What is the Problem with Individualism?
The term “individualism” has provoked disapproval in multiple arenas and from myriad directions. It is odd to me, though, that this disapproval continues to the present, long after its opposite has been proven disastrous.
Critics first coined individualisme as a pejorative to represent the prevailing bourgeois ideology in revolutionary France. One such critic was Louis Blanc. Searching for the germs of revolution in the letters of men, Blanc traced the triumphs of individualisme “in philosophy, through the school of Voltaire; in politics, through that of Montesquieu; in industry, through that of Turgot”, finally placing the entire project at the feet of Luther and Montaigne.
Much has changed since Blanc’s time. The descriptive and pejorative form took on normative qualities, and people began defending individualism on principle. But Blanc’s definition of individualisme is worth noting because it resembles modern criticisms.
Three recurring themes are present in many criticisms of individualism, as they are in Blanc’s: isolation, selfishness, and anarchy. But, as intimated, in the shadow of the previous century these criticisms remain entirely unconvincing to me. No individualist suggested “taking man out of society”; selfishness is present among collectivists, too; anarchy has never arrived save for in the vacuum of a collapsed, collectivist project. As far as I can tell the worst moments in an individualist society is precisely when it fails to live up to individualist principle.
So what, then, is the problem with individualism?
Critics first coined individualisme as a pejorative to represent the prevailing bourgeois ideology in revolutionary France. One such critic was Louis Blanc. Searching for the germs of revolution in the letters of men, Blanc traced the triumphs of individualisme “in philosophy, through the school of Voltaire; in politics, through that of Montesquieu; in industry, through that of Turgot”, finally placing the entire project at the feet of Luther and Montaigne.
Much has changed since Blanc’s time. The descriptive and pejorative form took on normative qualities, and people began defending individualism on principle. But Blanc’s definition of individualisme is worth noting because it resembles modern criticisms.
“The principle of individualism is that, which taking man out of society, makes him the sole judge of what surrounds him and of himself, gives him an exalted view of his rights without indicating his duties, abandons him to his own resources, and, with regard to all matters of government, proclaims the system of laissez-faire.”
History of the French Revolution of 1789
Three recurring themes are present in many criticisms of individualism, as they are in Blanc’s: isolation, selfishness, and anarchy. But, as intimated, in the shadow of the previous century these criticisms remain entirely unconvincing to me. No individualist suggested “taking man out of society”; selfishness is present among collectivists, too; anarchy has never arrived save for in the vacuum of a collapsed, collectivist project. As far as I can tell the worst moments in an individualist society is precisely when it fails to live up to individualist principle.
So what, then, is the problem with individualism?
Comments (415)
Surely, the only reason one can object to an individual choosing the path of freedom is because one fears one may lose their hold on him.
Assuredly, the one and only reason, no other option you dictate and expect or will look down on or dismiss others if not agreed upon. How curious and double-edged this concept is.
Far too often men confuse freedom with abandonment of responsibility, which transmutes to power that will simply be assumed and dominated by those who forgot not these truths.
In a word: responsibility. People like freedom but responsibility is a big bummer.
That’s very true. Increasing the space of individual freedom gives opportunity to the irresponsible individual as much as to the responsible one. Personally I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Naturally, because it's worked out okay for you so far.
There's a lot of irresponsibility in 'free society' and it has an ever escalating cost. I can only imagine that either you deny the cost or simply don't give a fuck. Whatever the case may be, it's a free society so you're cool.
I don’t deny the cost. I just think the cost is a small price to pay knowing the opposite.
I can partly agree with you because I'm not sure that we know what the costs really are yet and 'the opposite' could be worse. I'm also not sure that we know the opposite or know what's possible. This is where the road branches to progressive or conservative, I guess.
In mainstream debate the alternative given is "communism" as in the USSR.
But it's a good question, what such an alternative could be like. Voluntary cooperation? Total control by corporations? Or would it be a Mad Max-like scenario?
It's an awful thought to think that the alternative could be much worse than what we have now, what with all the Earth heating up, threats of nuclear war, severe inequality, etc.
Quoting NOS4A2
I suppose it's not wrong per se. It only becomes a problem if your individualism is such that it can harm other people. How we define harm is obviously very much debatable.
I can only say that we aren't born out of holes in the ground, alone. We are born belonging to a family, a city a country, etc. The closer the relationship between people, the closer the bond. So individualists at least have to contend with dealing with the social unit of family. Beyond that, things get very murky very quickly.
This is not meant literally as is clear from what he goes on to say. Man is taken out of society in the sense that he recognizes no authority but his own and no responsibility to anyone but himself. He rejects the idea of the common good. The only good is what he deems good for himself.
Quoting NOS4A2
The modern philosophy of Liberalism attempts to frame political and social issues on the model of the emerging science. "Space" is a neutral term. The failure to recognize responsibility to anyone but yourself is not a matter of "increasing space" but of disregard for others.
There's a good meme floating around about a Native American who noticed a distinction in the way he was raised vs many in the dominant culture. I wish I could find it. But the upshot was this: Many folks are raised with a sense of "rights" where as he was raised with a sense of "obligations." It might be difficult for one person to relate to the other. But there is also an infinite number of combinations between the two.
This is a big problem. If some people don't share these intuitions, because they don't feel them, then what do we do?
Physics is very hard. Society is impossible.
I think any claims to another's essential freedom is to be looked down upon and dismissed. One of the few claims for which I think that to be the case. Would you object to this?
Quoting Outlander
Quoting praxis
Quoting NOS4A2
Man is born free and without responsibility. Responsibility can only be a result of his own voluntary actions. Responsibility is assumed, and not imposed.
The public educational system teaches conformity, obedience, and propaganda for obvious reasons. This is the struggle of the human condition.
Man is born utterly dependent, actually, and compared to other mammals remains that way for a very long time. Man is also a social species and is therefore irrevocably tied to others of his kind. Man is also completely dependent on his enviornment and is not independent or free in that way.
Quoting Tzeentch
Right, that's the problem, not enough assuming.
It has been used literally (and as a straw man) in Marx, for example.
I’m not a fan of modern liberalism myself. But point taken.
I’m not sure how individualism can harm other people because much of individualism is concerned with the protection of individual rights.
No individualist (as far as I know) denied the social aspects of life, family or community. I would argue that this is a common strawman against the position.
The problem arises when one individual gains too much power over another. It can happen in politics, business or societal affairs. When there is too much asymmetry in relationships, individualism becomes a problem for those individualists who are at mercy of others in terms of paychecks, laws, etc.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sure. I just wanted to point out that this obvious fact should be kept in mind. How much of a free individual is a person in relation to family? This wildly varies from case to case.
Man is born into a society not a "state of nature".
Quoting Tzeentch
Depending on where you life, you may have no choice but to pay taxes, no choice but to keep your property safe or have it condemned, no choice but to have your children or yourself educated to state mandated standards.
We were discussing the passage by Blanc that you cited, not Marx.
Quoting NOS4A2
Modern liberalism and individualism are the same thing - the freedom and rights of the individual.
By way of one example only, "We" didn't overcome the "Indian problem" with a bunch of individualists. The self-identified individualists got the government to come out and clear the way for them. Then they created a myth of "pioneer spirit", "manifest destiny" rugged individualism" "enlightened self-interest" "boot-strapping" etc.
The lies we tell ourselves are all bullshit. We only overcome each other by working together.
The foregoing is just an example. It applies across the board because man is a social creature whether he likes it or not. He's not born into any state except a total reliance on his mother's tit. And the only thing that keeps a strange man from dashing him against a rock is other men. Ostracization is a good thing, but it's a social engineering tool and it got us where we are, for good or ill.
Again, we need not go to a system of ants on an ant pile, all working is some communist utopia. But neither should we lie to ourselves about how the individual rights we honor some how make us self-sufficient loners against the world; wild stallions to be let free to run through and eat the crops of others hard labor.
I was discussing the recurring themes in anti-individualist argument, of which isolation is one. Blanc was just one example. We can find more if need be. Except no individualist argues conceiving of individuals as separate from society. Even those whom Marx accuses, Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat, conceived of the individual in relation to his tribe or nation.
I don’t think so. Modern Liberalism, in my reading, is a more social, statist version of classical liberalism.
If they did, we wouldn't know about it.
Exactly true. Except no individualist (as far as I’m aware) conceives of individuals as hermits or wild stallions, as if every single human was Robinson Crusoe. So who is spreading this lie, exactly?
I'm not sure anyone is spreading the lie. It might be like the War on Christmas. If anyone is spreading it, it might be those who feel put-upon by someone else.
On the other hand, it could easily be the "someone else" engaged in that universal human trait of setting up straw men in the opposition. In this case, a more socially oriented person might put the myth of isolation out there to more easily knock it down. Just as the individualist might point at commie ant piles, Stalin and Pol Pot as the alternative.
So, if no one is really making a claim to isolation as part-and-parcel of individualism, I say let it go.
But being selfish, yeah, that can be a trait.
Then why would you yourself make such a remark, as if someone actually believed it?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just curious where this notion comes from.
That would be the first people I referred to: people who are chomping at the bit. People who make up myths and lies about themselves and their forefathers. There might actually be a few "real deals" hiding out in the bush somewhere, but like I opined above, we will never hear from them. I live out west (U.S.) and there are lots of folks who fancy themselves isolationists, even though they are clearly not. They pretend to champion the real deal isolationist in theory, but if one is found, he is looked upon with fear and suspicion. And he is not left alone.
Admirably put.
You are talking about contemporary liberalism. Modern Liberalism refers to the classic philosophers of natural rights.
I think the philosophical issue is that of the atomised individual ego becoming the locus of meaning in a universe that is now understood to be devoid of it. Whereas in earlier times, individuals were situated in a matrix of social relationships, underwritten by divine law, with the advent of modern liberalism, the individual conscience assumes more of the role or arbiter of values at the same time that the advent of modern science declared that these have no real foundation in objective reality.
This was anticipated by Emile Durkheim and his famous analysis of anomie:
Also by Max Weber in this Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic
The sense of freedom that accompanies modern individualism is at once liberating and terrifying, as described in Erich Fromm's classic The Fear of Freedom. And the theme of the atomic individual as the sole arbiter of truth in a godless society is writ large in a great deal of existential literature.
Neither of these analyses makes individualism wrong, but they help to frame the issue in terms of society and culture and indicate where I think the stresses lie.
"Divide and conquor." This strategy always conquors the divided, the separated, the privatized, the atomized, the depoliticized, the disconnected, the isolated, the walled-in...
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives."
And, besides, eusocialism has worked far longer and more profoundly in the development of the human species (e.g. language, cooking, solidarity, markets, dialectics, science) than "individualism". In fact, despite their most vigorously incorrigible denials, every damn individualist ever born is human and therefore an eusocialist; "individualism" is mostly just a contrarian affectation, even maladaptive when extreme.
Quoting James Riley
E.g. banksters, gangsters, grifters, dirty tricksters...
Quoting praxis
In other words, "individualists" bullshit themselves with delusions like "libertinism", "social darwinism", "metaphysical libertarianism" & "Objectivism".
Defining everything in it as something good and creating a juxtaposition between individualism and collectivism. Those who promote individualism often see any traces of collectivism as something bad. Yet not all collectivism is bad: that our society works there has to be some kind of collectivism, even if many collectivist ideologies do indeed have been disasterous.
And that individualism often boils down to hedonism and narcissism.
I like the national challenge.
We do have Johnny Cash singing to prisoners.
Walt Whitman and the future rappers.
The odd relationship between Thoreau's and Emerson's writings is a thing.
The easy swagger of Billy James upon the scene.
The brutal satire of the twentieth century.
It is not all cottage chese and cofevfe.
Adieu.
I do want to add to the rest of opinions though, that I came from a Korean family and conservative Asian structures are extreme in the other way around in which the individual is under-valued, what the individual desires for their own path in life and not just conform to the others' expectations. Anyone who observed how these cultures operate would know it's extremely unpleasant.. So I think there is something to individualism of a certain more restricted kind, if you would call it that. You need a balance between it and a focus on collective interests (the left-wing Anarchist tradition is an example that emphasizes both), and it's obviously swung way too much in one direction here.
I see two major kinds of individualism which are not to be confused:
1. Entitled/expansive individualism
and
2. Defensive individualism.
Entitled/expansive individualism is the kind where the person thinks they are entitled to take over the world and that the world owes them. Such individualists don't care about others, other than how they can use them. Such people feel good about themselves, consider themselves good and innocent.
Defensive individualism can emerge in response to other people's entitled/expansive individualism. It's the position one can take when one realizes one is left to themselves and that other people are eager to exploit one. Such individualists are anxious, always on guard.
Externally, the two types of individualism can sometimes look the same, but in bears emphasizing that they are motivated differently.
I wonder though whether Rand's individualism is actually a case of defensive individualism. Rand's individualist is coming from a position of lack, from a position of being a prospective victim due to his exploitability (due to poverty, lack of resources). It's not the spoiled upper class individualist who was born with a silver spoon, believing that the world is his oyster.
Fucking bullshit fairy tale. Man is born as a wailing, incapacitated blob of fat entirely dependent on other people to take care of it.
And yet he is free. In fact, children are more free than most adults.
Dependency does not detract from his essential freedom. Unless you wish to argue individuals may claim moral authority over others?
