Work Text:
The United States, as a nation, is built upon the ideals of the rights of the individual. A country and system built upon the idea that the rights of each man outweigh the rights and powers of the government, and yet the idea of someone exercising their desire to express themselves in a way that goes around the conventional standard of their place in society, causes an uproar of unprecedented scale. Nothing makes someone angrier than the concept that their thought process might not be the only correct way of thinking.
And here we find our great contradiction. In a society that enforces the idea of originality and singularity, you are also bombarded by concepts of conformity and an overwhelming belief in staying where you’ve always stayed.
People who promote individual control of agencies such as economics and governmental control, people who support the idea of taking care of your own needs on your own and rejecting authoritative interference in their own lives, are also the people who find themselves in the most distress when confronted with ideas such as unique identities and personal moral codes.
If you are going to scream about higher authorities staying out of your personal affairs, you cannot then go and condemn and persecute others for affairs of their own. Along with your individual right to hold and express your beliefs comes the right of others to hold and express their own beliefs. You can’t tote around the statement ‘religious freedom’ in regards to Christianity and then discriminate and mistreat someone else for using religious freedom to practice Islam. You cannot order the government to refrain themselves from interfering with your personal life and then be in turmoil when they don’t meddle in the lives of others.
The idea of a “special snowflake”, someone who believes they’re different or separate from society as a whole, is one that is met with disdain in many part of the country. And yet, it is, in theory, the very sort of ideal that the nation was built upon. Everyone is different and separate from the rest of us, in some way. Each person has the right to pursue their own personal “pursuit of happiness”, and that pursuit may very well be different from that of the majority’s opinion of a perfect journey to contentment.
If you truly advocate for less governmental control, that the will of the people must be left to the people , then you must also accept the fact that this means people will be different . They will exist outside of your neat little societal spheres. Humans are not hedges to be pruned and plucked and shaped until they model the image you have in mind for them. On the contrary, they are snowflakes; each different, each individual, each destined either to stick or melt, blown only by the wind of circumstance and unfettered by the reality around them. Snow will be snow, no matter where it is. It may melt, but it will still be the same substance. Likewise, humans may change, but their substance will always be the same.