February 28, 2023
. . .
Today, we’re reading Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron” in my Template:1102 class. It strikes me this time through as a science-fiction allegory where some humans have evolved and perhaps mutated into superior beings, but the current US government passes constitutional amendments to ensure equality. Three amendments codify the ideological aspiration of the Declaration of Independence that reads “all men are created equal”—and if they’re not, they are forced to be through sanctioned handicaps. In essence, then, law maintains a society built around the lowest common denominator so as to not make anyone better (or worse) than anyone else.
Yes, I can see this is as the dystopian hellscape that conservatives see in liberal “wokeness.” Vonnegut’s satire makes this notion of a forced equality absurd and potentially morally dubious. In this system people are punished for being better, forced to live at the level of those least capable: perhaps the logical outcome of a society that gives everyone a trophy for participation, making competition antithetical to social harmony. George Bergeron even associates competition with the “dark ages,” or being unenlightened.[1] The logic, then, is that forced equality eliminates an integral aspect of individuality and the natural competitiveness that excelling at somethign leads to. I guess I can see that wokeness regarded in such a way could be nightmarish.
At the other extreme, all of this handicapping seems to have the opposite effect on many members of society, Harrison being the primary example. Indeed, he’s like superman forced to wear kryptonite. And this analogy seems very apt, as if the handicaps have accelerated evolution to ironically increase the natural abilities and attributes of many citizens.
. . .
notes
- ↑ Vonnegut, Kurt (January 1, 1994) [1961]. "Harrison Bergeron". Reading and Writing About Literature. By Sipiora, Phillip. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. p. 136.