Quoting praxis
I don't think that applies to all of mankind, or is inherently true for all individuals.
Quoting praxis
Perhaps. Maybe there is too much imposing.
I think control is counter-productive to individuals developing into independent adults capable of taking responsibility in the first place.
What is society, and how did it take man out of this "state of nature"?
Society is a group of people. Here we are talking about a politically structured society.
The state of nature is a fiction created by social contract and natural rights theorists - Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and others. Man has never lived in a state of nature. There has always been some organization, starting with the family.
And this group of people can lay a claim to the individual's freedom or impose responsibilities, then?
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think a state of nature implies an absence of families.
Essentially, it gets in the way of groups whose express purpose is controlling individuals.
The individual v. the collective is an 80mph fast ball coming right down the center of the plate.
99.9... % of all good that is accomplished in this world is made possible via human compassion (a state only individuals can manifest). OTOH, 99.9...% of all the evil perpetrated in this world is made possible by groups (whose primary intention is always the same...power and money grab).
Does that not happen where you are from?
Quoting Tzeentchthen
The family is a social structure with rules and differences in power. It is not freedom without constraint.
Oh, sure. I just don't believe any of it to be legitimate.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think a state of nature implies freedom without constraint either. I'm having trouble seeing how this relates to my earlier posts.
Freedom without constraint not restraint.
Fixed.
Equating individualism with avarice is a common argument. However avarice is a vice of individuals, not of individualism. Individualism encompasses the charitable as much as it does the self-interested, but we wouldn’t say individualism is charitable.
The response to Covid was a collectivist project if I’ve ever seen one. Entire industries were at the mercy of governments; civil liberties were scattered to the wind; prison terms were used to describe our situation. As such, certain individuals benefitted while others were mostly restrained from even trying, their livelihoods sacrificed on the alter of “national security”, “the common good”, which, in the mouths of those in state power, is always their own interests.
What if your ability to live where, in the manner in which you've become accustomed and act as you please and state what you state is the sole result of claiming the essential freedoms of another? Odds are it was. So, you don't quite believe this, you believe in protecting a familiar status quo that serves you and little more, just another case of looking out for number one. Don't we all I suppose.
Quoting Tzeentch
People have themselves to look out for. Meanwhile you need to eat, drink, have access to shelter, maybe a little entertainment, and social interaction. Who's going to do or provide all that for you if not yourself? Me? Your neighbor? Who will provide for him? And so on. We're not in Eden anymore. We're all slaves to our biology, human needs that must be met with limited resources. Unless you believe in enslavement of others to meet these needs, one would best saddle up and smell the coffee.
If a person is actually free then they can freely assume responsibility. So why is there such an apparent lack of it? It seems to be the case that only when accept the fact that we’re not free, accept our interdependence, that we may tend to become more responsible. And because we’re a social species this acceptance may provide meaning and an enhanced sense of well-being, feeling part of something greater than ourselves.
Then shame on whoever did that claiming.
Quoting Outlander
I believe what I stated, and this is just an underhanded (and sleep-inducingly old) attempt at framing it as selfishness.
What makes you believe I am so fond of the status quo?
While individuals are inherently free, they must still actively accept that freedom, and few do.
Most are enslaved in their formative years and never escape their (mostly psychological) bonds, sadly.
Quoting praxis
For some those things may very well be true. For others, maybe not.
I am in favor of individuals making such choices freely.
Most (who isn’t?) enslaved by invisible bonds but are inherently free. Any way you can help me understand that?
If the individual develops critical thinking, they have a chance to reevaluate all they know, and rid themselves of the false beliefs of others.
The "invisible bonds" are the beliefs of others, and one is still inherently free, because one by virtue of their own mental faculty holds the key to the lock.
This depends on the assumptions about human beings that you bring to the question. If you ascribe to some theory of social atomism, that is, radical autonomy, then any constraint on your freedom will be seen as illegitimate. If, on the other hand you think human beings are by nature social animals then there must be constraints if we are to live together in peace.
I don't require constraints to live in peace with others.
Covid is not selective. Anyone who avoids getting it benefits. Those around them to whom it may spread benefit. Business benefits by not having a workforce that is sick or dead and goods and services they cannot sell because a large segment of the population is sick or dead.
Even with all the measures put in place covid is the third leading cause of death in the US. What would the numbers be like if nothing had been done?
You say nothing about masks. Some act as though a mask mandate is the height of tyranny.
That may be but it is evident that many do.
I do oppose mandatory state-clothing across the board, whether it is the burka or a mask, and I oppose such measures for the same reasons. That is to say nothing of the efficacy of masks, or of burkas for that matter.
The benefits of not dying is one thing, the benefits of rule-by-decree and the denial of basic human rights is another, and I refuse to confuse the two. One can still protect himself from infection without the government penalizing him if he refuses to do so.
Oh shame is not relevant, that is a human emotion. What is mandated comes from beyond and is not only ever-reaching but everlasting.
Quoting Tzeentch
Human nature. One wants better for themselves. You believe that by toppling the giant greater enjoyment can be had, but perhaps it is protecting you from greater torment and despair. You wouldn't know. This is the folly of men.
I don't share that view of human nature, and frankly I think attempts at psychoanalyzing complete strangers sooner point towards projection.
So for example if a kid were raised in a, oh I don't know, heavy libertarian culture and eventually applied their God given critical thinking skills to discover that they've been manipulated, would they throw off the invisible chains and go on to undo the damage and work to help empower the working class?
More seriously, if I'm following correctly it appears to be a catch 22 situation. The freer a person becomes the more responsibility they assume, but the more responsibility they assume the less free they become.
Sure, why not? If they are guided by reason and that is where it takes them. However, one would hope that since they had to undo the damage done to them, they would apply methods that do not do the same to others.
Quoting praxis
A free person more readily recognizes and accepts those responsibilities that are theirs, because they chose them voluntarily. They do not necessarily assume more responsibilities. While responsibilities limit one's freedom, since I believe responsibilities can only be assumed and not imposed they are an extension of one's own free will.
Nor do you have to, for it was already done for you. You can ignore the hand that fed you and is responsible for your existence, but you'll never be free from it. Human history is human history, it is as plain as day to be observed, be it from a textbook or archeology. I make no assertions otherwise. Perhaps you're different, the exception. Oh but when salt pours, you'll be no different than the rest. You wouldn't be here now if so.
Give me an account of what you understand individualism to consists in, and I'll tell you what parts I agree with (if any) and what parts I don't (if any) and why. So far this thread looks like pissin' in the wind.
One problem with that view is that there are social phenomena that cannot be explained away as the result of the actions of individuals; they involve the cooperative intent of many folk.
For example, an individual kicking a ball into a goal is not scoring a goal in a football game; the gaol cannot be scored except as a part of a collective enterprise.
Hence, individualism is inherently incapable of explaining many key social phenomena.
They'd use critical thinking, of course, to free themselves from libertarian beliefs and those that have manipulated them with it.
Quoting Tzeentch
Does that make sense? There's literally mountains of evidence indicating that people don't freely accept responsibility. Take something as simple as driving. If someone applied their critical thinking they may come to realize that following traffic laws was in their best interest and in the best interest of other drivers, so rather than those law being imposed on them they would be freely accepted. An invisible chain being invisibly discarded, if you will. Both freer and no more free than before.
Agree. A succinct, no bullshit view.
How about the denial of the basic human right to life by those who have no regard for the lives of others and refuse to follow simple safety precautions and wear a mask?
Yes, this one simple statement encapsulates a key problem. What hope for a shared notion of common good when agreement on first principles seems unachievable.
Living in place where covid is effectively non-existent thanks to a combination of lockdown, mask wearing, and social distancing measures, I am free as fuck right now. Almost none of those measures are currently in place anymore, and mingling in crowds is life giving rather than taking right now. And I can do this because the environmental and social conditons under which my freedom can be exercised have, to a large degree, been secured.
Incidentally and with reference to the idea that 'humans are born free', the only people who can get away with saying that are people who have never so much as laid eyes on a child before. There are few creatures as so hopelessly dependant and subserviant as children. Kant understood this well: that any measure of freedom was the result of a great deal of discipline and tutelage, such that, having mastered our abilities and rational capacities by way of education, only then could anyone be called free. The individualist notion of freedom is literally infantile.
In nations where the public health responses so far have been efficient and effective (e.g. Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, Iceland, Germany, (Scandinavia), Australia, New Zealand, etc), you are quite right, NOS: their approaches have been much more collectivist than not. However, nations mislead by individualistic, reactive, populist governments like the former Trump maladministration, BoJo's clown show, Modi's "Raj", Xi's sweatshop gulag, Putin's klepto-czarship & Bolsonaro's junta, for example, demonstrate yet again that not working collectively – collaboratively – on common complex problems is disastrously self-defeating.
:point: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2021-03-25/countries-culture-matters-when-fighting-the-covid-19-pandemic
This is why Ayn Rand never wrote - could never write - about children in her novels, or as far as I'm aware, her non-fiction work. A philosophy incapable of approaching children is a philosophy without a future. Beyond infantile, individualism is inherently moribund - a dead ideology.
One would assume that the denizens of this forum would be intelligent enough to understand that the phrase "Man is born free" does not imply that babies are born in absolute physical freedom.
Man is born unindebted, under possession or moral authority of no state, society or individual.
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Maw
Luckily there is anti-individualism, and what delightful historical company do we find ourselves in!
Oh? So what are children free to do? Piss and shit their diapers? And scream?
And what are they free from? Certainly not from aging, illness, and death.
I heard somewhere that Kant said that children cry so much because they are angry because they can't do anything much, as not even their bodies obey them.
Quoting Tzeentch
I just don't see that freedom. Where is it?
But this is not true of any existing human being. It's a literal fantasy.
Oh, then by whom, by virtue of their existence, are they rightfully owned or to whom are they rightfully indebted?
If you don't see that man is in essence free, you must believe that his existence can belong to someone else. Who?
None of which, at least initially, a result of his voluntary choice.
Therefore I believe none of these to hold any moral claim to him.
Unsurprising that someone who has a Thomas Sowell quote in their biography jumps on the opportunity to transform a metaphysical fact into an issue of property rights. When all you have is a hammer...
Humans are socially natal beings, born into a network of societal ties, absorb and are molded by the customs, mores, laws, languages, institutional arrangements, socio-political structures. Let's see how far you would have gotten in life without the social absorption of language acquisition. Let's see how radically different as a person you would be if you were born in a peasant barn in 1520 France.
Oh look moral voluntarism...that's just an internet philosophy
But this is senseless. A 'voluntary choice' can only be made by an agent which can rationally assess options which are available to them, on the basis of motivations, desires, wants, etc. You think people pop-out ready to do that? That's more Cinderella-world stuff.
"Man is born free" is one of those grand sounding phrases that sounds immediately stupid as soon as anyone actually says it out loud.
This is metaphysical rubbish in the worst sense of the term. It's a 'philosophy' designed for no one who exists on this Earth. Philosophical LARPing.
Morally that is certainly not the case, assuming we can agree on such basic things as the right to bodily integrity.
If such is the case in practice, then I hope we can also agree that it is morally reprehensible and such situations should have been done away with in 1863, which is already several millenia too late.
Man, at the very least initially, does not choose to exist. That much is a fact, and no amount of tirading will change that.
This is a meaningless statement. A grammar mistake elevated to metaphysical significance.
"A fish did not choose to be a tree" makes as much sense.
If voluntary choice is the one true expression of freedom irrespective of socially and situational context, then we must admire the conditions of Robinson Crusoe. Shipwrecked on a deserted island, sure, but every action is done of his own will. What freedom!
That's pretty radical; I'd call myself an individualist but I'm not really with you here.
If you have good parents, for instance, who raise you right are you not duty-bound to them? If your parents provided you with a great upbringing and did everything for you are you really going to tell me that you have no moral duty to them unless you voluntarily choose it?
I call myself an individualist because I fundamentally prefer to deal with individuals rather than groups or ideologies. I believe that the individual is the fundamental unit, and that each individual contains multitudes and near infinite complexity. The individual is not to be fundamentally reduced to a member of a class or a race or religion. That's my individualism - it's not the view that everyone is atomistic and has this bird's eye view over society that allows them to pick and choose their moral duties.
One cannot force conditions on someone and then tell them what they expect in return.
On the other hand, one would assume that sometime during one's lifetime one's interactions with one's parents become conscious and voluntary, and perhaps on that basis a moral duty can develop.
What would you say about a single parent who was mid-way through feeding their infant and then decided to "opt out" of this arrangement? Are people free to opt in and out of all social relations as they see fit?
But can't you opt out of it? What if I voluntarily choose to abandon that because I want to do something else right now? It's my free choice after all.
Stealing this burn. :lol: :up:
Even a moment's reflection is going to reveal to anyone with half a brain that its our existential lot to be dependent, in ways almost never of our own choosing, to things, people, environments, and systems around us which enbale (as much as constrain) any exercise of freedom. Yet these morons model freedom on a limit-case scenario that is so abstract that it converges, in last analysis, to non-existence as freedom's ultimate expression (if you don't exist, you're totally free!). These people need to go outside and stop modeling existence on Dungeons and Dragons.
