In this dystopian short story by E.M. Forster, we see a society where conformity and automation rule people's lives.
Of course in every dystopian story, the different character is the best character. I always find myself rooting for that one too; we all do when we’re reading dystopias, the framing doesn’t really allow us to do otherwise. In this case, I guess I am kind of advocating for difference too, but in our world. Of course The Machine Stops is an extreme of conformity and automation, but isn’t our world kind of heading in that direction too (hopefully not that much, but well I wouldn’t put it past us; human greed knows no bounds — we’re killing the world and don’t give a shit because getting oil is cheaper than using other energy sources, regardless of the irreparable damage it causes our earth, because money is money, right? Fucking assholes)? Why is it that we can’t live in a world where differences exist but are accepted? Why does difference freak people out so much? Jeez, it’s like we all just have our hands over our eyes and say, “If I can’t see you, you’re not there!” And who or what are we saying that to? Just about to everything we don’t like about life, that doesn’t fall in line with our expectations, just as Vashti does with her son. He calls, and she’s all like, “Oops didn’t see your call there!” And forgets about it. Until she can't anymore, because a world of conformity is not one that is sustainable, both for our physical and mental health and for the world and its societies.
Conformity is not sustainable because regardless of whether we were all white or black, or all girls or guys, or whatever else, the other white girl beside me is still different than me — maybe not that much on the outside, but astoundingly so on the inside. Differences are everywhere, regardless of whether we can see them or not. Have you ever played the game “Spot the differences between the two pictures?” And there’s always that last one you can’t find but you know it’s still there? Exactly. That's life. “All I know is that I know nothing” - Aristotle. The ultimate man of wisdom. Why can’t we just listen to him? It’s impossible to know everything, but what we do know, we have to accept that it's a part of our reality.
With the extreme increase in people’s expectations of same-ness and efficiency, they start losing their individuality and the self-fulfillment that used to drive us as societies. And though this may be considered a slippery-slope fallacious argument, with a lack of the feeling and promotion of self-fulfillment and individuality, people are less happy and content with their lives. The increasing rates of depression and other psychological ailments that now seem to riddle the people in our societies, it is easy to blame the increasing expectation and societal demand for conformity, either in physical aspects or in regards to our dreams, hopes, and wants.
We are all expected to love the 'McDonaldization' of our societies, where we can expect efficiency and all the branch offices of stores to look relatively the same and provide the same services, and yet, the general happiness and contentment level of people keeps falling, as our lack of individual lives keeps rising; as we are expected to put our heads down, go to work in relatively the same clothes as everyone else in our respective jobs and eat the same crappy food and smile through it all — or maybe don’t smile because too much happiness in the monotonous workplace may freak people out. These expectations bear down on us and the pressure keeps mounting. What will happen when the monotony, the conformity, the lack of happiness and sense of self-fulfillment gets to be too much? What will happen when the pressure becomes too much and we either crumple as a society or we explode? When will we realize that as much as the structural-functional theory of sociology demands that we all function as cogs in the machine, cogs can still be of different colors? Sure, our society demands that we work in order to keep it running, but can’t we all just be us while we do it? Why do we have to be mindless drones while doing it or to be able to do it? Why does standardization have to be our new normal?
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