Watch the video for a few seconds.
Now try to recall a single face you saw in it. You won't be able to.
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This is what a typical end of a workday looks like at the Jiangsu Shipyard in China.
Thousands of workers streaming out make their way on bicycles or motorcycles, because the plant is so vast that walking is simply not an option.
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This video saddens me.
The sight of that regimented, soulless river of people — all wearing identical caps — becomes even more unsettling against the steel colossus looming above them.
The presence of the factory in the background only dwarfs the human beings at its feet further, reducing them to a meaningless swarm.
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Dictatorship has its advantages: exemplary order, zero protests, political quiet.
Dictatorship also has its costs, because it prefers to erase the individual — to strip away every distinguishing mark and fold each person into the collective.
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When we, as a society, allow the people around us to be individuals — to be who they are — we will pay a price for it.
We will hear opinions we cannot stand.
We will hear people who are angry with us because we think differently from them.
We will deal with people who use our own values against us.
But that is the price of democracy, and for all the pain that comes with it, we would not trade it — not for anything — for the army of workers at Jiangsu.