The choices we make are largely shaped by the culture and environment we develop in, or at least the way we rationalize our choices. It’s as though you’re claiming that we have the freedom to choose the way we choose.
A moral framework that puts personal liberty on a pedestal, rationalizing selfish and in many cases self-defeating choices.
If one could simply opt out, then there wouldn't be much point to calling something a moral duty.
Quoting praxis
Our world views are, at least initially, largely based on the beliefs and opinions of others. That is an obstacle to freedom and one's ability to make conscious, voluntary decisions.
I'll take a monkey over a tyrant any day. :kiss:
I don’t think that any of us knows what it would be like to somehow erase all our conditioning and achieve a kind of moral blank-slate, if a ‘moral blank-slate’ makes any sense. Would such a way of being value liberty as much as you appear to?
I don't think the result would necessarily be a moral blank state, as you put it. There are still the self, reason and the laws of nature that can provide a basis for personal morality. And whether one values liberty or not, it would be the product of this process. Intellectual liberty at least, which in the modern world is perhaps the most under pressure.
The tyranny of existence, apparently.
Just curious, and I'm not looking for an argument or a serious discussion here but I am curious: In a capitalist society, is financial independence a morally acceptable goal for an adult in your view? What do you think about an adult striving to go from financial dependence to financial independence?
Quoting StreetlightX
:clap: :100:
@NOS4A2 :point: roll save vs SLX's beatdown :sweat:
If you mean our relationship to society, there is no sense of financial independence. You pay taxes together with other citizens to build roads and schools that we all use together for our activities and achieve our goals. I don’t know why anyone would want to be independent of that unless they want to become a hermit.
Namely, financial independence from an employer. It basically means that you have enough saved up or in investments that you don't need to work unless you want to and you're free to spend your time largely how you like - at least free of economic obstacles like needing to receive a paycheck to cover expenses.
When Trump said he was a war time president fighting an invisible enemy, the first thing I thought about was the front line troops, how the Commander In Chief and his crew failed to support the troops, how un-American it would be by their own patriotic standards, and how they essentially spit on the troops. What happened to all the "United We Stand", and "If you aren't with us you are against us", and blah blah blah? Troops died because of it, and the collateral damage of innocents was horrible. End rant, sorry. Next time conservatives go banging the drums of war, they can pay for it themselves and go under a different flag. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Sure, why not.
In terms of a personal goal, it’s fine.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=40JmEj0_aVM
I did not. It’s a nebulous term. Mostly I wanted to see what others thought it was. No one has cited any individualist argument but the criticisms all resemble each other. I think that’s telling.
Well stated.
Quoting NOS4A2
I am convinced that even in the slave days, there were a certain percentage who believed they deserved their position.
Individualism (the love of freedom) is something you either get or you don't. Look how easy it has been to convince young people that it's about fear and victim-hood instead of courage and ambition to never stop growing.
You’re right, but I don’t want my governments to be efficient and effective—welding people in their apartments is efficient and effective. I just want them to leave me alone.
What you fail to recognize is that you are not alone. What you choose to do and not do affects others. It is possible to live in isolation, but you choose not to, and so you cannot at the same time choose to be left alone.
I don’t want isolation. By “leave me alone” I mean I want them to quit meddling in my life. That’s what you fail to recognize.
How do you feel about you meddling in the lives of others? (Whatever meddling means in this context)
Meddling or interfering. I feel I shouldn’t meddle in the lives of others.
Personal rights are protected by strong and effective governments. In other words, small governments and maximized freedom are mutually exclusive.
At the same time though, I would argue that technological advancements have significantly impacted freedom. Mass surveillance, rapid communications and transportation has made effective resistance/avoidance of the state far more difficult.
Sure in the past there were regimes that did not respect the notion of human rights, but it was easier to evade it. The enforcement of state policy was not nearly as effective as it is now.
I don’t, though I tend in that direction.
Once again: What you choose to do and not do affects others. It is because of this that you cannot be left alone. The only way what you do would not affect others is if you lived in isolation. To be left alone you must be alone. And even then there would be an impact on others.
He is your standard run of the mill myopic libertarian.
Should I meddle in your life because what you do affects others?
It depends on what I am doing and how it affects others.
What if I came over and demanded you pay a fine for parking too long?
Would my extended parking be a violation of the laws of the state or municipality? Are you authorized by a government agency to collect fines?
Obviously I have no authority.
"leave me alone"
Then I would tell you to report it to the proper authority.
As is your habit you shift from one thing to another when you are no longer able to defend a position. You were talking about:
Quoting NOS4A2
not someone without authority showing up at your door.
BOOM.
Tough titty, fella. Move as far off the grid as you can then (i.e. for consistancy sake, treat society / civilization itself as the egregious "externality" that you believe it is). And good luck with that! For the rest of us, however, the synergistic benefits of eusociality still far-outweigh the notional costs.
:lol:
...and yet here you are.
Your obedience is apparent. But appeals to law and authority mean nothing when that authority is questionable, abused and leads to injustice.
No thanks. We've seen your "eusociality" descend into rank tribalism and murder too many for it to be something to be proud of. I'll seek the company of free men.
Note: discussing topics on the internet is meddling in someone's life to Banno.
Something as basic as food, I’m sure that prior to the FDA food producers didn’t want anyone meddling in their business. They did pretty much whatever the market would bear, until the buyers could no longer bear it. Some of the worst additives were things like radium and highly addictive drugs like cocaine.
It means that we work from within the system to make necessary corrections to promote justice. Justice, as I understand it, goes beyond your desire to be left alone or the absolute protection of every right you might claim.
Yeah, NOS, you must be one of those disingenuous damn Incel-fools running around with MAGA hats & rebel flags on your pick-up trucks and blaming "Antifi & BLM" for looting during mass protests against unaccountable killer cops and "Islamic terrorists" for waging asymmetric warfare against globalist, client-state, manifestations of the American Empire all the while ignoring (or materially supporting and/or participating with) Alt-Right/Proud Boys/QAnon and ethno-tribal White Supremacist "free men" have been, respectively, looting the US Capitol and terrorizing unarmed, fellow American citizens with near-daily mass-shootings. That you're freely using this site's bandwidth with your (I'll be charitable) deplorably trollish commentary, NOS, testifies to the eusociality of accessible commons and, therefore, of your infantile "individualist" demand to be "left alone" which you aren't wo/man enough to reciprocate by leaving this site, or any public commons, alone. :shade:
We probably have different conceptions of the state. I see any state system as an imposition, formed by conquest and confiscation, designed to enrich the conquerors by exploiting the vanquished. To me it is fundamentally criminal and anti-social institution no matter how far it has strayed from its original intentions.
Oh sure, I must be—or these are the fantasies you like to tell yourself. I don't need to pop your bubble as you've already accepted your status as drone.
You don’t have to, yet you do, 180proof. If you ever care to know don’t hesitate to ask. I don’t hide my views.
I learned that no policy, regulation, statute or Constitution ever came about in a vacuum, or through some insidious governmental desire to meddle with someone for no reason. Each and every case came about in response to:
1. Someone who just wanted to be left alone externalizing the costs of their existence onto the backs of someone who did not agree, in an arms-length transaction, to voluntarily assume those costs; or
2. The insidious desire of those who sought to suppress competition by lobbying government for a standard they could afford to comply with, but which they knew competition, or would-be competition, could not afford.
Unfortunately, society applies those standards across the board (unless you can afford to purchase an exemption) to everyone, regardless of whether they personally have externalized a cost. But here's the deal:
I also learned the greatest threat posed to those who just want to be left alone is not who they think it is (government or meddlesome liberal busy bodies) but, rather, other people who just want to be left alone, who got their first, have more power, and want to keep the little "leave me alone" guy down.
Unlike you, I did seek isolation. I sought it for two different reasons:
1. I wanted to get to. To the Earth.
2. I wanted to get away from. From meddlers who wouldn't leave me alone.
I'd rather supplement the word "wanted" with "freedom." I wanted freedom to, and I wanted freedom from.
I conjured up the notion in my own mind, that all the freedom in the world ain't worth shit if you don't have a place to be free in. I then read a man, much more eloquent than I, who said the same thing thus: "Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" Aldo Leopold.
I knew an eastern man, long in city pent, with, ostensibly, the same Constitutional and legal freedoms as I had, out west, was not as free to, or as free from, as was I. And I knew that the greatest danger posed to my place to be free was not the man in the city. Rather, the greatest threat is my peer out west, just wanting to be left alone, so he can clear cut, strip mine, dam, over-graze, plow, subdivide, pave and domesticate all that he claimed he loved, and all that he found pride in, all while looking down his nose at the city slicker, and all while dissing the eastern locations that were once just as great and free as the west. This man, who just wants to be left alone, is hell-bent on turning his place into what he hates about that other place. He should just pack his damn bags and move to the city if that's what he working toward. Instead, he complains about the urban immigrants moving to the west, yearning to be free of the city, but bringing their liberal ways with them.
But it all boils down to people who just want to be left alone. There's too god damn many of them. And they encourage breeding and the production of even more, throwing semen and seed, hither and yon, because it's his God-given right to flood the world with his spawn.
In short, you can't do it alone, Bro. You're gonna need help to be left alone. Make sure you don't ride for the wrong outfit. But you will have to ride for one. There is no more open range.
Yes, mine is based on actual regimes, your's on a resentment fueled fantasy. If that is far as it goes then that is your problem. If you act on it it becomes our problem. And then you may lose whatever precious little freedom you now have. You no doubt will call this injustice but I call it justice.
Gottabe lovin me some of that CCR!
Didn't know "Al Bundy" was a fuckin Fed. :point:
Quoting Fooloso4
:100: :clap:
ala Claude Dallas.
I've read research that the original intentions were pretty much as you describe, and only relatively recently has civilazation been worth the price of forced admission for the average Joe. That's history though, today we could emigrate to any country that would have us and perhaps find ourselves in a better situation than where we came from. You're an expatriate yourself, aren't you?
And what about those for whom it has not been worth it? Are you happy to accept them as collateral damage? Do you believe they should too?
Not to say that the collective is "superior" since it merely consists of many individuals and might itself become an Individual, falling prey to the same ills I described above. But the numerous opinions and personalities in a group often serve to slow it down and temper progress with caution, or at least fear.
If these are rhetorical questions l’m not getting the point. It looks like life in hunter-gatherer society or simple farming was better until only recently, but now it is generally better. Anyone can go off-grid and live off the land if they wish to now.
We watched just recently as the Islamic State (an actual regime) formed before our eyes. This was not due to any absurd notion of a social contract or anything else, but by expropriation, terror, murder and the enslavement of the people who lived there. Anyone who resisted were met with your kind of justice, stoned to death or murdered on the spot. So what a complacent and statist fantasy you have there.
It’s been over a year since the government seized the economy. Just a week or so ago we’ve been told we cannot leave our health authority, and if we leave we should expect roadblocks and fines. My right to work, to travel, gone with the stroke of a pen. So I’m a little salty.
That was a good story. Thanks for writing and sharing. But I’ve stated numerous times no one is suggesting doing it alone. It’s more refusing to be a drain on others than escaping others.
You went from:
Quoting NOS4A2
to the Islamic State. Is it necessary to explain the logical fallacy to you?
I recall you dismissing the theory and resorting to ridicule. So please, explain the logical fallacy.
Someone who tries to bully others on the internet, miles away from any accountability, shouldn't try to lecture others on virtue. You're the asshole, Tim, and about as useful as one on an elbow.
Do you really not understand or are you just being obstinate?
You said "the state" and "any state" These are all inclusive claims about all states, each and every state. To conclude something about any state from one state is a logical fallacy. We cannot conclude that all dogs have three legs because Tripod does.
The system that facilites and promotes the birthing of individuals, then promptly attempts to claim them for its own purposes, like a failed parent, has no other answer than "If you don't like it here, you can leave".
Of course, this isn't even a realistic option for the vast majority of individuals. To emancipate oneself from the mental clutches of the state is a lengthy process, by the end of which one finds themselves rooted in the system. To emancipate oneself from the physical clutches of the state, a near-impossibility.
Luckily, the individual has other options. Namely, to dispose any of the state's mental and intellectual impositions in the trash bin where they belong, leaving the state with only its most primitive tool, the cement of "society"; coercion, which the average individual is insignificant enough to evade.
I do understand, but I didn’t make the conclusion from one example. I provided one example after you concluded it was a resentment-filled fantasy absent any example or reason altogether.
What if he (the individual) regards "the collective" that attempts to rein him in as an immoral enterprise?
Quoting New2K2
Do you believe this to be true for all individuals? If yes, on what basis? And if no, why should those for whom this is not true contend with being imposed upon?
:100:
I sometimes wonder what saved me. The seduction is real, and it can be very persuasive. I think my proclivity toward both the illness and candidacy was balanced by a strong sense of a non-existent justice. I see my own footprint on the Earth, and realize I cannot ameliorate it on my own, without compounding the problem by making space for others with bigger feet. Thus, we must work together to check ourselves. So I stay and play.
. . . .
Oh, but to be the first man through the Bering Strait! Days of harshness, big game hunting, clean water and air, and countless miles of Eden with no need to anticipate conflict with other humans. Now, about those two or three each of the most beautiful females of every ethnicity, 40 and under, and all trained up in things I could use, like medicine, engineering, and etc. . . .
