Won't You Be My Neighbor?

From a very early age, there have been two messages that have been hammered into our brains that are supposed to shape our vision of our-Selves and our relations with Others.

1) Deep down, we are all special, unique Individuals.

2) Deep down, we are all the same—we are all just humans being.

The point of this education is two-fold. First, it is supposed to build Self-Esteem—we are all special and unique and there is no one else in the world quite like us. When others try to push their agendas on us and force us to contort ourselves in un-natural ways, we end up maiming our true-Selves causing unnecessary pain and frustration. We should only be who we want to be and everyone else be damned. The second part of the message is supposed to combat Racism and Intolerance and illustrate the “fact” that was found back in the State of Nature: we are all Equal and any sort of arrangement contradicting that is illegitimate and can be overthrown. Underneath our exterior, superficial differences, we are all just Human Beings trying to get by in this world and live some sort of life of meaning.

This contradiction has been coined as The Fundamental Tension of Modern Life. We all want to be unique, self-reliant Individuals who live with a unique purpose, which transcends the banality of everyday Bourgeois life, but there is also this pull that makes us want to be part of something bigger than our-Selves that will connect us with eternity. But how is one suppose to reconcile these two seemingly incompatible ends?

Rousseau was so worried about this contradiction that he felt the only solution was to “De-nature” Man in order to fit him into Society—the process of which he described in The Social Contract, in 1762. In order to reconcile Man to Society we must be capable of “changing Human Nature; of transforming each Individual who by himself [in the State of Nature] is a perfect and solitary whole into a part of a larger whole from which that Individual would as it were receive his life and his being; of substituting a partial and moral existence for the independent and physical existence we have all received by Nature.”

Yet, somehow today we preach these contradictory impulses to little children—completely unequipped to deal with this necessarily frustrating aspect of our Nature—then pat them on their heads and send them on their way, while never recognizing the incoherence that lies behind this instruction.

How can we be different and identical at the same time?

We have found the best way to resolve it is by just never bringing it up. Just sweep it under the carpet because exploring it can have dire consequences and the strategies that have thus far been prescribed have lead to less than desirable results. The complete abnegation and suppression of the Individual and the Rights accordant to them was played out in the atrocities of brutal Communist Regimes throughout the 20th Century; and the self-evident evil of not recognizing every Individuals inherent humanity has played throughout all of Human history.

So, whereas, once again there is a plausible end that is trying be reached by the premises of our current wisdom, our current methodology is cracking around the edges and is showing signs of decay. Romanticized, wishful thinking only gets you so far because it is necessarily based on a fallacy, which has no basis in Nature and is usually created in order to make up for what is seen as a perceived failing of our Nature.

Is Man by Nature a Solitary Being? Was Man ever an individual, singular Whole at any point in our History or can we only receive completeness in union with another/others? Maybe inner contradiction and the resultant attempts at reconciliation are the source of Man’s greatness and we are never destined for the peace and happiness promised by our Regime?

Our current wisdom says that if people follow these mutually exclusive and contradictory impulses to the max, then they will achieve inner peace and Society will live in harmony. I wouldn't hold your breathe.