Felt lives.
Invisible weights.
And to compare one with another
is not just to ask what is fair—
but what is human.
And in the end, interpersonal comparison reminds us
that we are connected—
but not identical.
That fairness requires more than evenness—
it requires understanding.
And that when we compare,
let it not be to rank,
or to reduce,
but to care.
To see the other
not as a number to weigh,
but as a soul to witness.
And in that act,
we begin not just to calculate justice—
but to live it.