I often had a problem with the idea that learning to love
others is impossible without learning to love yourself first. I now see that this is one of the most
important lessons that we have to learn and to teach. I have spoken to many
people, and engaged in many debates. I
have found time and time again that, in the main, the people that support the
most radical ideas are the people that I have found to have a problem with applying
this lesson to their own lives. I have come to believe that if a person is
unable to recognize their own inherent value, they are unlikely to recognize any
other person’s inherent value and also unable to empathize with them. The
failure to learn this lesson results in many personal problems, but as they
accumulate in society they become social issues, too.
I think that this idea has vast implications for societies
and the morals and values governing those societies. Being special, or the acknowledgement
of oneself as special and unique, is the basis for empathy. I do not pretend to know the best way of how
to foster this feeling in people but I do think that one of the best ways
begins in the nexus between the nuclear family and the free market. I arrived
at this idea because I have been reading a lot of socialist literature lately,
and have found it to be diametrically opposed to those two things. The core
tenets of socialism, as they have appeared throughout history, have been the
abolishment of private property and the destruction of the family.
I wondered two things about what the phenomenon of socialism
said about the human condition. How could ideologies be responsible for the
deaths of millions of people? How could such ideologies still enjoy such
popular support? I believe that in socialist doctrine the value of the
individual is all but erased. This stems
from the core ideology of all men being ‘equal’, not just in legal standing or
market interaction, but total equality in all aspects. They believe that any
man, free of certain ‘corrupting influences’ can be taught to do anything. That
is why the state assigns jobs to the individual. Aptitude, for socialists, is a
myth. There is only the willingness to learn as instructed, or a stubborn
refusal to obey. People guilty of the latter have merely been corrupted and
cannot recognize that they are nothing special. In such a society, we see a
view of the individual as a mere cog in a greater machine. When a cog proves
defective, it is discarded and is replaced with another, identical part.
Socialist thinkers give as little thought to ‘broken’ humans
as mechanics give to broken parts. If there is no special value attached to the
individual, then there is no problem with ‘throwing them away’ or killing them
in large numbers as the case may be. In such a society, central planners
formulate policies and ideas with utter disregard for their impact on an
individual level. If the plan does not work, then the little cogs are the
problem - it’s never the People’s Presidium, or the Party, or the Politburo
that are at fault. Society at large is seen merely the extension of the Will of
the Party; it is not the collection of special individual pursuing their own
self-interest. Everything is decided for the individual by the state, there is
no private property and in pure socialism, no nuclear family. So at the most
basic of levels, individuals are stripped of their value to other people, and
their own concept of the value of others. This is a perverse equality, since
all people are equally worthless in the greater scheme of things.
If you look at the worst socialist dictators’ biographies,
you will observe first and foremost the failure of the family unit. Another
interesting phenomenon is how they even change their names. Hitler’s father was
almost nonexistent, the offspring of the union between a housemaid and her
Jewish employer. Rightfully, he should have been known as Adolf Schikelgruber. Stalin’s
father beat him mercilessly. He was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. Kim Il Sung, born Kim Song-ju,
father of Kim Jong Il and Dictator for Eternity of North Korea’s father died
when he was fourteen. Cambodia’s Pol Pot was born as Saloth Sar. He was born
into a moderately wealthy family of nine children, being the eighth child. All
of these most infamous of men have, in my opinion, been made to feel worthless
in some regard, maybe their extreme actions stem from both a desire to build
self-worth as well as the inability to recognize the worth of others.
For South Africa (and Africa in general), there is a more
immediate example of this social failure that can be observed on a wide scale. Large
and broken families are a staple of African culture. At one time, the agrarian
based economic activities called for this style of family, as many children
died before reaching the working age. Later, due to certain factors such as the
introduction of lifesaving medicine from the West, more children survived, but
the mindset of having many children did not chance to adapt to these new
trends. The AIDS epidemic has made many child-headed, single-parent or
grandparent headed households. All of these factors create an environment ripe
for abandoned and hopeless children whose primary activity is attempting to fend
for themselves. Developing a personality or enjoying their parents’ love is
simply denied to them.
As a parent, when you have above a certain number of
children, it becomes extremely difficult to pay attention to each child. It is
very tempting to treat them as a group rather than individual constituents of
that group. In this environment, with exceptions, I believe that the child
begins to feel the worth of their individuality diminished. There are other
factors to consider, inspiring teachers, great role models, friends, books,
religion, ideas, or philosophies can serve the purpose of fostering individuality.
I only contend that this process becomes more difficult after having experienced
a broken or large family.
It is important to realize that people make assumptions about
others based on their concept of themselves and their own experiences. This sometimes becomes quite childish in
expression, for example, people may tend to think that since they grew up in a dysfunctional
family, the family as a social institution is dysfunctional. This can also be
seen as the thought that if they are not special, then nobody else is. People
like these tend to lend themselves to more radical ideologies, and there are
always people who feel that they have been failed by society. Thus, we can
explain the perennial support that socialist ideas have enjoyed.
The free market can also be a saving grace to foster empathy
and understanding, almost in stark contradiction to common sense. Although
often considered to be selfish and motivated by profit, free market capitalism
allows people to develop their own products and skills and achieve a notion of
self-worth. Each individual becomes valuable then, as destroying any individual
destroys their skill set. In a socialist society, killing an academic is not a
problem because another academic more sympathetic to the state can be appointed
by the Party. In a capitalist democracy it is wrong because that individual
will be erased and the service he or she provides will be lost to that society
forever. This is where the free market comes under a lot of criticism – that people
are assigned a ‘value’ by the amount of money that they can make, the car that
they drive and the house that they live in. The opponents of free market
capitalism never take the alternative to its logical conclusion; that is to
hold all human beings as worthless.
It is so important to teach people their own value, and how
to love themselves. I think that we are failing the youth in this in South
Africa, in our families, our schools and our politics. There are too many
people around that support socialist policies and want to rule by fiat because
they themselves have never had due attention paid to them. This is not a
justification for the bad things that they do, but can help us understand their
motivations in order to avoid such leaders in the future. By raising the next
generation with a true sense of their own value as individuals, we will
effectively halt the destructive and counterproductive actions that are all to
evident today. Teaching the youth of all races to love themselves for who they
are and to make them value their own individuality is the key to teaching them
to love and respect others.
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