The Shame of Sameness
2000-09-08 - 22:44:59
Uniform is a funni werd.
Wouldn�t it be a horrible world, if everyone were the same? Of course. But if you were living in the gray area, where people are slowly becoming the same, how would you know that you were becoming just like everyone else?
This was exactly what Charles Dickens was talking about when he created the setting of A Tale Of Two Cites. �It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.� And if Charles thought that the time in which he wrote the book was a melting-pot of good an evil, he would be appalled by what we know now as �the present�.
In the present, (meaning the time of the post-modern industrial country), we are the same. In a capitol society such as the US, there is only one goal for the individual: personal gain. If you ask any true American* what they want out of life**, They will respond that they want happiness, or funn, maybe even sinn (note here that they WANT their lives to contain a certain quality, without doing anything to deserve it). A great majority of people will base their answer on green printed slips of paper that represent a certain worth to the people of this country. What few people fail to realize is that there is no real value in money...the government uses paper money as a system to universalize trade. If we changed our minds and decided to use the Yam as the base of our currency system, the same universalization would exist. But regardless of what we use for currency, this desire for money makes all capitalist citizens very similar. They all want the same thing, they all use the same means to attain it...they think in the same manner. And a similarity in thought patterns more closely links people than any amount of physical characteristics ever could.
Now, let us consider communism is a very pure form.
The doctor, the garbage man, and the wet nurse are all important participants of the society. They each have a special skill or knowledge that allows them to perform their task. They each give their services to the other people in the society, just as they receive services for other people in the society. Because each person in this society is required for services, they must all gain equal compensation for their jobs to retain the equality of the structure. Each citizen is paid for their his/her own contribution of society, paid as a function of how well they do their job, instead of what their job is. Because of this, there is a general balance formed by the need and desire for every citizen to do their job well, compared to the other persons in the community. Working and training is then thought of as a beneficiary, and each citizen slowly specializes into a defined field with which to help their community the best. This system also encourages a communal link with the citizens, because they base the use of their services on the other members of the community, and it is in their best interest to help them as much as possible.
Because of each person�s own specialization in their field, and hence, they�re diversified experience, each member of that society is going to be more individualistic. They are a set of individuals helping the others survive, rather than a set of similar people fighting each other for the same goals. As a slightly intoxicated english teacher once told me: �The path to the goal is always more important than the goal itself.� In this example, the citizens of this semi-pure communism are not looking for a goal in life, so much as they are looking to help and be helped, to survive. The capitalists, on the other hand, struggle against each other lazily to win a prize that may not even exist �at the top of the ladder�.
God bless Pete Seeger. �...Doctors and Lawyers, and Business Executives, and they�re all made outta ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same...�
*American here means any person with the personal views of the stereotypical American: a blundering slothful moron who thinks s/he knows more than they do, speaks altogether too much, is spoiled rotten by their idea of �entertainment�, and is continually thinking that they are the most pathetic and mistreated individual on the planet.
**Here, the question is posed as American in manner. The question is based on what is �wanted� rather than what the person strives to get. Americans are farr too accustomed to getting everything handed to them, and thereafter complaining that they don�t get anything.
