The Standard Mold: How Uniformity Becomes the Ultimate Tool of Power
TL;DR: For those in charge, keeping the masses uniformed and predictable—like standardized containers—is an essential, historical tool for control and profit, leading them to suppress anyone who doesn’t fit the mold.
Let’s Dig In
When you look at how the world is truly run, you see a basic fact: uniformity is power. Think of it like a giant machine. The people at the very top—the ruling class, the aristocracy, or the modern power elite—need predictable, interchangeable parts to keep their machine running smoothly.
This idea isn’t new; it’s a root idea that goes all the way back to the days when power meant having the biggest, best-trained army. A thousand soldiers with the same weapon and uniform are a single, powerful unit. They are a standardized component.
The same logic applies to the mass public, or the “lower class”. For the elite, the ideal citizen is a standard-sized container.
The Container Economy
If you want to understand this on a grand scale, look at two of the world’s biggest industrial revolutions:
- Shipping: What made global trade explode? Not bigger ships, but the uniform container. When every box is the same size, you can instantly move it from a ship to a train to a truck without wasting time or resources. It’s efficient, predictable, and scalable.
- Nationalism: The concept of a “nation” is just a uniform social container. It blends many different people—different languages, histories, and beliefs—into a single, central identity: the citizen. This uniform identity makes the population easier to control, manipulate, and use for industrial labor, political gain, and consumer spending.
The Price of Deviance
This need for a standard container creates a fundamental problem for the people who hold the reins: deviance.
Anyone who doesn’t fit the standard mold—the person who can’t be easily ruled, coerced, or manipulated by the usual tricks—becomes a problem. They are the parts that stop the machine.
Because the established tricks of control (like advertising, propaganda, or political messaging) don’t work as effectively on these “deviant populations”, the powerful have historically resorted to shunning and suppression. This is the root of why so many topics are made taboo. Whether it’s historical taboos about foreigners, non-English speakers, or the modern LGBTQ+ community, the underlying impulse is to suppress anything that breaks the uniform standard and, therefore, threatens the elite’s easy control. Uniformity allows for smooth control; difference requires messy effort.
Go Deeper: 🔍 Never take at face value anything that claims to inform or educate. These links are your receipts and come from reliable sources.
Link 1: Intermodal Container - The Shipping Revolution (Wikipedia) Link 2: The Power Elite: C. Wright Mills’ Core Theory (SozTheo) Link 3: Sociological Perspectives on Deviance and Social Control (Lumen Learning) Link 4: Uniformity and Power in Early American Law (Congress.gov) Link 5: Uniformity and the Standard of Weights and Measures (Wikipedia) ```