A Society of Individuals

The separation of the individual from his roots is a salient one. I relate the need to separate to maturity and to humanism.

The small group retains its patterns. Roles are set. The dynamics are pre-ordained. Inevitability. As time has passed during the history of our species, the purity of each person’s relationship with existence has developed significance. This is easy to understand; we developed methods of coping with shelter and sustenance. We are always involved in improving these methods. As we have striven to do so, we have emerged as individuals who fulfill specialized tasks, who contribute more or less, and who articulate ideas, given us a means of understanding one another and thus of surviving. I base this observation on what seems to me to be true…our particular species has survived by seeking agreement and then taking the actions that seem most constructive. Democracy, brought into being in these United States at its inception, seeks to insure that what is constructive for the many will triumph over the needs of the few, and that in the end greater stability and well being will assert a long lasting and healthy structure. Simultaneously, of course, democracy is designed to protect the rights of the individual from the many. History has shown that subservience to the economically dominant creates a fragile structure. Symbiosis is ideal. Leadership that recognizes that the whole brings the hypothetical future into the picture, and a real synthesis of what’s good for the goose is good for the gander can ensue. The caveat, the difficulty, lies in the fact that the law of the jungle is natural, and democracy is not. It takes understanding. It takes work. It takes living with the tension between power and the value of the economic strength of a small segment of the population and the way of life and social structure that prevent that strength from becoming overwhelmingly exploitative.

Because patterns of dominance favor the dominant, groups of people have been disenfranchised and social patterns such as institutional racism exist. Therefore achieving fairness for all requires acknowledgment of patterns and actions of redress that break the patterns. It is frustration with these efforts that have led to identity politics. The celebration of ethnicity and the insistence on developing power in relationship to diverse portions of society, women, blacks, native Americans, etc., has been compensatory. I regret the existence of this kind of tribalism, and wish that we were more willing to solve problems without shifting emphasis in what seems to me to be an intrinsically regressive way, back to groups, away from the individual.

It is only by restoring respect for the individual as the essential core of identity that we can restore criteria for the definition of responsibility and character, and agree that our shared values, as a nation, revolve around the way in which an individual responds to his own conscience, regardless of his ancestry, familial status, wealth, or poverty.

People are often exploited or oppressed in relationship to identity. There ought to be nothing that causes suffering because one is part of a minority. We can understand the need to assert strength through numbers by identifying with one’s ethnicity. It shouldn’t be necessary. We should strive to reach a level at which we can celebrate our backgrounds, cultural, ethnic, or whatever, if we choose to, but not need to rely on our respective groups in order to find the strength to live as a full person, to express oneself, to be respected.

The words of Martin Luther King, Jr., referring to his hope, his goal, that we could build a society in which we judged each other on the basis of character, and not on the color of our skin, rang loud and clear. Activism led to the signing of the Civil Rights Bill in 1964. Within a few years it became clear that the Civil Rights Bill was not a magic wand. Though Jim Crow was now technically illegal, discrimination in hiring, housing, education and the justice system continued to reinforce socioeconomic division, and fear and resentment.

Our political leaders should all engage the public in the complexity of a society based on individuals rather than groups. We have to address years of patterns of suppression while moving away from group identity. Walk and chew gum, people.