You will be able to give a more reasoned response if you change my words, but I said nothing about your fantasy being "absent any example".
The absence of reason is evident in the assumption that what holds true for one state holds true for all.
You claim:
Quoting NOS4A2
So what is it that led to your conclusion about "the state" and "all states"? One example is not sufficient. Examples are not sufficient unless you include the example includes all states.
That was my poor writing. I was trying to say your conclusion about my conclusion was absent any example or reason, implying you were guilty of that which you accused me of.
More examples would be the Middle eastern partition, colonialism, slave states, every empire that expanded beyond its own borders. Any counter examples?
I think it is more a matter of your poor thinking. You made a claim about all states. It is up to you to defend that claim. You did not.
Quoting NOS4A2
Once again, more examples are not examples of every state.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sure. The United States.
First it was a resentment-fuelled fantasy, and now all you can do is quibble about my use of the word "any".
Tell that to the people who lived there. There was once a statue (The Rescue) that existed outside the capitol building depicting the white man's domination of the natives. Maybe that too was a fantasy, but "Indian Removal" wasn't.
This implies that I'm for the project of the development of the state, regardless of the incalculable suffering that it may cause. As though I wish that any hunter-gatherer societies that exist today were developed into states, or worse, annexed by a state. I'm evil, but I'm not that evil. It seems your arguments have degenerated somewhat and now include ad hominem attacks.
Quoting Tzeentch
It's curious that the individualism that you appear to value so much is a consequence of the development of the state, and now you and NOS pooh-poohing the thing that gave rise to your moral framework. Shouldn't you guys be grateful?
What is the thing that gave rise to this moral framework? In my own case, it was writers such as Humboldt, Mill, Smith, Locke, Hume, Popper, Orwell, AJ Nock, de Cleyre.
What you most fear, the state taking over what used to be provided by the collective.
I wouldn't say the state provided me with any moral framework. Has it done so in your case?
You seem to miss my point, as it was not a personal attack but what I consider to be a valid summary of your reply.
In your defense of societies, which in the modern era manifest as states, you seem to point towards the good societies do for individuals. I'm pointing out that it also causes evil to individuals, and asking you whether you simply accept this as collateral damage. "For the many to thrive, some must suffer," seems to be the reigning sentiment on the opponents of individualism "You will have to suffer, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make". That there is no valid reason why the individual would have to accept such a bad deal seems obvious to me.
Quoting praxis
If I understand correctly that you are proposing that states enable individualism, then we must have wildly different definitions of that term.
I can relate. Honestly. I just find within that moral framework the seeds of it's own destruction. I guess that would make me conservative, or even better, reactionary; wanting to go back to a time when the planting of such seeds occurred where there was still room to grow. That time has passed. So successful was that morality that our growing has choked out the space, and the current crop demands the even older, tried and true morality of cooperation; a morality that sprung into existence back when space seemed to overwhelm us, demanding a tilling, taming, reduction and domestication of the land.
All of that latter morality purchased for us the luxury of the morality of individualism. Time to pay. Sad, really, but again, we brought this on ourselves.
It's okay to pine for the days of yore, but such conservatism, such reaction, will not long be tolerated by the young and powerful fruit of our own loins. Best to offer them what little wisdom we have, while honoring what it is they propose to do with the mess we left to them.
P.S. I have an analogy to kids turned loose, unsupervised, into a giant, well-stocked mall. Anyone can run with that analogy so I won't belabor it.
Quoting NOS4A2
And prior to that:
Quoting NOS4A2
And:
Quoting NOS4A2
Once again you shift from one thing to another. We were talking about what occurs today, here and now, your desire to be left alone, your disregard for how this might affect others,"my governments", the laws and authority as they exist today, how they are abused and lead to injustice. Rather than defend those claims you shift to what happened in the past.
Conquest and confiscation is a significant part of human history and is not the result of "the state". Such activities predate the state.
Do you imagine that through disobedience to the state you are rectifying the wrongs of the past? That somehow you are making restitution?
That sounds rather theoretical, whereas the destruction caused by states and collectives is tangible, real and overwhelming.
I was merely explaining theory of state formation, and where our differences might lie. This was right before you called it a resentment-fuelled fantasy and tacitly threatening me if I was to act on it. When I try to show I have justification for my beliefs you submit what I wrote to contextomy, then quibble about my use of one word, while avoiding any and all arguments I present. So I no longer care about your analysis of what I wrote.
I never suggested disobedience to the state. I never suggested all conquest and confiscation in history was the result of the state.
Critics have been promising the failure of individualism since revolutionary France. Any day now, I guess.
And yet here we are.
It reminds me of the social media memes where some of my generation list all the wonderful suffering we engaged in during our youth, and how it didn't hurt us. All the while complaining about the younger generation.
Not once do my peers engage in any self-reflection about how the younger generation was our clay to mold, and look what we did with it. I won't go into how our fathers and mothers rolled their eyes at us.
It's not theoretical when the states and collectives are ours. We can't absolve ourselves of responsibility for their actions while eating the gruel they slop on our plate. They are us. If we don't like it, we should have kept our cranks in our pants and legislated for a place to be free in.
I guess there is nothing for the individualist to whine, worry, or ring their hands about in consternation. Time to get back to individualizing while sucking the tit of civilization.
P.S. Revolutionary France is, like, two seconds ago in the scheme of things.
Doesn't make sense. Were those who forced non-state societies into the drudgery and disease of developed agriculture working with them cooperatively or exploitively?
I think there are two basic strategies for social living, which are living cooperatively for mutual benefit or competing for resources. In competition there is always winners and losers, so in that strategy some are guaranteed to suffer. That's not the case in a society that cooperates for mutual benefit. The Libertarian moral framework is designed to rationalize the competitive strategy.
Exploitatively. What is your point?
Quoting praxis
The problem arises when such societies force individuals to participate against their will.
You have not presented a theory of state formation.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is not a theory of state formation. It is what a band of marauders do.
Quoting NOS4A2
Pointing to the consequences of your actions is not a threat. The fact that I would play no part in those consequences means that I am not threatening you, tacitly or otherwise.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is a common retreat tactic when the argument fails.
Quoting NOS4A2
I will let the record speak for itself.
Quoting NOS4A2
Really? You said:
Quoting NOS4A2
Are you saying that you too are obedient to questionable authority, but it is not apparent? Is it that your obedience is not apparent? Why are you obedient when law and authority mean nothing?
Quoting NOS4A2
No, you didn't. You presented your "theory" about the formation of the state. I pointed out that these things predate the state. In other words, if they already occurred then how can they explain the formation of the state?
Quoting NOS4A2
Okay, we can leave it here.
:up: Politicians. :grin:
I guess that's why democracy tends to work best for the average Joe.
One can see, even from this thread alone, that individualism is held in fear or contempt. Yet there have been zero refutations of actual individualist argument. So I have to wonder how much of it is premised on the typical misrepresentation, and further, how much ignorance mounts because of it. This to me is worthy of whining about.
An odd statement considering deeply imbedded it is in Western, or at least American, culture.
Quoting NOS4A2
I imagine there could be if you were to present one.
I'm not so sure about that anymore.
Is a critic still a critic if he is unfamiliar with the literature?
I don't hold life in fear or contempt, yet I understand that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Same with individualism.
Quoting NOS4A2
I guess everyone (especially you?) is floundering around trying to nail down what individualist argument actually is. I've seen a metric shit-ton of refutations of what many people think it is. But yeah, if we're missing something, or wrong, maybe you should nail it down for us. But please don't move the target around every time someone hits the bulls eye, and then say they missed.
Quoting NOS4A2
I see your point. Again, what is individualism and what are the misrepresentations of it? I remember we already tackled the false attribution of isolation and anarchy. So you don't need to go there. I don't remember what, if anything, has been done with alleged selfishness. But for the sake of argument, lets say individualists are not selfish.
However, simply saying the critiques ring hollow if maintained long after the opposite has been proven disastrous, is not getting to the point. Individualism should stand on it's own two feet, regardless of the quality of any opposite.
The two-valued orientation, I think, has been debunked. So we are left with the question: What, exactly, are you concerned about? And again, since we are not pitting either against or, I think it is incumbent upon you to show where the line is drawn between what individualism is, any misrepresentation thereof, and that which is pitted against it. If you want to avail yourself of this, while eschewing responsibility for that, I'm sorry. We will not allow you to do that. Your only option is the isolation which we've already taken off the plate.
Where most, if not all governments have some combination of each, at what point do we start whining? When I, personally, subjectively, feel put upon by others? When I just want to be left alone? That seems an impossible ask. "We the people" are not going to ask you for permission to make you pay for the costs of your existence that you externalize onto the backs of the rest of us. If you don't want to play, take your ball and go home. Oh, wait, there is no where to run anymore. Tough. (No thanks to individualism.)
I'm left with this feeling that individualism is like a religious good that can do no bad. Every blow against it must be wrong, simply because of this. Sorry, but if individualism wants to maintain any traction in the decades to come, it should come to the table, not only with a list of it's attributes, but with a list of ways that it will not externalize it's costs onto the backs of the rest of us. Or, at the very least, how it will pay for itself without subsidy.
It reminds me of the corporation, a creature of the state (it does not exist in nature), pleading to governments about all the investment capital it will free up from hiding, all the jobs it will create, all advancements that will be made, all the social benefits, if only the shareholders thereof can be protected by big government from having to take personal responsibility for their own actions.
That's all well and good, but a condition of this ability to hide behind big government skirts should include taxation on a paltry portion of the profits earned so the state can partially offset all the externalize costs born by those who would not voluntarily assume them. If the corporation wants to be allowed to shit in the river or pour tons of poison into the air, it should include a stipulation to abide regulation of the offending activities to ameliorate the downsides. The later is AKA meddling in individual affairs. Tough.
Yes, I can understand how it might appear that way to you when you shut your eyes and ignore the refutations that have been given.
You are like the person who has been checkmated but thinks he has not lost because he continues to move pieces around.
Yes, just not a good one.
I went straight to the punchline and didn't read your OP until now. Turns out you've thoroughly thwarted all criticisms yourself with:
And last but not least...
These three aspects have been addressed in the topic and your reading comprehension seems good, so the issue must be the same as it frequently is with you, your honesty.
Virtue out of one side of the mouth, pettiness out the other. Perhaps the stoicism isn’t working.
Ugh, you’re trolling skillz are getting embarrassing.
Can you be banned for low quality trolls?
I'm just thinking that to meet your needs we'd have to clear an area for you, which you could farm or hunt and gather or whatever, so you could live unbothered by others and without bothering them. There's a decreasing number of spaces of dwindling size and resources, unfortunately. Perhaps colonising another planet would suit you.
I suspect that is where he is from.
The opponents of individualism seem to believe that the state holds a moral claim over the individual on the basis of dependency. in that regard seems to be the only one to state this plainly, however it is implicit in what other opponents of individualism have claimed here.
He stated:
Quoting New2K2
To this I replied:
Quoting Tzeentch
This is a crucial question.
Is a woman that is born into Islamic fundamentalism somehow morally indebted to a society that oppresses and enslaves her?
To me the answer clearly is 'no'.
Unless one wishes to answer 'yes' to that last question, one must come to the conclusion that the moral claim that is being forwarded by opponents of individualism cannot rest on dependency alone.
Abused individuals owe no loyalty just as societies owe no loyalty to freeloaders and traitors.
This sounds to me like meddling. Surely it cannot be that difficult to leave someone alone.
It's not difficult at all, if they get the hell out of the way. :grin:
We used to have a saying in the Marine Corps: "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way." I always thought that a little shortsighted, because it didn't account for a fourth option, which is "actively resist." So those are the four options life gives you.
The problem, as explained before, is there is no where left to go to get out of the way. We are going to find you. Especially those of us who just want to be left alone to do so. Sorry. Sincerely, sorry.
You need help to be left alone. Figure that one out and get back to me.
Is the woman in my example a freeloader or a traitor? (Or neither?)
The Sirius Patrol doesn't cover the area.
You could run into the occasional polar bear and Inuit hunter/fisher (the former might be more likely to "meddle"), but otherwise good.
No one's gonna' bother you, it'll be you and freedom. (y)
Not bad. But I fear it will be prime real estate once you’ve had your way with the rest of the world.
It's really hard, I think! What if you become a disease vector?
All the more reason to go bother someone else.
But what if you start running around infecting people?
He is an intellectual disease vector. Fortunately many here have been inoculated.
The inoculation of fake fallacies and quibbling.
In your lifetime? Doubtful. You'll be meddle-free.
Moving to Greenland and occupying land there is a problem because I’d have to contend with the Danish state’s monopolization of it all. I wager that had the Danes left the Inuit alone there wouldn’t be this problem. But they meddled and claimed the land as their own.
No one would know. (Hence the location.)
Greenland has been autonomous for half a century or so (from unreliable memory).
True, except in matters of immigration. The Kingdom of Denmark gets to pick and choose who gets a permit to reside in Greenland. No so autonomous, I suppose.
No need for that nonsense. Just make your own way there.
No one will care. Unless you travel by (Iowa-class) battleship?
Interdependence as a rationalization for behavior is rather unusual, probably because it's far too abstract an idea to be popularly adopted. There's no natural intuition to step back and look at the bigger picture, even though that could lead to a more fulfilling and sustainable outcome. So yeah, certainly couldn't rest with that alone.
