The New Evolution

It doesn't seem right that I am much more interested in sitting around engaging the plight of the working class, planning their emergence and freeing their minds through education than I am actually engaging working class people. It doesn't seem right, and yet I know that I am guilty of the sin of subscribing to intellectual evolution. I don't know if other people have coined or used this term or concept, but what I'm getting at is the idea that through education a human being can quite literally evolve. The difference in only one lifetime when education surpasses the previous generation's can be equivalent to many generations of Darwinian evolution--I truly believe the difference can be so stark.

Elitism. This is an option for the POV that I'm referencing. Elitism, however, requires a feeling of arrogance. This can be true in some cases of established white-collar/blue-collar tensions, but that's not exactly what I'm referring to. What I'm NOT speaking of is a person who is an established member of the white-collar class with no hands-on blue collar experience; in this case avoidance or a hands-off approach would indeed be a candidate for elitism.

The intellectual evolution of which I speak happens within an individual, within a lifetime. In this case, the unwillingness to engage the blue-collar world from which said individual evolved is based, not in arrogance and lack of understanding, but in fear and intimate understanding. The outward signs of this intolerance can perhaps be the same as elitism--aloofness, scoffing, avoidance, distaste and distrust--but the internal struggle is completely different. The outward signs are a result not of a lack of knowledge (as in elitism) but of intimate knowledge and, having "seen the light," a fear of "going backward." This notion of "going backward" is not at all fair to the place from which the person evolved, nor to the people who still inhabit that space. But the individual, perceiving personal enlightenment, believes their journey to be one of progression, the inverse of which would be regression. So, through this progression or personal evolution, the concept of "overcoming" emerges. "I have overcome and to engage or embrace my previous incarnation is to take a step backwards."

I am beginning to see that this personal evolution is, in fact, a circle, not a line. The further growth and progression from the starting point leads not to greater distance but, in fact, a greater understanding and a closer look and, eventually, the release of fear.

Until next time...