Ideas for Sale: Cheap!

I do not approve of mass production.

Those words, to me, summon up an image of running conveyor belts and cheap plastic parts.  It makes me think of someone who is making as many of something as possible to make the most money possible.  It makes me think of the videos we used to see in middle school social studies with factory workers turning knobs and pushing buttons in factories.  Maybe that’s a stereotypical reaction.  Mass production is a large part of our economy, enabling us to get things that we would never be able to afford otherwise.  As I write this, I’m sitting at a desk from Ikea that has numerous clones all across the world.  I’m typing on a keyboard that was mass-produced, looking at a monitor that was mass-produced, sipping from a mug that was mass-produced.  Maybe I don’t have any right to complain.  But I don’t like it.  Is it wrong of me to think that there should be some care placed into the things that we make?  Is it wrong of me to want some originality, some uniqueness, something that no one else has?  That’s the writer talking, the artist, that part of me that has to assign meaning to everything.

I suppose mass-production is here to stay, no matter what one irritated blogger with fewer than ten followers has to say.  But do we really have to follow the example of mass-production when we make rules for ourselves?  You know you’ve seen it.  “All abortions should be illegal.”  “All illegals should be deported.”  “Real marriage can only happen between a man and a woman.”

Let’s face it: humans are different from one another.  All of us have different beliefs, different cultures, different values, different motivations, clashing together in the soul to make immensely complex organisms that no other human can ever fully understand.  How can we all be expected to follow the same rules?  How can what is right for me be right for everyone else on the planet?  One would think that by now we should have a small understanding of this.  Yet we lay down laws that are supposed to rule over everyone, and we are surprised when there are loopholes and exceptions.  Wouldn’t it be better to address conflicts with an open-minded consideration for both parties, to hear them with compassion and decide what is right for them, not what is right for everyone?

But the thing I hate most is the mass production of ideas.  When someone says something and suddenly it is springing out of the mouths of everyone else around me, it infuriates me.  When my coworker rolls out these ridiculous theories about the way of the world with all the confidence of reciting gospel, because he has never had to think for himself: he has simply downloaded it into his brain.  When no one questions the things our leaders say, when we just echo what the media has interpreted for us, when we take any opportunity not to think for ourselves—that is when I want to tear down the assembly line, destroy the factory, and start teaching people how to make their own stuff again.  It might make things a little more expensive, a little more difficult, but I think that’s what we need right now.  Because if we don’t, we will end up with every house the same, every face the same, and every misery the same, all trapped together in an easy, lifeless existence.