Burning Men | Teen Ink

Burning Men

June 2, 2009
By Daniel Blumin PLATINUM, Tenafly, New Jersey
Daniel Blumin PLATINUM, Tenafly, New Jersey
38 articles 0 photos 1 comment

Why is it that we must follow the machine we call society? For what is it but a tool to tell us what to do, a malicious force that eliminates truth. And what are we? What are we but fools for trying to follow society, for it is society that makes us blind, that makes us a pawn in a never-ending game of chess. We are machines, programmed to receive and follow, and to be controlled by the flick of a finger. We are told that the world is black and white, and we are punished when we try and see in color. The thing is, I doubt we can ever win against the battle that rages between society and individualism, for you see one cannot survive in context with another. The normality, the formality that society sets us to follow is only a expectation we are expected to live up to. Involuntarily, unwillingly. This is what society wants of us. This is what it expects. Secretly all it wants is a simpler machine that is easier to control. There is a war against individuality, and our ignorance about the machine we live in lets us lose every battle with ease, lets us take pounding after pounding. We embrace it. We take in society like a father, and we cherish it greatly. Yet none of the people see that slowly, the very thing that the choose to embrace kills off who they are inside. Society hollows out our soul, and it makes us into the simple machines that we are. One function, no thought. One idea, no reality. What are we caught in, but a simple never ending math equation? Society is killing off true human nature, and we as people are cut down, no will to even stop it. We are so deep in an act of embracing, we cannot resist the destruction of our own being. We the people who stand up, we the people who stand up and show our true colors are marked down for death as vigilantes. We, people who dare to stand the side of the societal fight against individualism. We the people who dare look at life in color. We the people who stand our ground are taken down, painted for the road of sinners. We stand no chance, and even the ground we stand is pressed up against a barrier of lies that even we cannot break through. Society weaves a web of lies so large, not even the smallest of men can escape it’s clutches. The people who slide past, are hunted down and thrown out. We have only one weapon, which is thought. We are different. The people who hold tight to their individualism are different. We are the villains that are splayed across minds as evil, when in turn we are simply good. We are told we live in utopia. People who accept this are doomed, because utopias that are built on black and white are not reality at all. Our individualism is the color in the massacre of suffocating blackness. This is what we must truly hold fast to, yet all of us have let go. I pray I am not the last to still hold my individualism. Society wants to kill it. Society wants it in it’s robotic grasp, and want s to suffocate it to create the perfect machine. It is nearly there, suppressing every “vigilante” it can come across. The clash of individualism and society creates the root of all human expression. For it is when our actions are suppressed we simply react in color. The paint on the walls of broken down subways, and the words thrown across a canvas of white paper, is the surplus of this war, hubris to seeing in color. This is what is being hunted down and killed. We are losing, and I fear we have already lost this war. My last can of spray paint was spent, and so was I.



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This article has 3 comments.


on Sep. 28 2009 at 8:26 pm
Daniel Blumin PLATINUM, Tenafly, New Jersey
38 articles 0 photos 1 comment
some great thoughts. Nice ideas inciendary good rebutal :)

on Sep. 2 2009 at 9:52 pm
Incendiary SILVER, NY, New York
6 articles 0 photos 7 comments
"The normality, the formality that society sets us to follow is only a expectation we are expected to live up to."

Let's get something clear; are you talking about society in its essence, as an infrastructure of economy, individuals, and industry, or the standards of society? Have you made clear your concept of society? In my understanding, what you are alluding to here is that the expectations and ideologies that society tends to make us subconsciously conform to, causes destruction of individualism.

I have always believed that society is made up of individuals, and depending on the direction cultural identity takes, a certain character molds and eventually identifies the society in one way or another. I have never given society a certain role, as you had, to this elitist, dystopian society you are describing. Personally, I don’t see such dystopia around me. I retain my individualism and my personal thoughts and beliefs and ideologies, but for now, all I can make rational judgment on are the individuals that I am familiar with. You see, “society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals,” and that is what I can say for myself, as Oscar Wilde had. I see the real world, but as for the “standards” and “formalities” of society that apparently are out to hunt down my anarchistic individualist self, I deal with them as I deal with problems of every day life. Some individual, group, company, board is trying to suppress my actions? No problem. I’ll just find a practical way around it. I don’t look for a vague concept of repressive “society” to blame all my problems on. I look for that inner hinge inside me, a compass that guides me through life—and it’s my heart and brain—and then there’s no barrier I can’t overcome. Even that of society! By golly, I guess I still have some cans of spray left!

TurtleLover said...
on Aug. 28 2009 at 9:40 pm
you're right. life is in black and white, layed out before us. with the way society and the government are taking things, i doubt machines will even be enough to describe us. things that would have been punishable by death so long ago have become no more then an every day occurance. is this the America we've created? in 1766 when 56 men knowingly signed the Declaration of Independece full aware that it was complete treason, is this what they had in mind? your words moved me beyond all comprehension and i couldn't quite figure out why. but the truth of the matter is that i think we're all a little bogged down by seeing everything in black and white and maybe if we just opened ourselves up a little the colors, the remarkable shades of diversity and truths would not be so lost. i applaud you for being able to put all of this into something people can actually understand.