I agree there is no natural intuition to step back and look at the bigger picture. I don't think it's natural for people (or any animal) to look at the big picture. However, I think interdependence has always been seen close up, and that is the reason we are here today. I think there is a natural intuition to step forward and find interdependence as a rationalization for behavior. It used to include our fellow travelers, and not just human beings.
Also we're naturally endowed with the capacity of reason and can override baser instincts and condition ourselves in particular ways.
I'm working on that. :grin:
Me too. Not yet to NOS's satisfaction though. :cry: :razz:
I’m rooting for you.
Then I'm in poor company (with Trump his ilk).
Have been binge watching A Handmaid's Tale and in the tale the US is taken over by a group with a "matrix of social relationships underwritten by divine [men] law". Thinking about this today while driving it occurred to me that such a society may necessarily have to be patriarchal, because otherwise a family unit could be united against any oppression from the ruling class. Women would need to be an underclass in society in general and in each and every household. In the handmaid's tale women aren't allowed to read, even the Bible, or rather especially the Bible.
Individuals go about their business in societies all the time.
So, there are some thresholds in whatever direction, where things go extreme or unacceptable.
We surrender some freedoms (don't murder), worry less about others taking your freedoms (don't get assaulted), do yours (contribute), utilize commons (infrastructures, hospitals), act responsibly, employ some to carry responsibilities (military, schools, politicians), ... (long list I guess)
We then discuss where reasonable thresholds are, find examples of overstepping or insufficient responses or whatever, so as to continuously improve, yes?
There are all kinds of inter-dependencies in societies; it's not like we'd get as far without some cooperation.
:100: :up:
Well said.
Concern for others, common welfare, the common good, the simple fact that what we do (or don’t do) has real consequences on the world (including people) around us, etc, has been so thoroughly beaten out of people’s heads that they come to admire Ebenezer Scrooge.
We know where this dangerous nonsense comes from, and why it continues: it comes from the mouths of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and other (perhaps unwitting) apologists for the plutocrats — and it persists because it’s useful to said plutocrats. Plain and simple.
It’s a truly sick mentality, and leads to sick outcomes.
Dependecy is the argument that I have seen the most in this thread. I struggle to remember any others that were put forward. What else is there?
And may I assume you don't view the woman in my example as either a freeloader or a traitor?
I guess we could frame the question in the context of power (weakness/strength). Our weaknesses push us towards collectivism and our strengths pull us towards indiviualism. Between the push and pull of weakness and strength respectively, our psyche is, in a way, torn into two - we need to band together but we want to live alone. Individualism is going to be an uphill task for the simple reason that weaknesses have a greater weightage than strengths - ignoring the former spells doom but surrendering the latter only means you share. I suppose in some sense dying is worse than sharing, you be the judge.
On top of that, our values, even those related to individualism, seems to have evolved in the setting of collectivism which makes it harder for individualists to ground themselves outside of collectivism. What's the point of being able to do whatever what one wants if their significance is rooted in a collectivistic mise-en-scène?
Perhaps my reading of individualism is a caricature of sorts but I'm just following the scent of individualists in a manner of speaking and it led to what I outlined in the preceding few paragraphs.
Presumably she was enslaved against her will and in order to provide some value to the enslavers. Your scenario didn’t touch on betrayal.
I like what you wrote. It reminded me that the schism is chalked full of irony.
All collectives are composed of individuals. If you add it all up it becomes clear that collectivism is exclusive, individualism inclusive. If you believe the individual is the primary unit of concern, you necessarily have a concern for all persons, refusing to sacrifice a single one of them for some collective. If you believe the collective is primary, you will sacrifice or discipline any individual who threatens its unity, excluding them from the will of the party.
I think it’s evident individuals do and should cooperate. I just don’t think any person should be sacrificed for an idea, whether it’s the “greater good”, the nation, the party, humanity itself.
If I were the primary unit of concern, for example, why would I necessarily have concern for all units?
Because all units are individuals.
I'm not going to dispute that. I will, however, remind that the idea of service is often justified by the individual as a recognition there is something greater than the self. I know most guys will say that when it comes down to it, they are fighting for the guy next to them, and not God, Country, Flag and all that. But the reasons they join in the first place, and find meaning in continued service outside of combat, are these ideals, or feelings of being part of something bigger. Something they believe in. A guy like you, for instance, may think he's joining up and fighting for the ideals of individualism that are expressed in our organic documents. But those documents were inclined toward a more perfect union, and "we, the people." If we were to undermine that motivation, I wonder if cooperation would suffer.
In short, as I've said before, you need people to be left alone. Counter-intuitive, but true nonetheless.
As a side note, having some sympathy for your position, as I've expressed before, I wonder why we engage. I don't know about you, but because of my circumstances, I have been blessed with an absolute metric shit-ton of opportunity to be left alone. Yet I come in here, as do you, and engage. What is it about me that seeks contact, seeks to hone, seeks to express? Why don't I just step away from the computer, the T.V., go read, go hunt, go hike, go fish, go practice the guitar, go write (not this stuff on web, but memoirs, books, poetry and whatnot), spend time immersed in the lives of family, loved ones and the few friends I have? Why do you and I feel it is important to spend our time here, engaging with community?
The more I read what I just wrote, the more I'm inclined to practice what you preach.
Then you’re not really talking about individuals but some abstract idea or collection of units, like ‘human beings’. In that case you have a lesser concern for units that are not human. I suppose that’s why oppressors dehumanize the oppressed.
Well said and enjoyable to read.
Unfortunately for me I'm stuck at my desk, but I shall be out foraging for morels and oyster mushrooms in about 3 hours time, so long as the weather holds up. Like you I come here to hone my ideas and to read other points of view. But I would not recommend seeing this as a social activity, because we are each literally alone. I would argue this is anti-social behavior. Had we all been around a pub table I doubt these sorts of conversations would occur.
"individual" is an abstraction, yes, but it fits on all human beings. Individualism is concern with human affairs, sure, but it does not prohibit concern for other beings.
The hierarchy is usually something like family > religious or political affiliation > neighborhood > nation, abstract notions aside.
That may very well be what happens to a man who is voluntarily isolated from the pub table: He starts to view this as a social activity. Regardless, he is drawn back into communication with others and a reliance upon them for honing and exposure. Real world would be better, but aren't we eschewing that?
Sounds about right. Personally I find little affiliation with many of those groups but I am nonetheless concerned with how each member is treated by them.
Yes, I think you’re right. Communication with others is not only desirable, but necessary, or else we end up someone like Genie.
Well I can only hope your love for family trumps your love for Trump and laissez-faire (fuck the working class) capitalism. Other than that, if I recall correctly, you claim to be a godless expatriate so no loyalties there.
You mentioned freeloaders and traitors, and I thought you were going somewhere with that.
Anyway, since we seem to agree the individual's dependency is not a sufficient basis for collectivism, what else is there?
I mentioned that "societies owe no loyalty to freeloaders and traitors."
Quoting Tzeentch
How did we arrive at this agreement exactlly?
I mentioned that "Abused individuals owe no loyalty" meaning that any moral intuition or social norm could be justifiably considered invalid in that situation when looking at it from the perspective of interdependence and cooperation for mutual benefit. From the perspective of dog-eat-dog competition, slavery is cheap and offers an advantage that can't be shared by all.
I ask you, pray do tell us: what is the trigger, and what is the response in Slave-keeping societies, and in Abused Uncles' Shelters where dog-eat-dog is the competitive norm of cooperative cannibalism, that establishes the morality or the lack thereof of invalid justification of interdependent perspectives?
Would that approach not reduce the number of dogs ultimately to one, by the processes of cannibalism and elimination, and their being a diploid species, not cause the extinction of these noble friends of man?
Ok, as far as the first part of your response goes, I think we are in agreement.
Is there any perspective, other than dog-eat-dog competition (essentially "might makes right"), for which these moral intuitions or social norms, in the example we discussed, would not be considered invalid?
It is my view that there aren't. I'm also assuming that, like me, you don't find "might makes right" a convincing moral idea.
Except it is not the individual that is the primary concern. The primary concern of individualism is ME.
If your primary concern is for all persons then your thinking has matured beyond individualism. If so then you have figured out what is wrong with individualism.
In your scenario the culprit is Islamic fundamentalism.
That's not true.
The point is that all persons are individuals and I afford each of them certain rights. If her rights are violated I get concerned, not only for her but for me and others as well.
Perish the thought.
I don't mind the concept of laissez-faire because it implies the state keeping their hands off of private affairs. But when corporations seek favor from state power my defense ends.
You probably already know this, but the corporation is a state favor to investors. The corporation is a creature of Big Government and does not exist in nature. Big Government specifically holds investors harmless so they don't have to take personal responsibility of their own actions.
We can ignore, for now, the question of how investors (or anyone else for that matter) came into possession of "their" capital in the first place. Chase it back and you will find theft. You will find someone who was left alone to put their hands on someone else's private affairs.
That's true. The corporation is the child of mercantilism. The state often granted single corporations monopoly on entire industries, which often led to colonialism. So much for laissez-faire and free markets.
That is for sure the most egregious example.
But even without monopoly, the state, in it's wisdom, thought to entice capital, locked up in cowardly fear of loss, out into the markets for the benefit of everyone. That can be a good thing.
The only problem is, when "capital" starts getting uppity, believing that it grew on it's own hard or smart work, without any help, and as a "risk taker" who then whines like a little bitch when government seeks to tax as small portion of the profits to offset the corporation's externalized costs, or to otherwise build roads and bridges that benefit the corporation and everyone. The corporation says "government is not the solution, it is the problem." That's like saying it's time to kill your mom and dad and eat them, while your brother and sister starve.
What are these rights that you afford them? Do you afford them the right to healthcare? Food and shelter for indigent minors?
The unit of analysis that is implict in any notion of rights is the group, and not the individual. Although 'individualists' like to forget this. Which says something too about the poverty of individualism. Its issue is not that that it elevates 'the indvidual' above the group: it's that it reifies an entirely false conception of the individual which leaves actual individuals worse off in every sense.
Even if the idea is individualism?
Like if I had some kind of weapon that allowed me to capture and control the minds of large masses of people and cause them to establish some kind of tyranny, would the prevention of that tyranny be grounds to sacrifice me as an individual?
Quoting NOS4A2
Aren't all affairs private affairs from a strict individualist perspective?
Quoting Tzeentch
Even if you're indebted to a society, you can still be justified in rejecting it. Those are not mutually exclusive.
The state is a paternalistic institution, so your analogy is quite apt. Unfortunately, I'm one of those whiny little bitches. I see taxes as forced labor and theft, the profits of which go to war, imprisonment, and ineffectual bureaucracy, as much as it does to roads and bridges. The state's modus operandi hasn't changed much since its conception in conquest and exploitation. All that has changed is the growing dependency on its existence, an increase in the religious fervor used to defend it, and all in inverse proportion to the decline of social power.
No, do you?
Yes, because you are enslaving and denying the rights of individuals.
I've never heard of that angle but there might be some out there who hold that perspective.
For taxation to be theft, there must be a right to pre-tax income. Legally, this is clearly not the case.
A moral right to pre-tax can only be said to exist if earned income results in a fair and equitable payment for labour rendered. This too is false. Market circumstances are not concerned with the moral worth of labour or who needs the job the most or who is most deserving of fulfilling the assignment. So a moral right to pre-tax income is incoherent.
Since no rights are infringed, there's no theft.
What do you mean with social power?
So are the individuals who stop our would-be overlord. If everyone is just individuals, then prima facie, any motivation is equivalent, and preventing a murder is equivalent to murdering someone.
. In fact, there is nothing wrong with individualism ...
. Follow this criterion ...
. Anything that goes against individuality is wrong ... Anything that spoils and poisons your individuality ... your very being ... your very uniqueness ... is essencially wrong ... Anything that tries to conform you to anything else but you and take away your singularity ... coming from your innermost core ... is absolutely wrong.
. Individuality is exactly what it means: it is individual. Personality is not individual, it is social.
. Society wants you to have personalities not individualities ... Society wants you to conform to others ... Society wants you unnintelligent ... because just unintelligent beings can be easily but subtly enslaved to monotonous and stupid jobs. For example, spend the whole Life being a clerk. That's tremendously insensitive.You are not allowed to be the way you are ... you are allowed to be carbon copys of others ... whose Life is meaningless ... so you can be easily manipulated through your so-called beloved politicians ...
. They perfectly know ... since 5,000 years ... that your individualities if not corrupted will create conflit. The society hides your individuality ... puts you a blind man ... and gives a personality ... a mask ... that's the meaning of personality ... from a greek root ... Did you know that? In Greek drama the actors used to wear masks to hide their real face and to show some other face. From persona comes the word personality, it is a mask that you wear, it is not your original face.
. When the personality disappears, don't be afraid. For the first time, you become authentic ... for the first time you become real ... for the first time you attain to essence. That essence, in India, has been called atma, the soul.
. The ego is the center of personality and godliness is the center of essence. That's why there is so much insistance from every corner that ego has to be dropped: unless you know what you are, not what you are expected to be ...
