Be All Everyone Can Be

Imagine how wonderful life would be if, as a little child, you were told that you could accomplish anything that anyone else could accomplish. Sounds like a dream, right? But how do we make this dream a reality? Well, unfortunately, the current answer is to try to override our entire genetic makeup and use coercion to build a “Better Human.” First and foremost among the properties of the “Better Human” is the recognition that you should not even dream of or attempt anything that is beyond the capability of the least gifted among us.

Imagine Annie Oakley’s song, “Anything you can do I can do better” gets rewritten into “Anything you can’t do, I can’t do either.” Both can be sung to the same tune, but one represents a precocious, yet talented, female who dreams big, and the latter represents a world of stagnation and decline.

How many wars would America win if our Army’s motto was “be all everyone can be?” Of course, Special Forces would be outlawed in a country where no one is allowed to be special. What would the GI Bill offer in a country where all education was free and minimalist? Only the high priests of this society, the ruling class guilefully named “The Servants of the People,” would be allowed to offer course corrections in such a society—and each change would have to be approved by all and only allowed if the result was within everyone’s reach.

Competitive sports, such as football, soccer, chess and checkers, would be replaced by tic-tac-toe, the only game allowed, since when two equals play it always ends in a tie. Angry bystanders would start yelling “PDC, PDC” at children trying to race one another. This is the worst epithet possible, “Public Display of Competition.” Peer pressure has to be the dominant force in Utopia, because everyone has to do what the majority decides, so that all can remain equal. It really does take a village to deflate a child’s ego in Utopia.

True equality requires 24/7 monitoring of the citizenry because, if you leave any place unguarded, you will inevitably seed the growth of a dark underworld.  A place where people fight for supremacy and compete in riskier and riskier ways until someone’s ego is horribly bruised or, worse yet, until someone’s ego is satiated, leading to bigger and bigger dreams.

John Hall PhD