A RIGHTEOUS SOCIETY: RESPECT FOR EACH AND EVERY JOB

We live in a society  where it has been suggested different times to everyone to follow one's own dreams and that those dreams cannot be just simple ones but must be huge. Then the fact that this same society give us the means and teach us the right attitude to follow them, remains secondary. But actually the biggest problem is the way of thinking which is gererated by the will of validating only certain dreams. So it is right to dream to be famous, but it isn't right to dream to be a baker.

This brings to an attitude where everyone run towards the top of the social ladder at every cost, even losing one's human dignity. But on the top there is no space for everyone: the result is a frustrated and mean society.

In a just and realistic society every dream should be validated: each job should be worthy to be dreamt about and pursued and so it should be treated with the same respect. In this prospective it would be considered right instead of unjust to allow the access to each job only to those who possess the peculiar skills.

Unjust is to push everyone towards the top knowing that there will be space only for a few lucky ones. And it is a lie to claim that only certain jobs are decent and worthy of admiration.

In order to be able to achive this aim it would be also necessary  to remove the salary difference based on the type of job and put in  one based on the amount of hours and on the quality of the performance. Let the possibility of  doing the job of one's own dreams be the reward for doctors, lawyers, etc for spending many years studying rather than very high income.

The result would be a fairer, happier, more satisfied and productive society.

THE INDIVIDUAL REVOLUTIONS

Every human being from the moment of birth, drawing from one's own experience and from the ideas that are passed on to him/her, develops a worldview, or to be more exact produces or supports  a Weltanschauung (the german word is translated as "worldview", but it has a dimension which goes beyond the single person and his own point of view), trying in this way to organize one's own existence and to find one's place in the world. This idea on "the way things work" can be built upon misconceptions or  a correct understanding of reality, but usually upon  a mixture of them, and it includes: the identity of the individual, the world order, the existence of God, the way of relating to others and to nature, the priority scale, the individual life plan (this group of ideas in particular constitute the framework of the individual's Weltanschauung and we are going to name them 'paradigm') and it extends even to one's opinion on each person or the judgement on every single event. Each human being moves within the worldview he/she has built for oneself and makes choices through it.

Nevertheless each person, in his lifetime, has to face certain events that can compromise one's own worldview because they are in contrast with its paradigm. These life-changing events could be for example the death of a dear one, experiencing extreme poverty, falling deeply in love with a person and so on; they can be different for each individual depending on the paradigm of one's worldview. Facing such events, the person can choose to adopt one of three different approaches: 

• to overlook them pushing them in the subconscious; 
• to justify them through reasoning but still remaining into the existing Weltanschauung or  
• to change the paradigm and start an "individual revolution" that will produce a new worldview.

So during the lifetime of a human being it takes place what Thomas Kuhn theorised for the science history. According to the american philosopher, science in its historical process doesn't accumulate truth upon truth, but it develops around some main ideas that he calls paradigm. During the periods of "normal science" the scientists develop new theories that don't compromise the paradigm. But there are discoveries  that undermine the old scientific system, leading to "scientific revolutions" that generate a new paradigm. The best example is the one of the Copernican system that replaced the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system revolutionising science.

Science, with its method and its historical progress towards truth, becomes in this way the example for the right development of the human being and for the individual journey towards a fuller life and a better understanding of the world. As the scientist doubts what is given as a fact and take the risk of experimenting on something different which life-experience shows as correct, so each person facing events that contradict one's own worldview must doubt the veracity of the latter and take the risk of building a new worldview which is able to include the aspects of reality showed by those events.

Life has got, however, a fundamental difference in comparison with science, that is, life is more profound, existential and because of this it acquires a greater dramatic nature and radicality. For a scientist, to experiment a new theory, means spending a lot of time and effort; but for an individual, to invest in the development of a new worldview, means having to face a temporary disintegration of oneself, of one's identity and world: it means getting lost for a while, and without the possibility of going back to the previous worldview. Such a choice requires a particular personal strength  and the hero's courage. It is clear now why so many prefer avoiding life and being locked in their own faulty Weltanschauung. But this last decision carries hidden in itself a greater danger: the one of not living but surviving miserably, building everything upon half-truth, the danger of a non-existence. The reward, instead, for those that choose to take the risk will be personal growth, a life enjoyed to the full and the achievement of a truth deeper than the scientific one.