You know, I used to think that if everyone were more like me, the world would be a better place. There would be all these smart, extroverted, sunshine-side-of life people making their way and wanting to be friends with everyone and everything.
However, there's lots of things I don't like to do:
- Manual labour
- Being mean to people (sometimes you have to be mean)
- Financial documents
- Being a grocery clerk
- Anything involving being dirty
In other words, I'm not really suited for so many important, necessary tasks in life.
I have noticed lately, a trend in both the media and activist movements to shun people who are not part of their special interest group, proclaiming that their 'difference' makes them special, and anything that seems like a 'majority' of any kind should be viewed as suspicious, or perhaps even some kind of conspiracy that is intentionally trying to harm vulnerable populations in our society.
When coming upon these arguments, it reminds me of Aristotle's political theory, which was that politics was
considered a natural state of being for humans. Part of the reason we come together is to avoid extinction, to better ourselves, to have a 'good life' by putting in place measures, both social and legal, that creates order for us. And it's natural for us to be reasonable, to come to agreements with all sorts of different kinds of people because we have language, and we can come to agreements about many different kinds of subjects by using reason. Notice, we very rarely come to agreements by using our feelings...for how we feel will change, but the structure of logic in language rarely does. In reality, arguments may change, though their structure must follow a 'reasonable' pattern.
My generation is a generation of individualism, born out of post-modern thinking, socialism, libertarianism, and other movements that stress the individual, their rights, and their freedoms. But the reason that the post-modernists, anarchists, and other will often fail in their endeavours is because their activism is rooted in a kind of nihilism which most usually takes away, and rarely replaces.
In the future, for my generation to survive, and to be well, my generation must be one of not just rights, but also responsibilities. As we age, I hope we become Hegelian-Kantians, (if such a thing were possible) because the best world is one which assimilates different viewpoints not out of malice or misunderstanding, but out of responsibility for the other, and
responsibility for ourselves.
I reject fundamentally the idea we are so different we cannot learn from each other, we cannot be friends to each kind of culture, even in our difference. After all, all kinds of civilizations were built with people with very different ideas. But those who constantly chant revolution, often end up the way of the French Revolution, where everyone and anyone can go to the guillotine, including themselves. The best way forward is always together, and not backwards for just one of us, but forward for as many of us as can be managed, responsibly, with an eye to fairness in all things, and consideration for difference without making difference the centre of any agreement.
