Year 9/10 winner: Richard Tong, James Ruse Agricultural High School

The light turns green, we walk. The light turns red, we stop. Like a pack of sheep, we wander through life unquestioning in our actions, unthinking in our words.

Our world is, and has always been one of conformity. For centuries, and on almost every continent, humans have obeyed. Indeed, the word ‘everyman’ has a certain truth to it. Every society has an ‘Everyman’, the epitome of the average citizen- serfs, peasants, slaves, factory workers, housewives and now, the white collar middle class.

Even those precious few who attempt claims of individuality-  hipsters and the like- are not quite able to capture its essence. Members of those countercultures have been so caught up in the narcissistic self obsession which so defines the western world today, that what may have started out as an expression of individuality has morphed into just another excuse for the young, privileged and ‘fashionable’ to buy another wardrobe.

Such a depiction brings to mind the famous scene in the “The Life of Brian” where Brian stands at a window and tells his followers “you are all individuals” only to have them chant back “yes, we are all individuals”.

Witty it may be, but, not without irony, the members of Monty Python seem to have created something quite close to the truth. Indeed, much of history (support for the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the British Empire) has shown us to have been influenced by the beliefs of the elite few. The dull masses, having been told what to do, will only blindly obey their orders.

In the 1960s and 70s, a series of highly controversial ‘obedience experiments’ demonstrated just how far people were willing to obey orders. Subjects were instructed to deliver (what were eventually revealed as staged) electric shocks to other ‘subjects’ in increasing voltages. The number of people who delivered the maximum 450 volts (enough to kill) is still in dispute, but it is estimated to lie somewhere between 40 and 60 percent.

Obedience, it seems, is deeply embedded into the human condition, but why? It used to be because we had no other choice. If we didn’t obey our orders, we would simply be killed. But now that these terrors of yesteryear have been torn down, what is still keeping us from expressing ourselves?

People today bemoan the death of independent thought, but the simple reality is that independent thought was never born, not, at least, for the everyman.

But now, progress in all fields is following an exponential graph. All fields that is, except human thought.

Even though the Arab Spring Uprisings have toppled many a regime in the Middle East, even though Kim Jong Il is dead, even though Aung San Suu Kyi is in the Burmese parliament, there is still so much more to be done. The protestor was named Time Magazine’s person of the year for 2011. But after the old world has been torn down, what then? Will one cruel and despotic government be replaced by another?

After all the Libyan National Transitional Council, like the Taliban, had received American military support. Will that allow them to mutate into another Taliban-esque force?

There are so many hard questions that have to be asked, but no one to ask them.

We live in difficult times, the human race always has. The difference now is some have found a voice. Some are no longer content to be lumped together and treated like chess pieces in a great game.

If we are to evolve, if we are to survive, we must accept our differences, and learn to question everything.