Tuesday 3 November 2020

Harrison Bergeron & Us

Harrison Bergeron is a short story by Kurt Vonnegut that I've seen mentioned several times recently, including here (fairly randomly as this is simply the latest place I saw the story mention and discussed):



And here's a link to the story itself: http://tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

It's a short read, and not desperately subtle. The underlying theme is those that believe everyone should be made equal do not have anyone's best interests at heart, coupled with the idea that the innately superior will always rise above any amount of handicapping and therefore must be ended by the equalizers.

Whoever does the deciding is obviously motivated to disadvantage everybody else so that they themselves are and remain advantaged. This is how this philosophy has always played out when implemented in reality. It is no coincidence that any implementation of a plan to pick out any group deemed to be disadvantaged and rise them up always ends in that group being further disadvantaged.

On what may seem to be an entirely different topic, and while I'm in the mood for sharing things, here's something rather more interesting (in the sense of being rather less obvious and therefore rather more worth your time). There are roughly a dozen in this sequence and each is short and to the point.

I just spent a little time looking around for a transcript of these, for those who read faster than people speak, but can't find one in a reasonable amount of time and don't have time to do that work. Pity, but there we are.




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