Assimilation – fearing the defeat of the Self

The topic of assimilation had come up a few times over the last week. Or perhaps it only came up once, but because I was daydreaming about today’s post, I applied it to all scenarios in my mind’s eye.

Which may in fact not be in my eye at all.

You need to be a Trekkie to appreciate that.

I have been told before that memory is pliable. Each time you recall a memory, it travels down a certain path to your consciousness, you recall a certain scene, and it travels back to the filing cabinet along a different path. Each time this happens, it changes slightly. For example, you may recall the colour of your childhood neighbour’s cat being ginger. But when you dig out the photos, it is actually a tabby cat.

The cynic in me thinks it may also have to do with your Garfield obsession at the time, “painting” your observations to change perception into so called fact.

It just goes to show, just how personal your perceptions are, and hence, your recall of “the facts”.

I recall the quote that is serving as today’s inspiration, as

“We will add your distinctive uniqueness to our own”.

It is irony defined. We are unique, and therefore must be assimilated into the collective.

I like being the odd one out (Thank you for noting that on Thursday NU). I believe that taking a different angle, makes sure that the collective is well rounded, and at least considered different options available before committing on a course of action.

And by adding my different angle to the collective, I become the collective. I change just as much as the collective changes. Which means I am not so different after all, does it not?

Last week, I commented on the importance to retain Your Self. No, it is not a typo, I did mean the person who is the self, and not yourself.

When we are assimilated into a society, or a new future, it may be a little jarring, or uncertain, or even downright scary. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It was at the farewell event of a remarkable woman of courage and inspiration, that it dawned on me. We join a firm, we learn, we grow, and of course, we change. And being the pack animals that we are, we are assimilated. If it ended there, it would have been a pretty boring story. A one-dimensional result. But, when we take our experience elsewhere, we extricate ourselves from a particular subset of the collective. And we have the opportunity to become assimilators. We must surely take the best of our past pack and influence the new environment. Our uniqueness can and must add value to the collective, which in this case, is the Namibian economy.

Each person at that event, had their unique strong bond with their own timeline linked to a strong collection of experience. Like a maze. There are many different exits and entrances, and some paths do not even cross, but if you stand back, you can see that each path is vital to making the whole maze work.

Some of the previously assimilated individuals had sparked off into a different direction, to take the seeds of success to another part of our environment, while others remained, to make sure the origin remains intact.

And here the diverging tributaries of uniqueness, come together again to form a deluge of —–? That depends on all of us. And how we tolerate individuals like the Fishrot 6.

I will use my uniqueness, if I can, to block, temper, influence, assuage, mitigate, and otherwise optimistically brace our economy, our collective. For it to work, I need you to do the same.

PS – the Borg actually said:

“We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

And the optimist in me, must report that there was one Borg called Locutus, which shows that even the collective, needs individuals. For the non-Trekkies, The Borg are cybernetic organisms linked to a hive mind. There are individual parts, but no individuals, hence no one Borg unit with its own name. And in spite of their “uniformness”, they saw a need to assimilate, yet retain one individual. What happens after that, is whole different movie, for another day.

Live long and prosper, my fellow homo sapiens.