What do we know in our time? So many people live in a loop, a repeating self perpetuating cycle of life stealing and deadening monotony. We are encouraged to think for ourselves and then punished for doing so. Our ideas and individuality are implanted in us by a societal force determined to have certain groups of people pitted against each other.
We strive to express ourselves in terms which convey our oneness and unique personality, but even these things are defined by others and what other people use to try and do the same thing. We have labels for certain types of people and fit ourselves neatly into these categories to consider ourselves as part of groups and collectives. We don't refer to groups of people as individuals, but instead have special words to lump them together as a single encompassing entity.
Everybody gets everything they want, jut not in the same manner they imagine. No matter what group you are in you have someone to look at and say, “I'm not that.” Everyone needs to feel like a part of something. In the same way, everyone needs to feel like they are excluding certain others and groups from their own cliques and circles. We do it with friends and family all the time. We compare our mother's side to our father's side and pit this group of friends against the other.
We are limited by the boundaries of his and hers, and mine and theirs. We privatize ideas and concepts and take ownership over certain types of pleasures and hobbies. Too many people are ruffled when someone else's views don't fit in with their own. We are oppressing ourselves by defining each other in such terms. Our need to have a sense of better and worse, good and evil, right and wrong, is so great that we are blinded to what could truly be best for everyone.
Let me make it crystal clear. I am definitely a capitalist, I believe very strongly in the ideals of private property and free trade; however I despise the concepts of exclusivity and classification based upon appearances or tastes. People should never feel ashamed to like something or prefer one thing over another when faced with people who might not particularly feel the same way. It seems to me that more and more this nation is being defined not by what people are, but by with whom they are associated. This is a travesty of our founding principles and the idealism that have made us the world power we are.
Why should we look to another group and say, “I'm glad I'm not them?" If we were focused on our own advancement and the freedom of choice we would realize that in our own freedom we inevitably grant others theirs. How could anyone be free when they are slaves to their hatred and the oppression of others?
