This was the exact insight I had in 1977, after I read the book, Brave New World.
I lived in communist Hungary at the time. I was an award winning architect, the daughter of a statesman, and suddenly I had the insight: the great system, the great idea of “nobody left out” left everyone left out.
There was no room for individual achievement. For individual growth. For being an individual. That wasn’t part of the deal: if you were, you suddenly weren’t part of the everybody, you were the one left out.
Human evolution happens through individual evolution, but in the most advanced, the most prosperous, the most efficient, productive nations people are dumb as a door knob.
It seems that you need to choose between blending in and pushing the apple cart, or risking being an outcast and achieve personal growth, personal evolution, and personal fulfillment.
And whether you look at it in the micro or the macro, you’ll find it true.
In the family. In the school class. In the workplace. In the neighborhood. In the church or congregation. If you want to be an individual you will be denied the support the micro unit offers to everyone who supports the “family.”
And obviously, on the level of society, it is so too.
Societies organize themselves around institutions.
There is a distinction called trust that the level of trust will decide what society you’ll have, and to what degree society is prosperous and advancing.
For tens of thousands of years, humans organized them in a tribal system: you trusted your kin, where you knew everyone.
When something happened to you or yours, the tribe took care of you, punished the person or group that hurt you.
The movie “Bliss”, a Turkish movie, showed tribal legal system do what it needed to do to punish the wrongdoer… watch the movie: it’s worth watching.
Countries that are not prosperous all live on a tribal system… a version of that is what is going on in African, Near Eastern, and Eastern European countries, the tribe that rules robs everyone else blind. They are not willing to obey any laws, they are above the law. Worse than communism, if you ask me.
But if you look, people don’t trust the legal system, governments, totally… so if something delicate happens, they don’t ask for help. And because in developed countries there is no tribe, there is no cohesive family any more, people are alone…
If your child (or you) get sexually abused, raped, there is no one to turn to: it is not going to help. At best you are going to be shamed, called a liar, because no one really cares about your honor, about your well-being.
You are an individual, and the needs and interests of the individual and society are vastly different.
It’s not a pretty picture, and it doesn’t make me feel good to be living in a country where I and the system are at odds.
Do you think anyone part of society will be interested in dealing with the mite epidemic? It’s faster and easier to call it a lie, call me a lunatic, or crucify me.
Interesting, this article started with me examining the IQ of different nations… and ended up with the mite epidemic…
But guys, it’s real, it’s real life, and you are getting dumber by the minute being a cog in the big machine… But dumb may not bother you (it bothers me a lot!) but you cannot feel fulfilled, at peace, and happy… NO CHANCE.
