I’ve been online for a long time now. I was a kid online in the early 2000s, and even before that, I was building a cursory knowledge of what a computer could do as a very young child in the late 90s. Looking back, looking now, and looking forward, I see that there are innumerable sub-groups and collectives amassed here and there on the net. That seems like a good thing, and really it is. The internet can serve to build a community, especially around more niche and esoteric concepts, better than most real-world meet-ups. The problem herein of so many groups devoted to this or that is the rigid stance of it all.
Indeed, most are not blind to how divided so many of us are, not just in our nations if we live in most first-world countries but across the globe. Yet these divisions are not just observed on a macro scale but the microcosms within the world. For our example, we’ll use first the United States and the theater of politics we observe every day as they have had a ripple effect more and more every year since the net has become a household tool.
Regardless of whether you’re a conservative or liberal or any number of permutations that exist beyond those standards, you’ve undoubtedly seen or been directly met with opposition to views you hold important. This is where the most glaring of fissures buds into being. We have allowed our politics to cloud our views of individuals, of one another. You might have once held a close bond to someone who is now an enemy because of a political idea or movement you or they have backed. For instance, I can think of many among my peers in my youth who were divided by the topic of transgenderism despite no one on either side being or knowing a trans person. This is easily written off as differing politics and either side, if not both, becoming radicalized towards specific points of opposition; however, that is where the problem becomes most evident.
We, as people, fear the points of one we oppose the most because we can’t convince ourselves they aren’t right.
And for a moment, we have to ask ourselves, are we doing the wrong thing? Are we backing the wrong idea and ruining our lives as well as anyone else’s we can conscribe into our ranks?
Well, the long and short of it is no and yes.
We have taken hard stances on divisive issues and, because of that, find ourselves stuck. Where these things might be important to us or someone we know, maybe we are directly involved or on the sidelines trying to be supportive, we doom ourselves by attachment to these causes. Now, the apparent question comes: “Should we not back social, economic, political, and personal issues in favor of keeping friends?” Well, it’s not that simple as the simple route is what we’ve done up until now.
The solution is nuanced, which makes it seem unapproachable or perhaps even without worth to those looking for a quick and easy solution. We need to have our opinions; otherwise, we’d be little more than drones continuing the chorus we already sing for others on high who would rather do your thinking for you. Yet, we can’t let our opinions become concrete, locking us into place with little chance of moving. What we need most importantly is communication, clear lines of communication wherein we take the value of those who present opposite viewpoints. With those opposing viewpoints, we can begin to break down the logic of another perspective, understand it, and respectfully disagree at points while still integrating the logical points made by this other mind. In theory, it sounds like a complex and strange dance we do, but in practice, it can be seen as far more straightforward.
We’ll take, for our example, the case of abortion in the US. There are two perspectives offered, and they are very restrictive in their nature as well as demanding. We have what is considered the family-first, Conservative Republican approach, which is pretty straightforward as to say abortion should be outlawed. And then we have the more Liberal, Democratic, individual-rights first agenda being that it should be legal without any restrictions or limitations. I won’t weigh my own opinions, but the simple way we run this debate now is a for or against campaign. You’re with us or you’re against us. In reality, we can find a sensible solution for this topic by stating our goal and our desire, permitting, in a civil manner, the opposition to express their wishes, and finding where we can meet in the middle wherein the most amount of people can live happily with the outcome. This sounds simple, but we run into many obstacles in the course of communication.
We can easily see how this works out, and much has to do with the baser functions of our mind. We have greed, as in we all want more than we need. There’s an urge for control; having to give up ground makes one look weak. There is ego, which nets most of this in but needs to be stated as our own drive of self-importance that flings us into these roles of opposition or proponent of one ideology or another. And, of course, we have the social effect of losing and gaining friends and supporters based on our stances.
Now, where the ego is concerned, there is little to do for a solution short of a proliferation of psychedelic substances among adults to help awaken a dormant sense of togetherness and banish some negative aspects of the ego. However, in regards to the social aspect, a sense of sincerity, a willingness to accept others’ faults and let mistakes go, allowing that human nature to be an accepted trait rather than a crucial error, is where we start.
