Why is it so appealing to go to the zoo to see beautiful creatures bound up in cages? My explanation is we relate unconsciously to these animals because likewise, society has put each of us into similar cages.

I realize in today’s age we believe there are no more improvements to be made in our society. We naively relax into assuming women have had their feminist movement, there is equality among the races and thousands of other concepts we no longer think about in our daily lives. Yet I believe a new wave must emerge, a wave that must break upon the soft sand of our comfortable reality and splash upon the dry untouched surface of our daily conceptions. We must make a movement for the individual race – we must speak and act against every revolution and movement that has ever brought forth justice and equality.

Although this may seem contradictory, I can explain that although we have been able to create movements that shake the stable foundations of our past, those successes have only created a title, a marker and a type of category that have slowly formed a perfect cage around the newly shaped individual. Now that we have reached a place where there is some kind of recognized political equality we have bound its inhabitants in a categorical group to define how they should act and who they are to be. The very thing that revolutionists fought for was their freedom, and once they received it they were boxed into a category that paradoxically only tamed and caged the beast so that society could more easily control it. We could easily be put next to the orangutans in the zoo and as people observe us, they read our marker and understand exactly what is expected from us and know that the cage that is formed around us will hold us captive for who we are supposed to be.

My belief is instead of standing for the new foundations that segregate the “feminists” from the “anti-s” or the “hippies” from the “conservatives,” we must withdraw all these titles and the expectations and standards that come with them. This new movement I call for speaks from within me; it is the individual “beast” that needs to break these ties that bind it. Society has neatly wrapped the individual so delicately to show how perfect and spectacular it is on the outside, only so that internally the knots are a type of magic trap that tightens the more one struggles. As each of us try to live our freedom we are forced to obey the conventions that define us.

The feminist is told she must not wear dresses, get married or speak sentimentally because her sex worked hard to reject these conventions. The liberal is told to reject all traditional customs and to never stand for something that could possibly restrict his/her liberties. Yet the fight made for these movements was never made so we can be dictated to by stereotypes, but so we may have the freedom of choice. Why should the feminist dress in drab pantsuits if she loves that bright flowing dress? Why should the liberal feel any obligation to vote pro-choice when s/he avidly believes in pro-life? S/he is feminist or a liberal because s/he is exercising his/her freedom to live. This movement for the individual race calls us to live as we want, think and act according to our deepest and truest desires.

There is no need for titles, no names or categories that dictate expectations. Instead there is a need to break away from social confinements and live according to your heart through allowing its most precious beats to dictate the path you are to follow. Let us allow the internal beast to speak for itself, that in a unified movement the metal bars of society that dictate our lives melt away and allow each individual to act upon their truest desires.