The Right to be Different

Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone's right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! the only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.

Vasily Grossman in Life and Fate

I like this thought. Political philosophers rarely assert the value of this right - the right to be different.

Some, like Hobbes, see society as developing out of our basic needs for protection. Others, like Locke, see it as the rational requirement of our fundamental rights. Burke and other's might see society as having a value in itself, as the transmitter of values through the generations. But rarely do philosophers proclaim the value of difference itself.

Grossman's point is useful because he sees that the individual's proper commitment to the group must be a reflection of the needs of individuality itself - it is my unique place in community that I expect society to respect and sustain. If society cannot respect and support that very individuality why must I support it? If I must become not I in order to be valued and protected then I have no reason to commit myself to society.

It is curious how careless we are of diversity and true individuality in our thinking about society. All too quickly some rationale becomes the new god for society - and we must sacrifice ourselves for that artificial idol. I think that part of the reason that Judaism was so opposed to idols was precisely to protect the individual from this kind of mad social coercion.