The Utopian World Championship

Neli Demireva: The incredible adventures of the black people

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Summary

As “atom” which in Greek means indivisible, the word mankind or rather humankind is only meant to represent one indivisible whole, a collective noun, a unifying rather than differentiating notion. In reality, however, it is the idea of all kinds of men that predominates the modern world. Racial, cultural, religious differences are often pre-exposed and make us feel really different. While at the same time terms such as mankind and humankind remain abstract, elevated, and completely out of daily use.
No matter how hard the modern society strives to impose equality, desegregation, and democracy, it seems that this cause is forsaken because we are prone to seek differences and track them out. As much as we cherish diversity, as hard it is to pass unnoticed some “obvious” differences.
In my opinion, the greatest crimes of humanity are the crimes against itself and most of them are based on the perception of the other. The chivalric quests, the extermination of Jews during the Second World War, the slavery period for the Afro-Americans, the world wide colonization, all of them have been based on the notion of the “dominant” versus the “inferior” culture. As long as human beings differ in something so superficial as the color of their skin or about something so “fundamental” as the name of their God, there will always exist stereotypes and prejudices. Although the so-called traditional racism has remained in the past, the new “symbolic” racism that strengthens the cultural differences is even more subtle and pernicious.
Therefore, in the utopian world I want to live in, the hothouse effect, and the increased levels of radiation will lead to over-production of melanin in the cells of our skin, and many people will artificially opt for darkening in order to protect themselves from the sun’s bombardment. Color will no longer be the predominant distinctive feature, and for the first time we will be held worthy because of our achievements. Our appearance will even lose its judgmental stance. What is more, the discovery of other intelligent beings will allow us to consider ourselves from another perspective and to understand fully the meaning of “humanity”.
In this respect, the guiding principle for the human beings in the utopian world of my dreams will be: “We won’t make so many mistakes if only we realise that we are not so different”.

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In one word, peoples’ perceptions of their differences were dialectic – they both enjoyed and feared them; they wanted to preserve their individuality but they were secretly anxious of facing alienation and estrangement if they did so. Those people never considered the possibility of experiencing individuality and variety without really differentiating from one another.
The people in 2015 were sad, gruesome, desolate, depressive creatures, frequently overwhelmed with anxieties, completely confused, blinded by the obvious, and dangerously liable to frustrations. The white men, even those who preached democracy and equal rights, knew deep in their hearts that they were neither black, nor yellowish, or reddish, or swarthy in color. The black men also had this primeval knowledge of not being white and of never becoming reddish or swarthy. The swarthy men were gnawed by the suspicion that both black and white men considered them to be freaks of nature and recoiled at this blunt unaccounted antagonism. Eventually, more and more of them signed up for “kamikazes” in order to administer justice. The world was a big mess but everybody pretended not to be so. They thought the differences irreconcilable and they chose to ignore the similarities, even the biggest one – namely that they were of the same species no matter what the color of their skin was or to what God they prayed.
In 2015, it would have probably mattered if I were a black boy of the name of Abraham Lincoln. Nowadays nobody except my father cares about it. Since we are all black, the concept of whiteness, reddishness, yellowness, or even blackness for its own sake is irrelevant to us. We recognize those colors, we only do not judge ourselves by the coloring of our cuticles. And when I come to think about it, we are probably much happier now. We don’t deride, mock, suspect, accuse, and blame each other using the epidermis as an excuse for maliciousness and prejudiced mind. Likewise, we don’t have to avoid mocking, deriding, suspecting, and accusing each other on grounds of our skin for the sake of political correctness and bigotry. As a result, our life is also easier, and void of conventionalities. The black color has made our distinctive facial features almost indiscernible. What I mean is that we are so black, we look all the same! Fortunately, we have developed in the course of time a sixth sense of recognition through the intensity and distinctiveness of our feelings. It’s almost as if we were born “blind”! Being so sensitive about the small “invisible” details! But we aren’t and that’s the best about it! You can say that we cherish a person for his or her qualities, not for their appearance, and you will be completely right. Our greatest achievement so far is the realization that difference and individuality are two separate notions. Thus, we can rejoice in the variety of our personalities, now serving as our distinctive feature, and yet admit that we are only humans. We are more compassionate and charitable because we cannot watch the anguish of others without thinking about ourselves and the great pain we might cause to someone just like us. Our world is still divided into different countries, but their boundaries are only superficial and when specifying our nationality in all legal documents we put first “residents of the Planet Earth”, and then we state the particular country we come from. The customs, rites, and traditions of all the peoples on our planet are defined as planet heritage and they are protected with a special Bill. In fact, each people has preserved only those practices that represent local color and do not contravene our Universal law of Equality, Freedom and Humanity, which basically forbids human beings to hurt and maltreat other human beings. What is more, there are no longer truly rich and truly poor people, because wealth is relatively equally distributed among the peoples of our world. Nobody has forced us to do so. It has just happened over the years – all peoples adopting democracy as their main form of government (actually there was no better alternative offered), and cooperating between each other. Back, in 2015 they would have probably called this the final stage of “globalization”. I don’t think so. We are not governed by superstructures; there are continental alliances that facilitate the process of cooperation, however, each country has an equal say in the Council on Humanity and Environmental Issues that basically guides the development of mankind, but in terms of suggestions, not directives. This is exactly the point in my story when you probably start to feel uneasy about all this peacefulness, voluntary good behavior, and suspiciously high morals of ours, isn’t it? But the people of today didn’t become what they are without no reason especially in comparison with the muddy, dubious ways of our ancestors, which reminds me that it is high time to get back to the account of their times.

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