“Coming
together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is
success.”
-Henry
Ford
Henry Ford, an American industrialist, utilized assembly line production to revolutionize the automobile industry. Assembly line production divides the creation of a product into a series of separate, distinct tasks; each worker involved in the production process performs a specific task in isolation, functioning as a specialized expert detached from the rest of the factory’s operations. Assembly line production revolutionized the industrial world, allowing industrialists to harness the power of division and isolation to efficiently mass produce a standardized set of products.
However, what if division and isolation
defined society and societal institutions?
What if society relied upon the power of division, separating
individuals and societies based on perceived commonalities and differences, for
social structure? What if society relied
upon the power of isolation, distancing individuals and individual societies
from one another, to create splintered realities in a shared social world? Unfortunately, the results of a social world
ruled by these two principles mirror the products of assembly line production. A social world fueled by these division and isolation
produces fractured individuals and societies; these individuals and societies
exhibit expertise in distinct realities, yet they remain detached from the rest
of the functioning world. Moreover, the
ultimate product of a social world defined by division and isolation mirrors
the end result of assembly line production: an impersonal assemblage of
fragmented experiences and realities.
Although Ford relied heavily upon
assembly line production for success in the automobile industry, Ford
recognized the danger of subjecting all “processes” of humanity to the
principles of division and isolation.
History credits Henry Ford with the following quotation: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success” (2013). To combat a future of alienated realities and
a fractured social world, humanity must embrace a mindset of unity and
collaboration viewing the world in shades of grey and embracing individual
realities as central to the advancement of the social world. With the goals of unity, cooperation, and the
furtherance of humanity in mind, I propose a revolutionized perspective of
pragmatism and existentialism, a unification of the perspectives of five
thinkers to transform education and ultimately unite a fractured social world.