This all sounds very out there, hippy, free-spirit, so on and so forth in nature, but if we can suspend our negativity for a moment, allow a positive thought, a dream of a world wherein brothers and sisters and so on are not pitted against one another over petty grievances, we might see the value in a such an approach. But it can not work with only a few scattered souls trying to find a balance in society and our world. Where it may work in the run-off of a very tight-knit group, on a grand scale, we can not allow only a few to stand while so many sit, their arms crossed, rolling their eyes at a chance for change.
We have become a society sickened by our own bile. We can’t accept criticism that comes from a viable source because it cuts to the bone where we thought we had the most protection. That is why the opinions of those we like least, the perspective of those we have little in common with, are so important. To have the commentary of a friend or like-minded individual on your artistic work, your life, your views, you’ll find little opposition, but perhaps in those differences between you and your critics, you’ll find their inadequacy and develop a disgust in their nature as though you are flawless and lack for faults. It is here we must be positive. To accept another’s view, even if you can justify the errors they find in yourself, is far more valid than having another praise you for all the similarities you have between each other. This, I’m sure, is a maddening thought, but the truthful, sincere, and heartfelt reflections of one who opposites you will serve the spear to the heart of an overinflated ego that has run so mad with itself it sees only itself but never in the negative.
We are a race of creatures who have at our disposal so many intellectual means of slaying the darker natures of what we have risen from, yet simultaneously seek comfort in those dark pleasures of a morose, self-serving, viciously negative egomania. It is through this that we have made our world a sick and inhospitable place. We have imposed order insisting on peace, blinding our minds that in the grand scheme of all things, this order will fail, and the cosmic force that propelled life to bud once so long will once more reign, and in that chaos of random chance and inconstant changes, peace will again be attained.
In short, we have collared and leashed the individual. The mind of one has been forcibly subsumed beneath the collective, the massive that intends only its virtues with no counter to them ever to arise. Because of this, we stagnate into hatred and disgust for others. We have become sickly content with harm and damage and watching the darker end of life unfold for others while bemoaning our own misfortunes as incalculably tragic without a slight veneer of comedy to them. We are a culture, a people, a world, so self-obsessed that for there to stand beyond us, one who is different is to insist that beyond us is an enemy. Their mistakes are war crimes, their opinions declarations against your sense of humanity, their existence an affront to your life, regardless of all that which makes them individuals proliferating in ourselves. A mirror reflection we must abhor. Our society has deceived us into many things: lust for money and power and influence while afflicting us with a bias against anything that should rise as different among our numbers.
It is individualization that has forced countless men and women into institutionalization throughout history, as anyone standing beyond orthodoxy must be utterly mad. This is why those we call genius are often quite mad. They are those who were individualistic enough, crazy enough, to attempt what others would find crass, foolish, or impossible while still avoiding an asylum. Perhaps that is the natural course of things, and absolving the world of biases that would limit and crush those who would be the minds of the next generation is a facile argument, a battle against the nature of humanity, the sheep-like following of thinkers who will themselves have their word diluted until it is palatable to a greater sum of people. But one can hope to try. We must, if we intend to see a future any can enjoy, attempt to unknot these ties that hold us fast to this medieval device of torture.
In so many ways, to be an individual under the circumstances of a world that refuses to accept differences is the greatest crime against one’s self, but not a crime that should suffer punishment as it is itself the punishment. One who labels themselves an individual and decides they will not follow suit and be like all of those who have come before them, to shift the stage and perspective for those who follow behind is to suffer without end and die before your worth is known. It is to live without the metaphorical mask that almost all wear into the world and force their fake smiles upon others and say how greatly they enjoy the popular article while despising the current person of interest. It is the choice to be chastised, chased, churn in and out of corrective actions and institutions, and inevitably end up unhappy and dead. But for that suffering, for that crime against one’s safety and health, we are rewarded with an authentic life and not that of living a reproduction. To die an individual, to die as your true self, unmarred by insincerity and lies against one’s nature, is to die a true death worth dying.
The question hangs in the air: will our society die this true death? Or is it fated to suffer in its hospice bed well beyond its expected expiration, insincere, its mind addled with false memories and delusions of self to comfort the fading masses in the final moments of a struggle they only knew, in the end, was their true life.
Shall we end it all as sentient beings or the shadows thereof dancing in the moonless night against the cave walls?
Trazor 
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