Showing posts with label demography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label demography. Show all posts

Friday, April 5, 2013

The Largest Minority



The Largest Minority
Charlie Earl

While the two fossilized old parties are constructing strategies for pursuing the Latino vote, both parties have miserably failed to appeal to the largest minority in the nation and the world. The individual is marginalized and ignored as policy makers and their minions implement grand schemes for targeted demographic groups.


One does not have to be historian to understand that humans have gravitated toward communal living for security and social purposes. On the other hand our written and oral histories are replete with stories of those who disagreed with others and struck out on their own. The group is not the basic element of human life. The individual is. Individuals drift from group to group while seeking communal compatibility. It seems somewhat fruitless therefore for social scientists and the governments who rely on their findings to focus on “groups” when the clusters are in a state of constant flux.

Individuals represent the basic element of any social structure. Any parent can attest to the reality that each of their children is uniquely different….even though they spring from the identical gene pool. Yet… demographers, political parties, bureaucrats and legislators insist on addressing people as groups or clusters while ignoring their individual deviations from the norm of the designated group. In an elemental way this explains why governments must resort to force to assure compliance with dictates for the “common good.” It is the equivalent of government force and social ostracism being used to force square pegs into round holes.

Our individual natures inherently lead to the conclusion that huge communities, cities, states or countries are counter-productive. Individual inspiration and creativity are throttled by the constraints of the system. Individual desires, no matter how lofty, are sacrificed for the mediocre good for all. The larger a society becomes the more necessary it is for force to be used as a means for ensuring order and total compliance. A social structure of “one” is the most free. Those who have voluntarily mated or married realize that forging two “ones” into “one” is an extremely difficult task. To extend the energy for harmony to hundreds or thousands or even millions of individuals suggests that individual identities will be submerged or lost in order to promote the unreal “common good.”

The wisdom of our Framers was their awareness that local smaller units of self governance were most conducive for individual liberty. The Constitution of the United States specifically limits the power of the federal government to trample individual rights in order to give individual states and their local communities the primary task for structuring community mores and rules. As the power and force of government moves further away from individuals, their unique qualities are blurred and the society suffers. The forgotten minority is the largest minority. That minority is YOU.

Charlie Earl