Do You Want Fries with That?

The search for unity has not been a fruitful one. Karl Marx hunted it in his Communist Manifesto, but when his ideals became a reality, they fell far short of perfect unity. Marx failed to take into account this one basic human emotion, the most intense of all our motivations, the driving force behind all the great empires and dynasties, the emotion called greed. This most base and destructive of human failings, present to one degree or another in all of us, would tear apart any utopian world simply because no human being is capable of sharing his or her wealth unselfishly with thousands of people they do not know.

Which still leaves us the option of democracy, right? I mean, laissez faire and that. A bunch of people being greedy and following laws that they establish by arguing with another bunch of people equally as gluttonous? It’s foolproof, isn’t it? Not really. It may seem to be the most effective way to make sure that everyone plays nice and nobody gets left out in the cold, but it has many faults. My dad and a couple hundred years of United States history may declare that it is, but the fact remains that there are many people who get left behind, despite the best efforts of those who would help them.

For myself, I think the kind of perfect society that Karl Marx and all the other naïve visionaries dreamed of can only be worked for, never achieved. And, as strange as it may seem, McDonalds is one of the best examples of unity in our world today. The company has brought together people from 108 countries, a feat the US, despite being the “Great Democratic Experiment,” has yet to achieve. If that kind of unity was promoted in all areas of global affairs, maybe we could finally get what Abraham Lincoln spoke of trying to realize: a more perfect union; but not only for ourselves, for every race that calls our planet home. Do you want fries with that?