I, Citizen
(In memoriam Kevin Jones, who taught me the Elemental Analyser.)
‘Society in its full sense... is never an entity separable from the individuals that compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilisation has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.’
- Ruth Benedict
1.
‘No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture.’*
‘No individual can arrive even at the threshold of her potentialities...’
If eugenics and gene research do not integrate,
If drugs and chip implants are not used to stimulate
The brain-waves we scan for their potential, so great
To serve the State.¹
‘No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities...’
But for the commerce in which we participate,
Expanding the markets to cover his plate,
Developing the technologies to fill his pate
Outside our gate.²
‘No individual can arrive even at the threshold of her potentialities...’
Till she comes to the enclaves of peace and prosperity,
Those havens of culture and the cutting edge company,
Walled against that visitor from the dens of austerity,
The unsuccessful interviewee.³
¹ This verse supposes the culture to be totalitarian, a nightmare Brave New World.
² This verse posits a poor person in a developing country excluded from the the enclaves of growth. He is still participating in a culture, that of the begging bowl.
³ The culture we may want to participate in has given the job to someone else.
* Part 1 carries a serious social message about how some are given an opportunity to fulfil their potential, while others are fated to miss out.
