From Torah, Christianity to Today

The Center for Human Equality in Southern Oregon, founded by Russell McAlmond, exists to advance a human relational philosophy called Ethical Individualism. At its heart is a practical interpretation of love: not primarily an emotion of affection, but a disciplined “respect of equal humanity.”

This respect insists that every person is a unique individual of equal moral standing simply by being human. No one may elevate themselves or their group above others, and no one may be lowered below the threshold of equal dignity. The Center holds that this imperative can be traced to the origins of the Torah and was broadened in early Christianity, yet remains unfinished until it is completed by the assignment of infinite value to each human life.

In Leviticus 19:18 the Torah commands, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Within its original context the command is framed by prohibitions against hatred, vengeance, and grudges among the people of Israel, and it is extended to the resident alien (the ger) who lives among them.

The love required is not sentimental; it is a demand for just action, fair dealing, and the refusal to treat the other as less than oneself in the practical affairs of communal life. The parallel injunction to “love the alien as yourself” already presses against narrow tribal boundaries. Early Jewish interpretation and later rabbinic reflection continued to wrestle with the scope of the neighbor, while the fundamental principle—that one must not treat a fellow human as an object of lesser worth—remained.

Jesus of Nazareth, standing within this tradition, radicalized the demand. In the Sermon on the Mount he states, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The expansion is explicit: the circle of equal regard is not limited to kin, co-religionists, or even the resident foreigner; it includes those who actively oppose or harm you. Love, again, is not defined as warm feeling.

It is a refusal to dehumanize, a commitment to seek the other’s good even when reciprocity is absent, and a recognition that the other’s humanity is not contingent on their behavior toward you. In this move, the commandment becomes universal in aspiration: no human being may be placed outside the sphere of equal respect simply because they belong to an opposing group.

Ethical Individualism completes this trajectory by giving the commandment a precise philosophical form suited to modern conditions of group conflict. It rests on the recognition that every human being possesses infinite value—equal to the value of any other life or any combination of lives—together with infinite uniqueness and infinite mystery.

Because the value is infinite, it cannot be ranked, traded, or subordinated. One person cannot be elevated above another, nor can any collective claim superior worth that licenses the diminishment of outsiders. Because each person is irreducibly unique, group membership cannot substitute for individual judgment; stereotypes and collective guilt become moral errors rather than useful shortcuts. Because each person remains a mystery, no ideology or observer can claim exhaustive knowledge that justifies treating someone as fully known and therefore disposable.

The practical result is a standing moral imperative: never deny the equal humanity of any individual, and never permit the elevation of one group or the dehumanization of another.

Human history demonstrates how rarely this imperative has been observed. The commandments were present, yet groups repeatedly declared themselves superior and others less than fully human. The Holocaust stands as the modern archetype: a systematic program in which Jews were stripped of equal humanity, reduced to a despised collective, and subjected to industrial murder.

The same pattern of group elevation and targeted dehumanization reappeared on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and allied attackers murdered, raped, and beheaded civilians in Israel—including children—precisely because they belonged to a people that had been declared less than human. In both cases the violence was not random; it was licensed by the prior judgment that the victims’ group status nullified their equal claim to life and dignity.

Countless other atrocities, ancient and contemporary, follow the same logic.

This record is the primary reason the Center for Human Equality exists. Ethical Individualism supplies a human relational philosophy that functions as a moral imperative against precisely these failures. It does not ask people to ignore real differences of character, culture, or conduct; it asks that those differences never be allowed to erase the baseline equality of respect owed to every person as a human being.

It rejects all forms of group judgmentalism—whether racial, religious, ethnic, political, or ideological—because such judgmentalism is the necessary precondition for dehumanization. By insisting on the infinite value and uniqueness of each individual, the philosophy makes the elevation of any group or the lowering of any other morally incoherent. It translates the ancient command to love neighbor and enemy into a contemporary standard that can be taught, practiced, and defended in schools, workplaces, legislatures, and personal relationships.

The Center therefore offers more than historical recovery. It offers a completed ethical framework in which the Torah’s demand and Jesus’ expansion are preserved and sharpened against the specific temptations of modern group thinking.

To love one’s neighbor—and even one’s enemy—as equal humanity is to refuse the hierarchy of worth that has repeatedly produced mass violence. In a world still marked by the willingness of some groups to declare others less than human, Ethical Individualism stands as a necessary moral corrective: a philosophy that treats every person as an irreplaceable center of infinite value and thereby seeks to make dehumanization, in all its forms, impossible to justify.