Audrey
Pietrucha
Our
dystopian world
Every faction conditions its members
to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's
not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way.
But our minds move in a dozen different directions.
We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It
means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will
always cause trouble for them. - Tobias, Divergent
At first the movie Divergent appears to
be a dystopian fantasy, a story about a world where people are divided into
factions and are, for the most part, content to stay within them. The five
factions - Dauntless, Abnegation, Erudite, Amity and Candor – each represent
personality traits for which their members have tested and been found to have
an aptitude. Dauntless are brave, Abnegation are selfless, Erudite are bookish
and intelligent, Amity are kind and peace-loving and Candor are honest and truth
seeking. The trouble is, some members of the society do not fit neatly into any
one category. They are Divergent.
Though the world of Divergent is
fictional, it contains obvious parallels to our own society. What is astonishing
is that we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions, even volunteer for placement.
We have our political factions, our racial factions, our religious factions. We
line up behind our favorite sports teams and taunt our rivals’ fans, we feel
superior or inferior based on which schools we attend or which stores we shop.
Southerners aren’t as good as Northerners who are as good as New Englanders who
aren’t as good as Vermonters. Like amoeba we seem able to continually divide and
separate ourselves. Naturally, whichever groups in which we find ourselves tend
to be the better ones.
While this human tendency to divide into
groups or factions or clans, whichever term applies, is damaging and limiting
to us as individuals, it is devastating to our society on a political level.
Once we have identified ourselves as belonging to one faction we often stop
thinking about issues and allow our “leaders” to do the thinking for us. Thus,
when a Republican president runs up huge budget deficits the members of his supposedly
fiscally conservative political faction are ominously silent. When Democrat
president expands policies that allow American citizens to be spied upon, his
normally civil liberties-loving minions see, hear and speak no evil. This is
extremely helpful to those in power but ruinous to a system of government which
requires an informed and engaged electorate.
Equally destructive is the tendency of
politicians to take cover behind their faction of choice whenever they are
questioned about their policies or actions. So someone like Eric Holder, whose
stint as U.S. Attorney General has been fraught with bad decisions, cries
racism when he is questioned on them. In our group-identity-driven political
atmosphere people aren’t allowed to disagree with those who are different
without being accused of hating the entire faction.
Divergence is extremely dangerous.
Perhaps the worst consequence of our
herd mentality, though, is how we treat those who express viewpoints outside
what the majority, or often a very vocal minority, considers acceptable thought.
Someone like Andrew Cuomo, who is supposed to serve as governor to all New
Yorkers, can actually say those he defines as “extreme conservatives,”
including people who are pro-life and pro-second amendment, have no place in
New York State and receive little backlash from his fellow “liberals.” Though
we give lip-service to the glories of intellectual diversity and the free
exchange of ideas, in reality dissenting nails are quickly hammered down when
they dare to pop up. Physical hammers are unnecessary, of course, since
name-calling words like “wacko,” “nut job” and “extremist” suffice.
Divergent makes the point that the
traits that define the factions, and many traits besides, are part of human
nature and no matter how much we try to isolate and extinguish them, they will
remain. We are not one dimensional. We are all, actually, Divergent and capable
of developing a myriad of character traits.
Our task is to cultivate and magnify
those that contribute to morally and culturally healthy individuals and
societies.
I think we’ve made a mistake ...We’ve all
started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of
bolstering our own. I don’t want to do that. I want to be brave,
and selfless, and smart, and honest,
and kind . . .
So should we all.
Audrey Pietrucha is a member of
Vermonters for Liberty and a proud Divergent. She can be reached at
vermontliberty@gmail.com.
