Sameness is the problem. Uniqueness is the cure.
Everyone is different.
There are no two people on the planet with the same skin, eyes, hair or DNA.
But it is bigger than that.
There are no two people on the planet with the same thoughts or feelings.
But it is bigger than that.
There are no two people on the planet with the same path.
This means that uniqueness sits at the very heart of what it means to be human.
Uniqueness is the reason Coronavirus affects people differently; why one person feels crap for two days before bouncing back, while another gets put on a respirator. Everyone is different.
Uniqueness is the reason for vaccine side effects. Give two people the same dose of the same vaccine in the same place at the same time and one will skip out of the room and the other will be carried out in a trolley. Everyone is different. And denial of uniqueness is the reason side effects are under-reported. People who do not understand human uniqueness, who think we are all just blades of grass, cannot grasp how Dave reacts one way while Steve reacts another.
Big Pharma will claim to account for this by testing its products on a wide variety of people. Except they will only ever be tested on the type of people who do not mind being tested on! Their wide variety of people is, in fact, very narrow.
Uniqueness is the reason Trump was elected, and Brexit happened. Different people looked at the offers presented to them and drew different conclusions. And denial of uniqueness is what drove the medias obsession with ‘Russian interference’ because elites, particularly, hate it when people have different points of view. Pollsters and political commentators cannot understand why these types of events continue to happen, failing to understand that it will not matter how smart their prediction models are, and how many people they survey, they will only ever be surveying the type of people who are happy to be surveyed!
Uniqueness resides at the core of any functional organisation. When Jane leaves her job in the office and is replaced by Dawn then that office is altered irrecoverably. Dawn and Jane may have the same job title and nominally perform the same job functions, but the way in which they do it will be different, maybe subtly, maybe wildly. There is no such thing as an ‘Office Administrator.’ There is only Jane, who did it her way, and Dawn who does it hers.
Uniqueness sits at the core of every healthy society. Some people are inclined to work with their hands, others, with their minds. Some are inclined to care for others, some to think about themselves. And so a rich tapestry of life is stitched.
But denial of uniqueness is everywhere now, and is certainly behind the lockdown and vaccination policies, both attempts to treat everyone the same in order to control a disease that affects everyone differently.
Identity politics, dividing people up by race and gender, is an anti-uniqueness movement, telling people that whatever identity group they belong to is more important than whatever unique gifts they can give to the world. Similarly, ideas like social justice are a dead end because they fail to consider the actions and intentions of individuals. Condemning, or condoning, on the basis of your group identity is an exercise in make believe, because there are good and bad people in every group.
Uniqueness, not the group, is what makes people happy. When people are helped to go their own way and do their own thing they thrive. Then, and only then, can they usefully join groups and teams and make their unique contribution.
Socialism, and its zombie elder brother communism, are so pernicious because the fairness and justice that they purport to introduce always comes at the price of uniqueness. Socialism and communism = sameness. Anytime you hear talk which prioritises the collective, the us, the we, you know trouble is coming because most people who speak in this way either do not understand uniqueness or know all about it but fear and despise it. And it is not just a political problem, there are plenty of so-called spiritual people who talk endlessly about the collective. Beware such people, for there is no collective worth a damn unless it is composed of souls who are strong in their uniqueness.
People disagree. People see things differently. But power has been seized by a group who cannot stand this fact, and they are intent on making everyone the same. This is not some shadowy elite tucked away somewhere. This is the person next to you on the bus, a family member, a co-worker. They do not believe themselves to be unique, so they do not see why you should be either. Governments around the world have conducted themselves shamefully. But they could not have done it without the acquiescence of people. Changing governments will solve nothing. The problem is people.
A big part of what has gone wrong is that uniqueness has been de-spiritualised. Uniqueness, for most people, simply means the freedom to make individual selections of material things. It means living their life the way they see fit and everyone else can go hang. You see this all the time in shops, on buses and trains, and particularly on the road. But the uniqueness I am talking about has a spiritual component. It is about the fact that being your unique self is a gift to others, not a loss to them. That by saying it as you see it others benefit. In a society which believes in nothing beyond the material, uniqueness will always produce selfishness. But a society which recognises that there is a spiritual dimension to life will see that God has a nine billion faces, each one valuable and unique.
I do not think that it is possible to turn around the current hell in which we are living. The way out will be the way through. Sameness is comfortable, warm and protective, while uniqueness is seen by many as uncertain, risky or disruptive. But the herd will charge over the cliff together, so it is not a good idea to run with everyone else. It is intensely spiritual and life affirming to recognise – and glory in – that which makes you, you. This is going to be even more important in the years to come. Yet paradoxically, as life becomes more and more regimented the unique person with the unusual perspective or the niche skill will be more and more in demand. The way to slow the march of authoritarian conformity into your life is to find out what you are good at and do it a lot, to allow yourself to think non-conformist thoughts and feel supposedly unacceptable feelings. There is no ‘correct’ human response to any given situation, and shame on those who tell you that there is. If you can find others who are tolerant of this then you have your tribe.
The solution to every argument, disagreement and conflict is to say, ‘everybody’s different.’ You do not agree with this? Well, that is ok, because everyone is different. Do you have a view about Boris or Biden that others do not share? Well, that is ok because everyone is different. But difference has to be tolerated. Losers of elections have to consent to be governed by those they do not agree with, and winners have to agree not to ram things down the throats of the losers. The solution to the conundrums of difference and uniqueness is tolerance, not enforced sameness. Only a society in terminal decline would think conformity of opinion or action to be a good thing. The fact that so many believe it is ok to force others to think and say certain things is a grim sign indeed. And when a government feels that it can force medical procedures on people for the ‘common good’ then human life really has fallen under the spell of evil.
