I Stand
I STAND FOR: EQUALITY, ACCOUNTABILITY, SELF-AWARENESs
What does this mean? I know a lot of people in higher up places, in the spotlight, get asked “what do you stand for?” It’s the question asked of all candidates of all offices. What platform are they going to run on? Obviously, those that “stand for” the issues a voter finds most important are the candidates that will get their vote. Does that mean the voter in question stands for the same things? The issue in question, let’s say education reform or mental health care, doesn’t necessarily represent an ideology. A candidate may be focusing on your priority, but not be going about it the way you think is the most productive. Even if you and they are both pro education reform, their plan may not match your wishes. That means we are all stuck with finding the candidate who most closely matches our endgame desires. I’m not sure that there is another way to do it, but that’s not good enough for me.
The sweeping statements about believing in equality and justice for all sounded really good in the beginning. When that romantic ideology was closely examined and all the fine print was written in, America became a country that qualified its equality. “For all” was so far from the truth of what our founders meant that we are still trying to pull it apart. It’s still far from the truth. Sure, Amendments partially admit that something was wrong—is wrong—that something failed. I’ll admit, I keep (almost) every draft of a story I write even after I’ve long since corrected all the wrong turns. I am beginning to feel, however, that Amendments still allow for future strife and uncertainties.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights are what we base our laws on, how we go about providing and denying—empowering or ruining—people’s lives. It almost makes me consider deletion as the safest option. Too radical? Maybe. It’s hard not to be a nihilist right now.
When the new laws are made—Amendments added—clearly we’ll remember that something else came before. The danger in deletion, of course, is abuse. Many governments tamper with photos and books in an attempt to erase things they want their citizens to pretend never happened, brainwash them into not remembering. The motto after WWII was “Never forget.” But it’s already been said that removing and replacing Confederate statues will never make us forget that the Civil War happened (and we pretend that we are not a country guilty of brainwashing and deletion). The point is not to glorify what those people did.
I would never suggest to remove something just because I am ashamed of it. Learning from our past is paramount to having any kind of successful future. The trouble with our system—as mentioned before—is that we are required to use them as legal precedence giving them power over us for all future governmental decisions, legislation, and human rights.
So, the question is, how do we acknowledge our demons—so as not to let them hide in wait—without compromising our future? Equality does not have parameters, it needs no qualification and has no quantity. It’s a philosophical truth; Thomas Jefferson wrote it himself: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” What does it say that this mind-blowing statement was made by a person who did not practice such truths? Thinking and believing mean little without action. These men had some good intentions, but still acted with self-interest and blindness to their own hypocrisy (or maybe they knew, which is worse). What they claimed they stood for and what they did rarely matched.
So, ok, we all know this…mostly. The point is, when our “leaders” answer what they stand for, we must hold them to it; that is our only way forward. The best we can do is be honest with ourselves: about our history, about our leaders, about our hypocrisy, and about our wishes. That is what I mean by standing for self-awareness. Saying, “I was wrong,” and following a plan to fix that wrong is what I mean by accountability. Meaning “equal” when it comes before a court or taxes or anywhere is the equality I stand for: the only kind there is. To those who cannot put equality in philosophical terms, perhaps the absolute language of math will convince them. If I learned anything from my Intro to Logic 120 class at UMB, it’s that Truths are absolute and proofs level everything. Put logic into action and what we stand for will come to life.
May nerd-dom abound!
katrina Pavlovich
Quote-of-the-day
“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”