MOBILITY AND PEER OPPRESSION

The Conestoga wagon preceded railroads as a form of mobility for adventurers and risk-takers. 

One of the great advantages of America's development as a nation has been its balance between population and desirable/usable land area. As I have repeatedly written, human population density, currently managed with large metropolitan sprawl and technology, will eventually lead to diminished resources and restricted mobility. 

The mobility of America has been a stimulus for accelerated innovation on many levels. Transportation, one of the first developmental necessities of this vast land, has facilitated the development of many of today's technologies and structural conveniences which benefit modern life. Transportation enabled mobility. An intelligent and innovative person in America whose talents were stifled by one environment could move to another with relative ease during the Industrial Age. 

The deep roots and cultural heritage of foreign lands are often envied by Americans who vacation abroad. And the quality of life in many of those places is lauded by their occupants. French and Italian architecture and cuisine. British cultural monuments to a colonial past which made English the world's most functional language. The Mediterranean basin's evidence of our ancient development as civilized creatures. Japan's refinement of a Nature-based island culture to accommodate its population density. 

America has offered something different to human evolution. Its historic mobility led to individual freedoms within a cooperative social framework, an invented republic with roots in evolved Western Civilization enhanced by an innovative Constitution. The explorers and pioneers of the early European settlements in America were not genocidal stormtroopers, as some contemporaries would paint them out of ignorance. 

The Americas, before they was even conceived as continents, were invaded by refugees and outcasts, not unlike the current swarms of illegal border-crossers into contemporary North America. Subsequent conflicts between newcomers and indigenous residents were inevitable, as they will be in the future. Will human beings in a new majority resist the impulse this time to displace or eliminate the indigenous? Will racial and ethnic blending prevent this? Time will tell.

When economic and physical mobility were easier in the US, the country prospered beyond the wildest dreams of its founders. Vast natural resources were exploited through mass population increase. Farming requires many hands. Building a railroad with 19th century technology also required many strong backs. After a railroad network was established, the descendants of those who built it profited from access to it. The agricultural bounty of the US South was dependent on a plantation system which exploited slave labor for its massive labor needs. After the Civil War, mobility enabled former slaves and descendants to migrate north to seek paid work. 

Once a productive community was organized and fitted with creature comforts, like sturdy housing, ample water and accessible food suppliers, people stayed put. Explorers set down roots and raised large families. Immigrants established their own communities within cities. A return to the ancient cultural roots of their origins was a core need for many immigrants. The inspirational effect of their ancestors' emigration took second place to their ethnic identity in America for some.

Not for everyone. A study of the best innovators, designers and inventors in America (and abroad) reveals the common thread of their mobility within or beyond their own native environments. 

Moving away from extended family and/or ethnic conclave, even in America of the 19th and 20th centuries, was an adventurous and risky proposition for those with no social provenance, higher education degrees or money. Risk-takers are often innovators or successful investors in innovation. 

Risk-takers also face a cost. The majority members of an extended family or stable ethnic conclave do not take well to those who sever roots in favor of adventure or individual freedom. Children in these environments are often indoctrinated with stifling ideologies. Religious and cultural standards often oppose individual liberation. 

The first college graduate historically may have been criticized for trying to be uppity. The bookworm in a culture of generational poverty is often bullied, even at home. Insistence by immigrant parents that children do not speak English at home can impede learning and independence. The expectation that children marry within the same racial or ethnic group often causes an added stress upon those who seek to break free. 

Peer oppression in the context of family or geographic origins is a cancer in poor communities. Mistrust of outsiders, anyone who does not share the community's origins, race or ethnicity, turns the group consciousness inward. These communities can become isolated islands of dysfunction surrounded by great prosperity. Many large American cities of the 19th and 20th centuries were dotted with these majority-enforced ghettoes. 

Generally affordable mobility has become increasingly restricted in America with the development of the wealth gap and technology gap. While white-collar workers with tech skills are perhaps more mobile than ever out of necessity, those without in-demand skills or education are increasingly immobilized by their subsistence lifestyles, burdened by debt and deprived of job security. The stagnation which this restricted mobility has made worse is evident in poorer communities across America.

When intelligent individuals feel restricted by poverty and peer oppression, the whole society suffers consequences. But the root causes of this stifling restriction include peer oppression. Poverty alone does not hold back the intelligent from seeking advancement. An environment which oppresses the intelligent in favor of shared communal misery contributes. 

A great failure of contemporary public (and some private) education in America is its surrender to peer oppression by seeking to level achievement. "Leveling the achievement gap" is a slogan I have heard over and over again in media. This sounds like the evil message given to brilliant students of color who are criticized by peers and family as behaving "too White". It stinks of the insanity of those who bemoan the "model minority myth". 

Indoctrinating the intelligent into being ashamed of their individual excellence due to racialist ideology is a disservice to all humanity. Promoting the forced placement of those with lesser intelligence into all segments of the workforce due to racialist ideology is also a disservice to all humanity. Limiting the enhanced social, economic and geographic mobility of achievers and risk-takers in favor of racialist leveling based in peer oppression is a disservice to all humanity.