Being A Member

WHENEVER a small group of people regularly assembles for a specific purpose, it runs the risk of becoming a sort of miniature cult with specific, clearly delineated, unified purposes and beliefs. Whether this is beneficial to itself or to society as a whole depends entirely upon the specific nature of and motivations underpinning its formation and existence. Fortunate are those who become involved with such groups only with great trepidition and reluctance, and who are prepared at any mmoment to forsake the group of choice in search of greater individuality. My membership and participation within the Democratic party has been lifelong, but I remain prepared at any moment to fly the coop in search of more rewarding political habitats. Complete political independence, or loosely affiliated membership in whatever socialist party exists in the United States are options for me. My aversion to the Republican party began with Barry Goldwater, and seems to have no end in sight. I have always imagined myself in attendance at a Democratic National convention, smugly ensconced in a far off corner of the room with my fellow democratic socialists. Whenever I attend church, which I did only a few times in early childhood and only a few times in late adulthood, I sit in a pew by myself, not necessarily by choice, because I would smilingly welcome anyone who chose to sit near or next to me, but most definitly by preference. I cannot imagine my being cloistered and closely clustered together with a few people of like minded thinking in any walk of life or any endeavor. For me, like minded people are, seemingly, few and far between, which I consider my good fortune. Einstein said that the very sight of men marching in lock step rank and file automatically motivated him to question their intelligence. Whenever I sense that I am becoming too closely compatable with any one person or group of people in ideology or intent, I raise my red flag, and question, yet again, my own reasoning...Immediately after the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte, elevated to power for that very reason, unified the French by establishing organized groups, trade guilds, service organizations, and patriotic groups devoted to the installation. preservation, and perpetuation primarily of Napoleonic dictatorship. People have always fallen victim to the refutable notion that the best way to establish and ensure the peppetuation of social stability resides in the elevation of a single person to a position of political preemeinence, whether or not that entails outright dictatorship. We tend to fear and loathe self governance. The United States, whose founders were well aware of the European template, sought to assiduously avoid duplicating it (the European model) by creating for themselves and their posterity a government fragmented in its limited responsibilities, accountable, essentially, to nobody. When Karl Marx proposed that future history would witness the withering away of all the formal apparatus of state, leaving people free to in essence govern themelves as individuals, The highly atomized, individualistic system he proposed would likely have proved unworkale, and congealed back into rigid, immutable systems. But when we as indeviduals or nations are afraid to make mistakes, we have already begun our own descent. We should do with our nation states as we do with toddlers and with ourselves; allow them to make and correct their own mistakes, without the coercive, corrosive influences of dictatorial overlordship. As Goethe said: "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance."