Harrison Bergeron: The Battle Between Equality And Individuality

The Fight Between Equality and Individuality
Equality is a topic of great debate in the world today, ranging from the people of the LGBT community fighting for their right to marry the person they love, to minorities fighting for the right to not be racially profiled and prosecuted for their skin color, to store owners and clerks fighting for their right to religious freedom if they do not want to serve a gay man or woman. While not all of these rights are fully recognized, there are rights that every man, woman, and child, in democratic countries, have. Whether these rights are God given or legislative, they allow everybody to better himself the way he sees fit. Every person has the ability to say or write what he wants and how he wants to.

Every person has the ability to become wealthier or more successful. Every person has the ability to become healthier or more physically fit. What makes a human an individual is how these rights are used to develop unique characteristics that only one person has. However, even though there are equal rights and opportunities for every person, that does not make everybody equal. There are some people who are much wealthier or healthier or stronger than others. At some point in trying to give everyone equality, there comes a time that the citizens become so equal that they are no longer individuals. They can no longer better themselves because that would make them unequal to everyone else.
In any utopian society, everyone is equal.

Nobody is better than anyone else. Nobody is wealthier than anybody else. Nobody is healthier than anybody else. Nobody is more beautiful than anybody else. This description of utopia can bring about two possible outcomes: one as seen in Thomas More’s Utopia and the other as seen in “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In More’s Utopia, the best possible outcome came from everyone’s equality. However, all the conditions just happened to be perfect. Everyone was willing to work while receiving the same supplies as everyone else, everyone was incredibly healthy because the country of Utopia had free hospitals with the most skilled nurses, and everyone just happened to be amazingly beautiful. This is one of the few instances that total equality can still keep individuality intact. While there is no way for the citizens to better themselves financially or through inheritance, there is still the opportunity for every person to better themselves physically and intellectually. This allows for the individual to choose what he wants to better about himself in and how he can do that, whether that is a workout regimen or a certain diet or a subject of learning that interests him. Even though this bettering of one’s self is expected in Utopia, it is still the right of the citizen to decide if he wishes to do

this.
On the other end of the spectrum, in Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, the United States has taken equality to such an extent that everyone is perfectly equal.

Nobody is wealthier, smarter, stronger, or more beautiful than anyone else. Unlike Utopia, instead of bringing the people up, the government in “Harrison Bergeron” brings down those who are above average through handicaps such as radios to distract the intelligent, weights to hold down the strong, and masks to hide the beautiful. By stripping everyone of the rights which once gave everyone equal opportunities, the United States government created a country where, by making everyone equal by force, its citizens are no longer individuals, but the same person repeated over and over again. The country would be different if some personal development were allowed but any sort of activity that would make one person different from another is punishable by two years in prison, a large fine or even death. It is one thing to not value personal improvement, but to punish the action creates a society were individuals are not just rare, but are illegal. By outlawing the individual, the government is creating a country that will eventually be filled with mindless drones, only capable of doing one thing:

work.
Individuality is the ability to express and change oneself in any way that person sees fit, and the combination of all of these expressions and changes that make each person unique. There are no two people who are exactly alike. Some people are smarter than others, while some people are stronger than other, and some people are more beautiful, or faster, or wealthier than others. This great diversity in society is what makes individuality possible, and allows mankind to diversify even further. When these abilities are stripped away, or when the right to enhance these abilities is stripped away, that is when a society is no longer a group of individuals, but a group of clones. Today, when groups say they are fighting for equality, they are fighting for equal rights and abilities, for if they were fighting for total equality, the groups would no longer exist.