Taking a Long, Hard Look

As anyone who has read my work must realise, I have very strong views on life being fair. It really matters to me that everyone has the same opportunities and chances in life, that no one be pushed down or denied on the grounds of their birth and social standing like my Disposables are, or discriminated against for the way they look or chose to live, like Dullard. I think that everyone deserves a fair shot at living or getting themselves the life they want, regardless of who they are.

But the world itself doesn’t help there. Because, she says as she dusts off her old cultural studies brain cells from her long ago Geography degree, the culture in which one grows up materially affects what every person within it considers “normal”. Viewpoints on what is acceptable and what isn’t, on what society should be and, more importantly, everyone’s place in it are ingrained into its inhabitants from a very young age without most people even realising. And so it can be that persons in one culture may accept and consider as a normal part of society something which those raised in a different culture would find abhorrent. A society makes its own rules and layers them into its people, encouraging them not to think twice. It makes its idea of normal into instinct. And those mass instincts can then suppress and impede the lives of those at the wrong end of them.

Such are the ponderings novels are made of. But one of the many reasons I created this story was because I think it matters so much to get people thinking about exactly what their society is. To, just like Fodder and his friends, highlight the injustices that hide under the banner of “just the way things are” and bring them out of the shadows. To encourage everyone to take a step back and have a long, hard look at the world around them and how it shapes both their lives and those of others. Normal can be pervasive – it’s not always easy to look past it or even know it’s there.  And it can be very hard to let go of feelings and instincts people have lived with all their lives. I know I struggle sometimes. It’s the comfort of the familiar versus the fear of the unknown. What will the new shape of life be if it isn’t the one we know? And where will we fit into it?

I do think it is important to be gentle with these people. Some will never change their minds, that’s just a fact of life, what they feel they know is too powerful , too much a part of who they are for them to let go of and they will never see anything outside the cocoon in which they were raised. But most – I think they can take that long, hard look if they are given the chance to. If they are coaxed, educated, helped to see their world as it looks from another’s perspective , they can see things differently. It won’t be comfortable for many, but I hope so much more will try.  

Letting someone realise for themselves what is unjust in the world around them and making a conscious decision to move past it is the most powerful lesson in the world. It’s never going to be easy. But it will always be worthwhile.