by Jason Stotts
I was recently sent a link to the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, about the ideal of “equality” and the practical implications of that. I strongly recommend taking a look at the story, which you can find here.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
(H/T Diana Hsieh)
Comments
2 responses to “Harrison Bergeron”
This was the first story I remember reading in high school and it made quite an impression. Vonnegut is a writer I have enjoyed reading and was very influential in my early years of adulthood. I guess you could say I learned to be less fearful about being atheist from him. But he was also an outspoken collectivist so it marked a big departure in my thinking when I read Rand for the first time many years later and found an even stronger affinity of ideas there. I have not yet gone back to read his works since, but I am interested to see how they will strike me this time around.
This is the first thing of Vonnegut’s that I’ve read. I will probably read “Slaughterhouse Five” or one of his other books at soon point. I think, though, that for the non-philosophical author, I’ll still prefer Orwell.
Thanks for the heads up about his support of collectivism, although he clearly doesn’t support it in this essay. Did he write this early and change his mind later?
~Jason