the enchanter

the unedited introduction to my Human Rights paper.

The struggle between an individual and a community of individuals is an on-going issue of humanity that leaves an imprint on every person’s life. In comparison to societies in the past, modern society is so much more complex that it makes most of its members anonymous beings. There is so much diversity in a modern society that theoretically the formation of a general trend should be much more difficult and one might not even have to care about the opinions of one’s neighbours at all, let alone be influenced by them. Nonetheless, there is not one person who has not experienced the dilemma of the obligation to choose between his or her will and the will of society which contains himself or herself Therefore, how advanced and complex a society is has little to do with the degree of influence society as a whole can exercise upon each individual; hence the question of individuality seems one of the most persistent issues of society at any given point in history. One is always concerned with being frowned upon by one’s community, and as a consequence one’s speech, action, and even thoughts are constantly confined by the parameters of “appropriate conduct”. The inevitability of such a dilemma is due to many reasons: the need to associate with others—or on the reverse, the fear of alienation—, the instinct to protect oneself, the instinct to pursue self-interests, and possibly many others. While seemingly a natural phenomenon resulting from such innate human qualities, the systematic and social need to conform is possibly the greatest danger to a just and peaceful society when practiced on a collective scale, as it often leads to the deterioration or negligence of morality that should sustain the human race; it can obliterate the most essential condition for the co-existence of many men, the respect for others. It is only so simple to overlook the possible dangerous consequences of one’s actions when one is blindly pursuing self-interests; and as part of a crowd, one’s moral integrity is often numbed by a sense of protective anonymity. On the degradation of people’s morality, the infamous Unabomber has sourly commented: “[t]he moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way.” John Stewart Mill, Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. also recognized the tendency of society to endanger the true individual liberty, and tried to explain to the people of their respective times the moral corruption of their society and how things ought to be for the achievement of a truly free society. While the purposes of their writings differ from one another, Mill’s On Liberty, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, and King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail have similar arguments; all three criticize the people’s unquestioning conformity to the “moral code” of society, explain why conforming to it without questioning is wrong and dangerous, and provide what should be the true moral code of an individual and how to carry it out in his or her current society.