Johnson chapter 6

The thesis of Johnson’s chapter six, “What It All Has to Do with Us” is that individualism is part of privilege and oppression, but it’s not anyone fault that it is so.

Everyone thinks that they are an individual, which is partly true, but in reality we are only individuals inside of a system. And the system dictates what is right or “normal” reality, but we can’t have a system (of any kind) with out people/individuals. People, as children, learn what their identity is by these systems; their race, gender, disability status and religion are just some of the things that we learn in a system. This is done by “socialization” and “the path of least resistance” We learn who we are and how to act by our surroundings, a growing influence of which is television and movies. All of this is what Johnson calls “socialization.” A lot of the time, however, what we learn during the socialization process is wrong but we never acknowledge it as such.

Another way that people are shaped by the systems that they are in is by what Johnson calls “the path of least resistance.” Otherwise known as following the social norms that are set up by the systems. When a person does something that is not “normally” done, for instance (using the same example Johnson does) standing in the back of the elevator facing the wall instead of the door, that person is violating a social norm. “The path of least resistance” is doing what your told, going with the flow and a way of systems keeping people/individuals in line and doing what they want them to. Johnson uses the example of the game of Monopoly as a system to show that individuals and their social systems make the patterns of social life. The only way Monopoly can start is if people start to play and if you are following “the path of least resistance” you are going to play. Johnson uses his example of his greedy behavior during Monopoly and not greedy at all behavior outside of the game to show that for every different situation there are different behaviors.

These patterns become privilege and oppression, which we previously have read by Johnson, and they become part of “the path of least resistance” practically, forcing us to be involved with privilege and oppression. And the good guys are inadvertently causing oppression to the “minorities,” just by following the “path,” even when they have no intentions of doing so. The good guys follow this “path” because they don’t know of any others and in sticking with “the path of least resistance” they are involuntarily supporting the privilege and oppression that comes with such a system.

The consequences of Johnson’s argument in our world today would be dire. As he said in the chapter we don’t talk about such things because it violates social norms. If anyone in the dominant group (heterosexual, white and male) would read this, Johnson would be ridiculed (just as the man who objected to the sexist comment about a women, in his chapter, was). Johnson makes us think about things that our social systems don’t want us to and that’s why this chapter, and probably the whole book and Johnson himself will/would be ridiculed and mocked.

I liked that Johnson used the example of Monopoly, it really helped the whole idea of systems and individuals and their relation to one another, stick in my head. I’m a pretty open-minded person so this article and all the previous that we have read make me think about our society. People/individuals are just the hamsters making the wheel turn; society cares about the systems not the individuals who run it.