Harrison Bergeron (1961)
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Harrison Bergeron (1961)
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Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#2A more readable version: https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#3Beauty, and human attraction to beauty, is impossible to overcome. While sometimes informed by culture, attributes like symmetrical faces are desirable across all cultures. And those attributes are often powerfully informed by genetics. Absent absurd handicaps like in the story, people with those attributes will have better lives. Life is not fair. In some ways it’s better that it’s not. Our perception of beauty, and marveling in its wonder, is something that makes us uniquely human.
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#4This story had an amazing effect on me as a child and before it begins, yes I have a disability (though a so called invisible disability - I have type 1 diabetes and epilepsy).
It isn't that we should turn a blind eye to the disabled, as many use it as a parable for. Many disabled do need extra help, but that help comes in the form of lifting up, not pushing down those who are able. The able should be encouraged, in their own way. Everyone needs to excel in an area that is their own and have a space to grow (oh God, I've turned into a hippy =/).
I worry that this parable, the true meaning of this parable, has been washed-out over the years to be used only as a sword and not the shield it was meant to be.
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#5Beauty, and human attraction to beauty, is impossible to overcome. While sometimes informed by culture, attributes like symmetrical faces are desirable across all cultures. And those attributes are often powerfully informed by genetics. Absent absurd handicaps like in the story, people with those attributes will have better lives. Life is not fair. In some ways it’s better that it’s not. Our perception of beauty, and…
Even various animals prefer attractive people. It's pretty crazy
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#6i dont know Vonnegut's politics but i have always wondered if this story was secretly a fairytale for the right-leaning. it paints wanting equality as intensely evil, holding back the best of humanity. which, yes, true in communist regimes, but you see echoes in some less well considered laws and policies in modern life. i am afraid to like, or even publicly discuss, the story because of what it might say about me.
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#7Treating different things the same can generate as much inequality as treating the same things differently.
- Kimberlé Crenshaw
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#8This story is typically seen as a critique of socialism, but it's more likely that Vonnegut intended it as a critique of critiques of socialism [1]. Vonnegut himself was a socialist [2], and the absurdist tone of the story reinforces this idea.
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/197545/03882696bf...
[2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/04/kurt-vonneguts-socialism-fr...
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#9i dont know Vonnegut's politics but i have always wondered if this story was secretly a fairytale for the right-leaning. it paints wanting equality as intensely evil, holding back the best of humanity. which, yes, true in communist regimes, but you see echoes in some less well considered laws and policies in modern life. i am afraid to like, or even publicly discuss, the story because of what it might say about me.
This story was part of a collection of literature that came out shortly after it became irrefutably understood on the left, that the USSR had failed and become a totalitarian state.
Early on in USSR's history most of the socialistically leaning world was hopeful that the USSR might still be, to some degree, working out as hoped. It was extremely hard to get unbiased reporting about what was actually happening within its borders, which allowed some die-hard supporters to hold out hope. But when the USSR put down the Hungarian revolution in 56, there was no denying this any longer.
This story wasn't support of right wing politics. It was anti-totalitarian.
Re: Harrison Bergeron (1961)
#10i dont know Vonnegut's politics but i have always wondered if this story was secretly a fairytale for the right-leaning. it paints wanting equality as intensely evil, holding back the best of humanity. which, yes, true in communist regimes, but you see echoes in some less well considered laws and policies in modern life. i am afraid to like, or even publicly discuss, the story because of what it might say about me.
> wanting equality
It's equality of outcome writ large, not equality of opportunity. I see it as a nonsensical extension of the classical liberal idea that everyone is born equal, which to me means that everyone is treated equally under the law; not that everyone is literally equal and anyone should be able to be and do anything that anybody else can, which is reflected in various postmodern movements such as critical race theory or transgenderism.