Comment on Original or Copy? by Joe Clarke

My generation’s temptation was to try to be an original like everyone else-Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Rilke, Baba Ram Das, et al. I love the commercials that pander to this illusion of uniqueness (in taste for liquor, cologne or conveyance) and America’s mythic rugged individualism, but didn’t realize the same appeal being made on the sub-culture level as well.
I’m beginning to believe that we are designed or created to be social and thus form larger societies for survival but also the attainment of our immaterial nature through art, study, worship, prayer and love. The social contract assumes that we are all working/living for the greater good of all. So being “part of” is an essential part of our nature, however the threat is when society’s aims are seemingly threatened and then easily co-opted by evil interests.
My Church group recently watched Weapons of the Spirit, and this time I noticed how some of those who were co-opted under the Vichy regime and Nazism were re-awakened to their own humanity by meeting such gentle, non-violent resistance to their aims by the farmers and villagers of Le Chambon.