. Personality is false, it is the greatest lie. And because the whole society depends on personality, the state, the church, organizations, the establishment are all lies. The western psychology goes on thinking about the personality too much, that's why the whole of western psychology is a psychology based on the basic lie. The East is being westernized as well ... and ... unfortunately ... the ancient wisdom ... is being lost ...
. Human beings must think in terms of essence, not of the personality. That which you have brought, that which is your intrinsic nature, that which is your intrinsic essence has to be known and has to be lived ...
. Personality is that which you are not ... but ... cunningly ... try to show that you are. Personality is that which you have to use as a convenience when you move in society.
. But you'll see that ... when you're alone surrounding by nature ... personality ... spontaneously ... is dropped ... and ... in that moment ... you truly are ...
This is one reason I'm against procreation. Birthing more people, is implicitly birthing people with the limitations of a socioeconomic creature (that is to say we become limited to the "options" of work, homelessness/poverty, free-riding (looked down upon), and death/suicide). Seems tyrannical.. an overlooking of an individual to put them in this game. It's needed once alive, but why does one need to go through it in the first place?
And yet that "concern for all persons" does not extend to their health or whether children have food and shelter.
Evidently your concern extends only to yourself and the principle of the right to be left alone.
Your defense of Trump has been nothing short of heroic. You've demonstrated such devotion that someone accused you of insanity the other day. I'd think that a virtue of individualism is in how individuals can abandon loyalties when what they've been loyal to becomes self-defeating.
I don't think so. Islamic fundamentalism is an idea. It is given power by individuals that choose to adopt it and impose it on others. I could have chosen various other examples, but I tried to make the injustice as clear as possible.
The principle at play here, is that the moral and physical impositions of the collective undermine the interests of the individual. We recognize that as injustice, especially when the injustice is magnified by one's own moral framework. Can you recognize it too when one's own moral framework is what hides it?
Well said!
I don't realize that because the state also denies rights, or otherwise granted themselves selectively: to nobles, the wealthy, members of certain races, members of certain sexes, and so on. The examples are myriad and not worth repeating.
I also grant rights, as can anyone else, and we don't need any legislation to do so. Should someone infringe on your rights I'll be right there defending you.
My point is it doesn’t matter if the confiscation is legal or not; it is still theft. If someone confiscates my resources without my permission and for their own use, whether state or man on the street, it’s theft. I don’t excuse someone for theft because he makes the laws or claims a right to my income.
I can’t see why it would matter if the income is fair and equitable. What matters is that someone is confiscating what another has earned.
Social power is often contrasted with state power. It’s wherever the locus of power is in society or the community and not in the government. It might be an outdated term but I couldn't think of a better one.
Evidently you’re mistaken, because you didn’t ask if I was concerned with the poor and whether children have food and water.
Do you afford these rights?
Best I can make out you seem to be saying that Islamic fundamentalism considers itself invalid because it's an idea. I don't think that's what you're trying to say.
The difference is, the state is, ultimately, under our control. When corporations control the state, we fascism (ala Mussolini). So, the state's train schedule sucks. I agree. But I'd rather that than corporate trains that run on time while hauling you off to work for them.
I don't know what's odd about what I wrote, but I rephrased it for you:
Quoting Tzeentch
What if a collective has little power and an individual has a lot of power, might not that individual undermine the interests of the collective? If the individual liked the power and wanted to stay in power they might intentionally take actions that weaken a collective in order to keep that power. The individual might try to make it difficult for the collective to organize, for instance, or promote the virtue of [i]Individualism[/I], and undermine their collective power. And of course [i]divide and conquer[/I] has always been a crowd pleasing strategy.
Quoting Tzeentch
I think moral frameworks rationalize behavior and not necessarily magnify or hide it.
You mean like Somalia?
So, you are "concerned" but don't think they have a right to health care or help when needed. Do you recognize the rights to life, liberty, happiness, and property? Do you think they are rights only as long as people are lucky enough to have them?
Or just grown-ups.
Not the best example but was too adorable to resist.
Yes, and in general terms I would consider it desirable that the interests of the individual are put before the interests of the state. Individuals are almost always going to be the weaker party in the relationship between them and the state, and therefore need to be protected.
Quoting praxis
Power hungry individuals are, sadly, everywhere. And by not giving them strong states to hold power over, the evil they can do to the individual is at least limited. I believe this is in fact a good argument in favor of individualism.
I think they should be helped, of course. Do you afford them these rights?
But not by you and not with the tax dollars you are required to pay. You just want to be left alone.
Quoting NOS4A2
I do not think of it in terms of rights. This is a fundamental problem with modern liberalism, everything is seen through the lens of individual rights. I do not "afford" people rights.
I can, will and have helped people in need both with my money and my efforts. My efforts and concern extend beyond begging the state to take care of people in need.
Then what is the problem?
I think it was Benkei who pointed out that individual rights tend to diminish with government reduction. Dictatorships, for instance, are most secure with small coalitions of power and weak individual rights.
But the state can do things much more effectively. Handling of the coronavirus is a good example. You as a individual are powerless. You are also incapable of providing healthcare, food, and shelter to large numbers of people.
But this raises the question; what rights exists without the State? Only moral rights. But moral rights will be ignored by most people if they can get away with it. It's quite obvious from history that rights are best preserved and protected in a civilised society. Human rights, unfortunately, really are a luxury not available to most and a recent invention.
I would therefore argue that rights are only meaningful, if they are legal and therefore protected by the legal order and organisation of a State. Morality still informs us about the content of what those legal rights should be. The "I can grant rights" doesn't exist - it's merely a sentiment. You're not capable of protecting me from Russian or Chinese interference, or indeed Facebook's abuses, or enforce a contract for me against an unwilling counterparty. Your "granted rights" are in that sense worthless and in any case a contradiction in terms if your position is that I have intrinsic rights (who are you to grant me my rights?).
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not confiscation if you don't have a claim to the income.
The reason why it matters whether it's fair or equitable is that if your morality is merely procedural, then obviously the legal procedure creates the moral basis for taxes. If you want to have a moral claim to income, you need to prove your claim to specific income is fair and equitable. But this isn't "priced" into markets, so the income paid is not a reflection of moral worth but happenstance.
You cited writers and philosophers before that I have read a long time ago but I'm not familiar with this. What is this "outdated term" based on?
Individual rights do not diminish. One right is exchanged for another. In the discussion between big vs. small government, the trade off is between freedom and security. Where security is given to one, freedom (in essence also a type of security) is taken away from another, which is why I don't see the extension of individual rights by governments as a more = better type of deal.
Further, I believe governments and the type of individuals that lead them end up undermining the individual rights they claim to uphold, due to the corrupting nature of power.
So using government as a tool to contiunously attempt to expand individual rights is a self-defeating ideal.
I don't know about that. Private people, organizations, charities etc. are quite capable. You yourself are as well, but you'd rather beg the state to do it for you. So much for concern.
It’s true. Rights are best secured by those in power. But those rights, whatever form they may take, are subject to their whim and can disappear with the scribble of the pen. History also shows that the state routinely denies human rights, even after they’ve been secured.
I don't believe in intrinsic rights because rights are man made, but I believe everyone is deserving of rights. Anyone can grant rights, king or commoner, because a right is little more than the promise of an obligation. When I grant you free speech I take it as an obligation to refuse censoring you; when I grant you the freedom of religion I take it as an obligation to refuse interfering in your religious customs; and I take it as my duty to defend your rights because I believe in your rights and freedoms as I do mine. This occurs with or without your consent or knowledge. Perhaps that’s worthless to you, and you would have no legal recourse if I violate the obligation, but to me it means a great deal.
I don’t understand the fair and equitable part or how it relates to the state’s claim to my money. If I want to prove a moral claim to the fruits of my own labor I need only refer to the consensual agreement between myself and whomever I’m doing business with. The state cannot refer to any such agreement.
The state doesn’t have a claim to my income as far as I’m concerned, nor does it have any claim to any other kind of tax: capital gains tax, property tax, federal and provincial sales tax, inheritance or estate tax, and on and on. I consider it confiscation because it takes it without my permission, without asking, without my input. I consider it forced labor because a portion of my labor is spent providing for the state.
I believe it is a term of sociology, but I do not quite know what it is based on.
I'm not sure what you mean or if anyone has claimed otherwise.
Typically wealthy people and organizations generally work together and coordinate with government agencies. At the very least they do not regard all government as the enemy as you seem to. No private entity has the ability to organize and implement on the massive scale of countries like the US.
Nothing, as long your individualism doesn't trample on another's right to be an individual. In this sense, you cease being pro-individualism the moment you think your individuality trumps someone else's. The whole point of individualism is realizing that you are not the only individual, else you cease being pro-individual and begin being authoritarian.
It's really that simple. All the other complaints in this thread aren't about individualism, but about authoritarianism - when an individual ceases to recognize the individuality of others and impose their way of life on others, or when an individual thinks that they are the only individual.
The problem is that people in this thread that are complaining about individualism are actually complaining about people that believe that individualism entails only believing that you are the only individual. Individualism doesn't only entail that you are an individual, but others are too. Authoritarianism is the idea that you are the most important individual, not individualism.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well said!
Ohhhhh, I thought the whole point was freedom or personal liberty. Boy did I have it all wrong. :yikes:
Not all wrong - half wrong. Freedom and personal liberty for not just one individual, but all individuals. Seems like a pretty simple concept to grasp to me.
Sure, an individual in a weak socioeconomic position is entirely free to fuck-off and die, for instance. The problem, as stated from the beginning, is responsibility. Generally speaking, being responsible can result in increased stability and sustainability. Not exciting goals, and being responsible is a big bummer, but cooperation for mutual benefit has its benefits. It can be a more meaningful way of life. A rat race is for rats.
Or free to make something better for themselves. Anyone trying to prevent that isn't a freedom-loving individualist, rather a freedom-is-only-for-me authoritarian. So your complaints are never about a fault in the idea of individualism, rather about the faults of the idea of authoritarianism. Why is that so difficult to grasp?
I'd say it has something to do with physics. Everything you do has an impact on others. Just being consumes perfectly good space that could better be used by nothing. When you start moving beyond being, you start using what used to be perfectly good air, drinking what used to be perfectly good water, eating what used to be perfectly good food. But when you start procreating, oh man! Now you've really done it!
The point here is, there is no free lunch. The individual externalizes the cost of his existence onto the backs of those who did not agree to assume those costs in an arm's length, informed transaction. So, we get together and agree to look the other way while we all go about being.
That doesn’t make sense because an autocrat can be a responsible autocrat that acts cooperatively with society for the benefit of all, or more likely act irresponsibly and take advantage of their position for personal gain, perhaps even going so far as to deliberately impoverish the citizenry to better secure their autocracy.
To me it seems that the basic whole point, as you say, is that the individualist wants to compete and the collectivist wants to cooperate. Some think that competition is the natural way and others think that, because we have the capacity of reason, there may be a better way.
Nor did the individual agree.
This situation you sketch is brought about by individuals who chose to have children, and by a state that facilitated a certain standard of living.
One cannot force these conditions on an individual and then claim one is entitled to their coorperation.
Yes, he did, and he did so by accepting the benefits of everyone looking the other way.
Quoting Tzeentch
The situation I sketch is brought about by individuals who have individuals, regardless of the state.
Quoting Tzeentch
Yes, one can. And so can many. Anyone who doesn't like it can kill themselves.
That, or not leaving and going somewhere else. Oh, wait, they can't! Because individuals, exercising their god-given right to breed more individuals, have stepped on their own dick. There is no where left to go. Individualism brought this on itself. There is always going to be people. You see, the social contract is an adhesion contract and, as far as I know, the U.S. is the best deal going. So yeah, not leaving or not killing yourself is agreement to accept the benefits of society in return for them exercising sovereignty over you.
I live in an area where individualist go to get away from individuals. It's sad to see what they have done to the environment without regulation. They've ruined it and created exactly what they thought they were trying to get away from, with their stupid "Don't Tread On Me" and "Trump" flags. I'd love to regulate the hell out of them, but this is 'Merica, right? What really pisses me off, is half of them can't handle the isolation so they either leave their detritus behind and go, or they spend half their time in town. Jeesh.
Lets say I trap you in a cage and force you to work for me. Every moment you do not kill yourself by holding your breath until you die of asphyxiation is a moment you agreed to my terms, no?
False equivalence. I'm not trapped in a cage and no one is forcing me to do shit. If, on the other hand, I voluntarily went into your cage to receive three hots and a cot and to have you protect me from getting trapped in a cage and forced to work for that other asshole, then yeah, I agreed. Especially when I could just leave if I wanted to.
Pick a cage: The one you can leave, or the one you can't leave. Of course, there is a third option: pick the cage you can leave, but don't. Sit around and whine about the cage you chose. The cage you helped create just by being. You are a bar in my cage.
P.S. I'd love to stay and play, but I'm going into the big city to get me some of that.
Some individualist chose for them. But the cage analogy does not fit. You can leave.
Are you being serious?
As a heart attack. The state isn't making individualists breed. They are doing that on their own. If an individualist doesn't like the cage they are in, and if they feel trapped in that cage like they can't leave (they can) then why bring another individual into the cage? That's on the individualist. It's a cage of their own making.
Anyway, the wife is pulling me out the door. The floor is yours. I'll catch up later.
