A Simple Choice

1. Letting Go

We are, it seems, constantly haunted by our own pasts. Whether it’s celebrities trying to keep their own indiscretions quiet or just some random bloke on the street, trying to live down a dodgy comment he made, we’re all saddled with our own histories.

We don’t seem capable of moving beyond those mistakes we’ve made, of learning from them and changing, and those of us that try seem to be dogged by people desperate to stop you, as if they don’t want you to change beyond their limited perception of who you are. Maybe, in a society that takes comfort in being able to categorise everything and everyone, we’ve come to believe and accept that no one can ever move out of those boxes that we’ve been placed in. Maybe we really are in some Randian world, where no one can be anything but what they are; the Goth can’t be anything but miserable, the Hipster can’t be un-ironic, the Feminist can’t like knitting. We’re assigned these labels and expected to check all the boxes that come with them, and if we do something that doesn’t fit the template, we’re looked at as weird (or weirder).

You can’t change and evolve, learn from your life experiences and move forward. You can’t be anything other than what society and the people that make it up perceives you as.

2. Randian

For many, Ayn Rand is laughed at dismissed as a crackpot. Her over simplified philosophy is largely mocked by any level headed individuals (and those that aren’t so level headed) and ignored. In her view, A is A and can’t be anything else. A rock is a rock; a leaf can’t be both red and green; a criminal is and always will be a criminal, and can’t be rehabilitated and leave their past behind. We, as a free thinking society, dismiss this as crap, because we all have the capacity to change and evolve into different people.

Or, perhaps, those views are dismissed because we can’t accept that it’s a viewpoint that has become ingrained in our perception of the world.

3. Routine

Society, as a whole, seems programmed to go against the tides of change, to resist every tiny alteration to the things around us. Whether it’s change for the better or for the worst, we don’t like it. We have routines that give our lives structure, that we can work inside: out of bed at a certain time, take a certain route to work, leave your coffee jar in a certain place. We put our children into a routine early on in their lives by feeding them at certain times and putting them to bed at certain times; school gives them that same structure that we have, teaches them the routines we all know and use. In turn, they impose the same routines on their children, and so on.

4. Stuck

As much as we want to move forward, change, evolve, everything around us is geared to keep us exactly where — and what — we are. It’s just the way we’ve been trained.

5. Internet

It’s often said that once something’s on the internet, it’s there forever, as if the world wide web is a never changing monolith that will be with us forever. But the internet changes. Access protocols change, servers change, technology changes. The culture of life on the Internet doesn’t.

The culture of the Internet is built on Randian ideals.

6. Change

With the birth of Internet culture, we’ve simply taken the ideals and philosophies that have become an ingrained part of our society and transplanted them to this new paradigm. The Randian viewpoint of A is A rules the web, permeates every strand of it. On the Internet, you are what you are and you can’t be anything else. Your history is there to haunt you forever, to be dragged up whenever someone wants to remind the world of what you are, to reinforce the idea that change is an illusion.

We had the opportunity to change, to do something truly different with this new culture, but we ignored it and carried on with what we know.

7. Binary

The Internet is increasingly revealing itself to be made up of binary viewpoints: black and white, left and right, liberal and conservative, and so on. There is no room for the shades of grey that give the world around us colour and dimension. We are forced into being one thing or another online and once people perceptions of us are fixed, we can’t, in their eyes, be anything else.

8. Evolve

Each and every one of us has the ability to change, to grow and become a different person, with different views and thoughts and feelings about what’s around us. We can change the online world to be something better, something that will allow us to be the fully formed, three dimensional human beings we are, something where we don’t have to conform to the routine, binary existence that we’re expected to live. From there, we can build outwards and bring some of those same ideas to the offline world and begin to change that, too.

But we simply choose not to.

9. Choice

We have the choice to reject the Randian ideals the modern Internet is built around.

It’s important we remember that.

10. Looking Ahead

I do not believe in the A is A philosophy. I do believe in our ability, as human beings, to change and become the people we want to be, to have multiple, sometimes even contrasting shades to our personalities. I believe each of us has the ability to see past the simple categorization we assign to those around us, and see the many differing interests and views that make us who we are.

But, it’s a simple choice that has to be made by each and every one of us: do I want to change?

I do.