I think one of the main purpose of science and art is to reduce the multiplicity of things into unity. These endeavors seek to explain the endlessly diverse and heterogeneous phenomenon in nature, concentrate on what they have in common (and sometimes invent them) and put them all in boxes with labels to abstract some kind of “law” or “rules” or systems so that the mysterious and ambiguities of nature and life can be eliminated, be made sense of, and dealt with.

But I think this notion of a “will to order” can be unsettling and dangerous to a person’s fundamental well being. Think of the way nature operates to ensure the uniqueness and individuality of each member of a species through out its evolutionary history. Each organism re-produces its kind by mixing the father’s genes with the mother’s to make sure the genetic blueprint of the offspring is as diverse as possible. There was a study done that showed that when a person is attracted to another, it is based on an unconscious attraction to the other’s pheromones. And usually such an attraction occurs between two individuals who have sets of genetic blueprints that are different from each other. In other words, if I am attracted to a girl it is precisely the reason that her genes are very different from my own, and if I have sex with her and mix our two unique sets of genes together, then our offspring would be “healthier” because it would have genes so diverse that it could fend of diseases easier. In fact, this notion of mixing genes so that the offspring could be different and unique from one another is exactly the reason why sex has evolved. Sex promotes heterogeneity and multiplicity while reducing and eliminating chances of uniformity and homogeneity. In other words, sex makes each one of us is unique, and uniqueness is one of the keys to survive in nature. Imagine if all of us are genetically similar, the population would be wiped out from a disease much quicker than if we were diverse and unique because if we all had the same genetic blueprints we would be all vulnerable and defenseless to this one disease. But if we are all different, then the population would more likely to survive because only SOME of us would be vulnerable, while the rest of us stay immune and un-infected.

But as I mentioned earlier, our culture, with its interests in efficiency, control, and production in the names of religious, political, and ideological dogma, has sought to standardize and unify the uniqueness of the individual, which I think could be a de-natured act of insult against human nature and its biological instincts. The advance in technology is accompanied by advances in organization, and over-organization results in the reduction of heterogeneity and diversity, which ultimately leads to subhuman conformity that undermines the possibility of freedom and self-expression. In politics, over-organization can lead to a totalitarian dictatorship. And think of the way the factories are operated in its most economically efficient mode; the smoothly running machines in factory cause the workers to become automatons as they are all minimized to perform the same tasks with the same gestures – perfectly in-sync with a machine that operates just like every other machine in a factory that runs in every other factory. The homogeneity of motor skills results dangerously in the conformity of cognition – a gesticulation that runs our biological nature to be unique and diverse. This could be why in our contemporary Western society, in spite of its technological, scientific, and intellectual advances, are all sick in the mind. We have become automatons who think and act just like each other, where uniqueness and individuality are not only undermined, but looked down as a mode of madness or even foolishness. We all want to conform because that’s the safest bet to make in a world that violently demands unity out of multiplicity.

This is why I think sometimes the most “normal” people; the folks who are the most “conformed” are the sickest and most abnormal. Normal” individuals are mentally ill because they are going against their basic instincts of multiplicity in order to conform to a system so they can be automatons like everybody else. On the surface of things, they seem to be happy because they are so well-adjusted to our de-naturalized ways of existence that their wills and voices have been silenced so well that they do not even make a struggle to be heard. But structurally, they are normal only relatively, in a culture that is biologically abnormal and de-natured. These abnormally and de-individualized people often wonder what the hell is going on. Why is it that deep down inside, something inside them is never quite fulfilled and content – and that they don’t feel the slightest bit of creativity, spirituality, and freedom? Indeed, their conformity has become so uniform that it is inconceivable to question this illusion of normality and de-sensitization. Freedom is at risk because it is impossible to co-exist with uniformity, and when everybody is the same as everybody else, we become mentally sick because being “automaton-ized” is precisely what nature doesn’t want us to become.