You can’t say that these conditions are forced on an individual that is at first completely unaware of them and then later at some point may realize they are dependent on them. If independence is ever reached then an individual may opt-out.
That's a bit like saying wetness is forced upon water. It is true that every individual finds themselves embedded in relations which they are not able to easily change or abrogate. But so do they find themselves subject to the laws of physics. Do we level a charge at the laws of physics for their tyrannical nature?
We can change the type and makeup of the social conditions "forced upon" the individual. But we cannot simply wish them away, because individuals cannot exist outside these conditions.
If an individual manages to self-isolate effectively for awhile they tend to respond even more poorly to being disturbed by society later Think Unabomber here.
At best we can hope to achieve a modicum of individual freedom by playing well enough within societal rules (whichever one you are in) that one is never on the radar, and therefore no one around knows that you really are ambivalent to society. That's about as good as it gets.
Of course I agree.
In my mind the collectivist rhetoric only serves to disguise the authoritarian impulse. What’s feigned to be done for the whole is always done for one portion of it at the expense of another. That the anti-individualist creed is a veritable rogue’s gallery of tinpot dictators and authoritarians from all brands of ideologies makes this evident. Even though it is fallacious of me to dismiss the anti-individualist argument because of the company they keep, I no less pity them for having to stand on the sunken shoulders of these types of giants.
One of the very very few times that we agree. :love:
That’s easy to do when you can remove much of my sentence. Contextomy is also a fallacy.
So you can't decide if it's fallacious or not? Trust me, it is.
I clearly said it was fallacious. I’m not sure why you’d raise that question.
Rather than try to explain why don't you simply say how the quote doesn't stand alone or how its meaning is distorted in isolation.
If it stands alone why didn’t you just leave it as is? Instead, much of the sentence is missing.
People are conscious, moral agents; the laws of physics are not. That is a fundamental difference to me.
Quoting Echarmion
My point is not that all possible changes should be made to "right the wrong". However, the realization that the individual does not necessarily participate in society voluntarily is an important factor in why I believe states/societies/collectives cannot claim to hold moral authority over individuals (at least not by default).
That's strange that you don't see the autocrat as someone that competed to get to the top of society. Individualism doesn't necessarily include the idea of competition. Individuals are free to work with others if they so choose, and can often accomplish a great deal in groups, but at the end of they day they are all still individuals that retain their own thoughts and the freedom to choose to participate in a group or not. Sports teams are groups that also compete against other groups, so I don't why you would think that competition is soley the characteristic of individualists.
Collectivists seem intent on limiting individual thought and imposing the thought of one individual on the rest. I think of an ant colony, or Star Trek's Borg when I think of collectivism, and both of those compete with other species for resources on Earth or in the galaxy.
I couldn't agree more. After all, who's ideas is the collective promoting? If you have to push your ideas onto another individual, then you're not allowing the individual to think for themselves. Another individual must make the effort to show another how their ideas are good for others and not just for themselves. Most of the collectivists don't seem to care about making that case. They just want you to submit to their will.
In my hypothetical society autocrats are appointed by lottery. Kinda rando but eminently egalitarian.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If they live in society they really have no choice but to be mostly cooperative.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Not sure how saying that someone may want to behave in a particular way means that they can only behave in that way.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Cooperation does require compatible values and goals, no getting around that. I imagine the same holds true for individualists who cooperate with each other.
Why by lottery and not by free elections? Who created and is administering this lottery?
Quoting praxis
Tell that to the people who resist an run from police because they've been told society and its enforcers are racists.
Tell that to the growing number of no-political-party-affiliation voters.
Quoting praxis
You're the one that used a single word to describe individualists, as if the two terms were essentially conflated, when you only need to take a second to see how that is just as much a property of collectives as it is individuals.
Quoting praxis
Exactly. So at this point we seem to be saying the same thing.
They are free, and in fact every eligible citizen receives a free sticker just for participating. Why lottery? In attempt to remove the incentive for power seeking. There’s no point of investing in power seeking if power is randomly given.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I tried to describe the difference as succinctly as possible. You apparently disagree, offering the rationale that everyone both competes and cooperates.
Maybe it has to do with competition vs cooperation as it relates specifically to power distribution in society. The individualist wants to win the game and the collectivist wants to play the game indefinitely and where ‘everyone’s a winner!’, essentially. In real life this plays out as collectivists supporting collective power, such as workers unions, and individualists supporting capital free enterprise and its concentrations of power.
One can’t deny thrust of anti-individualist arguments, for instance against avarice, but they fit better as arguments against human nature rather than any individualist belief. Collectivists too are guilty of the same sins.
What, today, or in the 18th century? :)
I don't think there's any problem with it--I'm an individual. 'Individualism', taken broadly, means I can do what I wish. Is it good for a state? Maybe not. But what's good for a state may not be good for me, and I won't survive the state. And even nurtured to perfection through controlled 'collectivism' it would still collapse. :grin: Then there's the question whether a state's good at all. Hard to say, thousands of years after they were made. Why did we make states? In any case I think an individual, someone that's truly one, that advocates collectivism is just shooting himself in the foot. Look at communist China or Russia. So it's come back to whether a state's good in the first place, i.e. someone ruling you. If that's going to be the case, individualism to me is just a minimization of his control, or we might say 'checks and balances'. I'm sure collectivism is better for the whole, in many not immediately defineable ways, but in any state there need to be people that rule over someone, and these people at least, or someone, is empowered to individualism--the ruler--and if his individualism isn't like yours, well you may wind up with your head on a pike. So, what's best for me, is best for me, basically. :smile:
I can understand the benefits of a lottery system as a means of dispersing power and the limiting the incentive for seeking it, but we have to know who created the lottery system and administers it so that it can't be manipulated to a particular group's or individual's benefit.
Quoting praxis
I already showed how groups compete against other groups. It seems to me that you are implying that there should be only one group and no competition, which is no different than everyone thinking the same way and the existence of only one party with no dissent or competing ideas. Just think about your argument and how that might equate to one race, country, religion, etc. eliminating all competition from other groups. Isn't that what we saw in Germany in the mid 20th century? Diversity of groups is just as important as a diversity of individuals.
Sexist. :roll:
Me, or individualism, or both?
Actually if there's any implication along this line it's that the Individualist wants to desimate the competition in order to secure their position of power.
I think the first to second wave of feminism was inherently individualist. It's hard to roll your eyes reading the abolitionist and woman's rights champions like Sojourner Truth, Angelina Grimke, or the anarchism of Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre.
As pointed out, individualism includes recognizing the rights of other individuals and not just one's own. If one is consistent in their beliefs, an individualist actually would shy away from positions of power over others.
I've never read any of them so I'll have to defer to you on that.
Feminism is a movement and movements, while made up of individuals, requires communal effort for any traction. I don't see women as being adverse to that.
Personally, I can't think of anything more individualist than the concept of pro-choice (I'm happy to ignore those who say "What about the baby's choice?"). But from my own personal life experience, most women I know have a much more realistic understanding of, and comfort with the individual's place in the order of things, than do men. That place is grateful for and accepting of reliance upon the group. The whole "it takes a village" idea tracks well with my understand of a female orientation. And that orientation is not so "individualist" in my understanding of the "don't tread on me" attitude of those who don't want anyone meddling with them.
I'm not saying there isn't a female out there branded as "individualist", but I don't often see them flying the flag. I think that, all in all, they have a more balanced approach to the idea of individualism and that which individualism would abhor. I don't have a good grasp on the latter, because every time you try to pin a self-identified individualist down, they slime around with some excuse as to why they avail themselves of the benefits of an intrusive government. The point is, women don't seem as "either/or" to me. If there was an either/or, I think they'd come down on the side of the non-individualist, like most reasonable people.
That's just my anecdotal take on it.
I don't see how that follows. On an equal playing field (equal rights and opportunity) one individual can compete better, or just be luckier, than others and 'win'. Having won, the playing field would be less equal and the winner would enjoy an advantage. The rules would be the same but the winning individual would have superior resources at their disposal. They would have more power.
Another thought on feminism: The forces against which feminism seems to be struggling are perceived by me as individualist males who don't extend the individualist notion to include women. Women are chattel. As I understand it, most forms of government that the individualist hates are actually more egalitarian when it comes to the sexes.
What you're doing is trying to blame individualism for negative human traits like greed and will to power, which is exactly the type of mischaracterization that Harry Hindu pointed out earlier. You're framing individualism as a form of egotism, which it is not.
Quoting James Riley
Case and point.
You're missing out. They were right, brave, and decent. Perhaps give them a read and it might dispel your assumptions. Back in those times they were fighting for the right to vote, against slavery, against arbitrary power, against sexist laws—you know, against the state and other forms of mob rule. Who knows? Without their voices you might be a little more reserved in your support for government.
I guess those who champion individualism need to pin it down. Every time anyone else tries, it's like nailing Jell-O to the wall. If it's simply "every individuals right to self-determination", then where does one individuals right to self-determination end and another's begin; and who is going to referee conflict between the two?
So long as I am missing out, we all have to stand here on our own two feet.
You see all those evils against which they fought as the state and the mob. I see their appeal (somewhat successful) was to the very state you decry, in an effort to overcome a mob composed of a bunch of individualists demanding their right to be left alone to oppress them. Regardless, they didn't get what they got by going it alone. And they were realistic about that.
That's a lie, I never claimed that individualism seeks to secure power over others. I said there may be the implication that an individualist wants to secure their power by eliminating the competition, in response to Harry's silly strawman about collectivists wanting no dissonance in society.
I hope you two kids are having fun playing with your little strawmen. :roll:
Harry wrote: "Nothing [wrong with individualism], as long your individualism doesn't trample on another's right to be an individual."
How is beating another individual in a competition trampling on their right to be an individual?
That would make them a non-individualist, then.
Quoting praxis
Oh please. They're your words.
That isn't what you said. EIther way, it doesn't follow.
Quoting praxis
All you are doing now is repeating yourself without providing any evidence for what you are saying. All you have to do is read your own words here and in other threads, and look at history to understand that groups are just as competitive as individuals.
Groups are not only competitive against each other, but against individuals. Just go back and read your statements about racial injustice, sexism, transphobia, etc. You are simply ignoring the fact that just as there are multiple individuals, there are multiple groups, and as such they can either compete or cooperate with other individuals or groups.
So individualist are in favor of antitrust laws? I thought y’all was all about FREEDOM!!
Individualism really isn't a model for economics. In general individualism promotes freedom, but I think what you are not understanding is that while that is the case, it may not necessarily agree with what individuals use that freedom for. Much in the same spirit of the famous quote "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
What does freedom entail to the individualist? How does the state of realized individualist freedom look in practice?
Somalia.
This seems to mean that while an individualist may disapprove of antitrust violations they will defend to the death the right to commit antitrust violations.
The right to bodily autonomy, the right to self-determination, freedom of speech, among other things.
Quoting Echarmion
A state that protects those essential freedoms, and nothing else.
Sure.
In my mind individual freedom entails the polar-opposite of slavery, allowing the right of an individual to control his own person and property.
In practice it is refusing to interfere in the affairs of one so long as he doesn't violate the freedoms of others.
Bodily autonomy and freedom of speech have fairly well practiced contours. What is the right so self-determination? Does it include the necessary material preconditions for that self-determination? And is some form of property on the list of other things?
Quoting Tzeentch
I wasn't referring to "state" in the more general sense of "state of affairs", though I should have made that clear. I'd be interested in a more "colourful" description of how you envision such a society to look. Do you have real life examples which are closer to this ideal than most?
And if I’m following correctly, the disapproved of antitrust violator will be kicked out of the Individualists club, even though they’ve done nothing to restrict the rights of other individuals.
The problem I have is with imagining how the interface between individuals functions based on individualism. Ok so noone interferes in "your affairs" so long you don't violate the freedoms of others. But how is this violation established? It seems in principle possible to conceive a notion of individual freedoms and their interactions to account for every possible result.
Good luck with that. Merely being here takes up perfectly good space that could better be utilized by nothing. Yet we champion the right to procreation, the swinging of a fist before the nose, and at the nose.
If I understand your problem correctly, I would argue the interface functions as it always would, except that each would refrain from coercing or otherwise using force and aggression against the other. One could look wherever coercion and force and aggression is being applied and establish where that violation occurs.
Or can we have big gubmn’t regulate Cletus, meddle in his affairs, interfere with his right to self-determination, make him get a permit, and regulate his generation and disposal of hazardous waste? But then, of course, we’d have to sit around and listen to him whine like a little bitch about the evils of gubmn’t as he’s shopping at Healthy Sally’s for dangerous chemicals that came in on the gubmn’t highway that morning.
I get the idea of the Bill of Rights, Natural Law, defending against the tyranny of the majority, and all that. I'm a strong proponent. But there is a sovereign for a reason, a social contract of adhesion. Life is not fair, there is no justice, and there is always someone bigger and stronger. I'd rather that someone be the state than some individualist asshole who came into his capital by being first, being bigger than me, being more rapacious than me, having gained enough to purchase the state as his tool to lord over me.
The state is indeed my big brother and he will kick your ass if you mess with me. If he has to hold me down and give me a noogie once in a while, so be it. I wouldn't need his help if all the individualists would leave me the hell alone.
Essentially it is the right of every individual to pursue those things that they deem comprise a good life.
