Blog 2

Parents should be responsible for teaching their children the skills necessary for developing their own individuality as necessary through the different stages of life. Formal education should be responsible for teaching the facts and processes of the society – the formal “government” and career expectations. As for the happiness of the individual, it is the individual’s responsibility – this is to say with the two given circumstances. The only circumstance that requires action of the individual is that if he is unhappy. In which case, he must communicate with his parents, teachers, and even more specifically his “friends” to discover the aspect of this source of unhappiness and the steps that must follow to solve their unhappiness.

Unfortunately, our society does not already play this role through any of the three areas. As parents are becoming younger, teachers are becoming more restricted, and as true “friends” are harder to find and keep, there is less of a concern for individual happiness. Instead, what is happening more often is that from the government’s educational system is more concerned with the happiness of the majority and/or advancement to the next success. Which, if someone is happy and good at fixing cars or working construction, then furthering their education in the field of, let’s say, mathematics, is just a waste of their time and assets. In this way, our society hinders individuals in that everyone is expected to at least graduate the basic bachelors system and possibly even a masters before they can be considered worth to their society, regardless of their originality.

Also, aside from the above examples, conformity to a “mould” of a character (I love the quote from John Mill, “Persons of genius are, ex ri termini, more individual than any other people – less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.”) is becoming the “cool” thing to do in schools – leaving the original individuals by themselves to develop alone for the most part. Which, as we all know (or should) from experience, being alone constantly is hardly a source of happiness. And just as important as it is for the emotional well-being of the individual to have friends is also the aspect of discussing important matters with “friends” to help with the development of the individual.

The moral obligation we have to develop ourselves in order to be happy is that (for an example, this can be applied to other situations) if we are indeed capable of being original, then we are breaking the natural laws applied to Mill’s views in that we are not preventing others from doing harm to themselves and others – which could be prevented if only by convincing them that they need development in order to more fully understand and help themselves and society.

So, since society has failed in these regards, we must rebel (although peacefully) and prove that we are original in that we can improve our own lives and even more so the lives of others in order to be able to live in a society that is non-conforming and beneficial and most of all, so unobtrusive that it can be controlled by individuals.