Quoting Echarmion
No. It is up to the individual to decide what they wish to do with their lives, and it is also up to them to accomplish their goals.
Quoting Echarmion
Assuming you are living in a free country, it is the life you are leading every day. Interaction based on voluntariness and respect for the other's wishes, individuality and freedom.
Quoting praxis
If they've not acted in contradiction to the ideas of individualism, then no.
Quoting James Riley
Pretty old and idiotic argument nurtured by leftists.
Yet a tribal society like Somalia with clans and clan structure with hierarchical system of patrilineal descent groups being so important has hardly anything common with individualism (or libertarianism/liberalism). Nonexistent or non-functioning states aren't so rare.
But ignorance make the memes work:
And of course, the part of the economy that works even with the problems hardly makes it to the news.
The reason it's not old or idiotic is because Somalia falls-four square under the definition of "failed state."
Quoting ssu
Wait, what? You mean even in failed states people tend toward clan and group? Who'd a thunk it? I don't think that is the flex you think it is.
I think Somalia had it clan based society far before the civil war that made it what it is now.
I'm sure you are right. They did. Again, it's that inclination natural and necessary to man.
We need to somehow define coercion, force and aggression with respect to all kinds of freedoms though. Most of these terms, if they are used in a legal context, refer to specific violations of specific rights. There are usually specific characteristics that the coercion or aggression needs to have in order to be considered a legal problem. For example, you can demand that someone who works in your company change some behaviours, possibly including how they dress, what they say in a professional capacity etc, but you cannot demand they have sex with you.
Quoting Tzeentch
Isn't that a bit like saying you have the right to bodily autonomy, insofar as you're allowed to defend yourself, but don't count on the state to interfere? Usually when people say the state should safeguard bodily autonomy they refer to proactive safety. That is to say they assume that there will not just be a determination after the fact of who was right and who was wrong, but instead an attempt to prevent a set of behaviors in the first place, on the basis that those generally violate someone's bodily autonomy. Is that not how you envision things to go?
Quoting Tzeentch
Sure, but then my country also has projects that could be characterized as collectivist: Socialised healthcare, for example, mandatory schools, a social safety net with mandatory contributions.
I cringe every time someone evokes the "social contract" because it is always in the service of power. But there is no such contract between you or I or anyone else, and at any rate, uttering it doesn't justify any use of force over any individual.
That’s true, and you’re right. If someone works for me I expect and demand a modicum of professionalism. But these terms are based upon mutual agreement between free men. I don’t think any coercion is required to uphold such an agreement. He is free to walk away should he disagree, as I am I free of any obligation towards employing him.
Actually, there is. And it exists whether you like it or not. It is an adhesion contract and you will obey or you will suffer the consequences. Full stop. See what cringing gets you. :razz:
Quoting NOS4A2
What if you have created an increase in the supply of labor by patronizing emerging communist and dictator markets, driving the price down and making any agreement between you and the employee one of unfair dealing? He is as free to walk away as you are to step away from the state and go it alone.
Any coercion is also a transaction and can be framed as a mutual agreement. If there is something I can coerce you with, that implies there is something in my power that you want me to do / refrain from doing.
Let's say A and B have a mutually agreed upon contract. Both get something out of that that they want. A wants to change the agreement. B prefers it to stay as it is, but prefers to change it's terms over loosing it entirely. At what point does A threatening to walk away become coercion? One might say that the parties simply also need to agree on the rules to change the rules. But this causes a nested doll situation where there is always a meta-agreement which is not agreed on (this actually happens in actual disputes sometimes).
Thinking out loud. I'm not married to any of these ramblings.
I've been thinking about prostitution lately. Leaving aside for now the issue of whether or not it should be legal, let's assume it is legal. I think that most people would rather not sell sexual access to their body for money. But they could be convinced to do it if the price were right. The same would be true for labor in general, would it not? Most people would not want to work for someone else for money. But they could be convinced to do it if the price were right. So there really isn't much daylight between prostitutes and any other laborer. Even those who own their own business "work for" their clients/customers/guests. Aren't we all whores?
Doesn't the payor always have an advantage, in that all they are trading is money, not themselves. They are all johns. We are all whores and johns, sometimes one, sometimes the other. I guess if you enjoy your work, then there would be no need to pay you to get the work done. Yet we can and will charge for the work.
Was there ever a time when we just did something for nothing?
As they used to say on SNL: "Discuss among yourselves."
Or not.
I'm leaning towards not being in favor of proactive action in this instance. At least, not in the shape of the use of force or coercion, unless there's a direct indication that physical violence is about to take place.
Quoting Echarmion
Coercion involves violence or the threat thereof.
Quoting James Riley
You're thinking of the divine right of kings.
Such categorical statements work, but the larger the category, the more relevant information is lost. It is true that every wage earner "sells themselves" but the terms of the sale differ, and I think that difference is relevant. Prostitution is in a way a microcosm of this. Decent arguments can be made for the position that all sex work is inherently exploitative and objectifying. But it doesn't seem convincing to argue that no-one really wants to do it, and everyone who claims to is either lying or has internalised misogyny or somesuch. It's too dogmatic to apply a category judgement like "all wage labor is slave labor" and be done with it. Personalities and aspirations differ, a market economy does get that part right.
Quoting Tzeentch
Fair enough. It does seem a far cry from the supposed world of mutual individualistic respect that has been brought up earlier in this thread though. In practice, individual rights under such a system are restricted to the right to not be directly physically attacked. All other rights only exist as mere potentials - they are there for you to take, if you have the power to keep them.
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Tzeentch
This is almost right. We seem to have forgotten that a company or corporation is not an individual and therefore doesn't possess rights as an individual.
Freedom is threatened when one individual or group possess to much power. Corporate monopolies are just as much a threat to individual rights as government monopolies.
Agreed. I'm sure there are some folks who enjoy their work and figure "Hey, if I can get paid too, great!" I know I've had work where I couldn't believe I was getting paid to do it. But, in general, most folks must be induced, hence the "market". I don't know why I even brought it up. I was just rambling.
No, I'm thinking of the social contract. It's an unfortunate fact of life. Only the King is somewhat exempt. But even he has obligations, and breach of the contract will at his peril.
Actually it is, from a legal standpoint, although the rights are not identical to an actual person. In any case, the president’s or CEO’s can be individualists, can’t they?
I always understood coercion to be persuading someone with the use of force or threat of ruin, like extortion, torture, blackmail. It's like "duress". Perhaps the word is open to interpretation. At any rate, I wouldn't put the scenario you outlined on the same scale.
Basically, the reason I am asking is because there seemed to be a trend in this thread, where all questions concerning interaction between the individuals are answered by pointing to "respect for other individuals". But that's only a convincing answer if said respect actually covers at least all basic conflicts and is enforceable.
Having the enforceable rules limited to "no coercion" and the defining "coercion" in a very limited way obviously means a whole bunch of conflicts are outside this scope. And conflicts that are will be resolved either by compromise or by force. And if it's the latter, then someone is going to loose. What can the individualist offer the loosing side? There's obviously no guarantee for compromise.
I can’t say that I favour either side of this debate - for me, it seems to be the ongoing dynamic of society to oscillate between individualism and some extent of collectivism.
That said, I don’t believe the ‘individual’ is as indivisible as he claims to be - he’s really just another form of collectivism. And, on the other hand, any form of collectivism we define and isolate from another is simply another consolidation of collaborative systems into an ‘indivisible’ structure.
So I think we can argue about this endlessly without reaching any conclusion, because we’re really just arguing about an arbitrary threshold of perceived consolidation/divisibility, and the merits and issues of the various structural possibilities on either side of that variable threshold.
Every individual is a construction that relies on collectivism for its existence - even in one’s rejection of that collectivism - and every identified instance of collectivism relies on the mutual awareness/ignorance, connection/isolation and collaboration/exclusion of consolidating systems. To double down on the ‘individual’ human being as the threshold of in/divisibility is as much an arbitrary perception as any collectivism argued for here.
I do think the experience of motherhood is a key aspect of my position. The notion of ‘individual’ becomes arbitrarily determined when your responsibility for another life must be gradually (and sometimes painfully) extricated from your own on a number of levels.
Then from a "legal standpoint" of corporations being individuals, these groups would engage in competition? Do you even remember what you said from one post to the next?
CEO's are individuals that have acquired their power not through their work alone. Kind of like how the children of politicians acquired their power through no work of their own. End dynastic politics.
What does that have to do with it, no one acquires their power through their work alone.
Shortly after birth one is excised from his mother, thereby severing any connection to anyone else. There's nothing arbitrary about this very real uncoupling. Indivisibility beyond this point means death. What is arbitrary is any notion of responsibility toward others, towards some collective, even towards one's newborn. The history of infanticide attests to this.
Or life, in the form of offspring.
Quoting NOS4A2
It could only be arbitrary if there were no system (social, ecological, or whatever), but there is a system, so it's actually the case that the freer an individuals is the more responsibility they have and the less responsibility they assume the more arbitrary (loss of order) the system becomes.
What system would that be? I ask because when I look for these things I only ever see individual people, separated by the fact of their position in time and space. A relation, no matter what size, is no system. We live in parallel, not in series. The responsibility lies upon these beings themselves and not to any grand abstraction such as a “system” or “the general good”. That’s my view, anyways.
A system is a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. Even you should be able grasp this rather simple concept. Your body, for instance, could be seen as a set of organs working together as parts of a, uh, largely functional individual. None of your organs functions are arbitrary, they each fit into the system in a particular way. There is an order, a system! If your bladder decided that it was an individual and had to express its individuality by peeing whenever you read the word "communist", well, you'd be sitting in a pool of urine right now and wishing your bladder were more responsible.
What you see is a visible uncoupling only. Although this action is medically (or culturally) determined following birth, the uncoupling of the birth itself is as arbitrary as any notion of responsibility towards one’s newborn. It is medicine and socio-cultural structures that determine what is ‘normal’ here, and intervenes as it sees fit. Yes, there is a threshold to life, but that specific point is going to be different for everyone.
The physical cutting of a cord can mark the apparent end of a long and painful process, or seem just the beginning of an even longer one. In most experiences, this particular cut is symbolic at best. While there is a relative temporal range within which ‘uncoupling’ at certain quantifiable levels is deemed ‘healthy’, the experience itself is much less cut and dried, and only normalised by cultural accounts and medical data. If you’ve ever openly discussed with a pregnant woman her option or reasons to terminate, or had to determine the extent to which a post-natal mother might harm her newborn, then you can appreciate the arbitrariness of this connection between mother and child, regardless of the state of the umbilical cord.
Infanticide is not just about the notion of responsibility - the way I see it, it stems from the struggle to cope with this whole tangled web of ‘uncoupling’ in the relational structure of what we perceive, think and feel, and can begin as far back as (awareness of) conception. We need to understand this space more, if we’re to help all women to navigate it confidently.
For a human being to manage the process of pregnancy entirely alone would likely mean death to both mother and child. I think it is how we connect to others, how our self-identity shifts between individual and collective, that supports this process of uncoupling.
I can relate to this experience throughout my two pregnancies: the notion of a part of your bodily system ‘expressing its individuality’ by responding in its own way to certain foods, bodily movements/positions or environmental factors (sounds, temperature, etc)...
I don’t think we live either in parallel or in series. It’s a far more complex relational structure than this.
But I do see the attraction of this simplicity as ‘individuals’ living in parallel, like billiard balls on a plane. We used to believe the atom was indivisible in this way, too. It’s only when you look closer at the process of splitting an atom that you recognise the ‘individual’ as a relational structure in itself - a system, an “interconnecting network” of potential: value, energy, information, etc.
A relation may not be a system, but its relative in/stability points to the potential or possible existence of a system structured to maintain it as such. I don’t really see this as ‘the general good’, but I will admit that I used to assume so. Nowadays, my view is that we continually critique, imagine, simulate, test, adjust and then ‘act as if’ it is.
It may seem that way, but mutual respect can only come about as a result of free interaction. Mutual respect enforced through state coercion is just a deception.
Quoting Echarmion
In a system where states are chosen as the guardians of individual rights, it would simply be a matter of what the state can coerce individuals into. More rights equals more coercion. From the perspective of individual rights it is self-defeating.
I like your way of considering things. Thanks for the insights.
Men too can certainly relate to a body part reacting to stimulus in a way that may not be inline with conscious will. The reaction nevertheless has a purpose and isn’t random or arbitrary.
:lol:
It’s not quite the same thing, though - the process is not one of awareness and assimilation, but of awareness, connection and collaboration with a newly forming identity. Men eventually need to accept that this body part and its reactions are your own - with pregnancy, you may reach that point... and then have to turn around and untangle it all again.
That seems contradictory to me. If the mutual respect is already a human tendency, then enforcing it wouldn't be "coercion". You can only coerce someone into doing something they would not otherwise do.
And if mutual respect is not already a given, what makes you think it'll appear?
Quoting Tzeentch
Then what even are "rights", according to you? Where do they come from, what's their purpose?
I’d say that the line between pre-birth and after-birth is arbitrary, and we touched on this earlier with Tzeentch‘s claim that ‘all people are born free’. Babies are utterly dependent and have yet to develop a self-identity. A newborn is more an extension of the mother than an independent being, in other words. At least that’s how I see it. Religious folk will see it differently of course.