Amerika

Collectivism gained a bad name for itself because it is a form of egalitarianism, which means working against nature to make everyone “equal,” which inevitably translates to taking (time, money, energy, status, focus) from the thriving and giving it to the flailing and failing.

That creates a self-consuming system that sacrifices its best hopes for its worst fears and as a result, makes more of what it fears. It should surprise no one versed in the patterns of reality that Communism and Jacobinism resulted in greater poverty and oppression than what came before them!

Humans, if not otherwise redirected, tend toward self-destructive behaviors like gambling, overeating, promiscuity, alcoholism, and individualism. All of these have a common root: asserting what the self desires over what reality indicates is more likely to lead to thriving.

Individualism forms a me-first above all else viewpoint which is a form of antirealism that reflects the unconsciousness of human “big brains” to our surrounding world.

We replace that realism with a pretense of goodness from which we rationalize that our desires are also good, but this means-over-ends thinking is an anti-goal which leads to a fearful herd conformity around the idea of equality which is the opposite of quality.

It originates in the quasi-religious dominance of symbolism that makes us feel in control of our world, encouraging hubris expressed through a socially-acceptable and crowd-rewarded philosophy of egalitarianism which in turn leads to xenophilia.

This throws civilization into a struggle between demotism — popularity, consumerism, democracy, peer pressure — and demetism or allegiance to nature, culture, and tribe.

Individualists span all political parties, institutions, and social groups which means the philosophy of crowdism it creates manufactures a uniparty which promotes collectivism or subsidies through collectivized individualism enforced as a bourgeois social value through groupthink which creates a dark organization within society.

In order to enforce the conjectural idea of individualism, individualists implement control systems that lead to civilization collapse because me-first is fundamentally anti-civilization as well as anti-nature, eventually peaking in a total control structure like globalism.

A biologist might view individualism and crowdism as a flocking or herding behavior that achieves perceived legitimacy through the appearance of consensus when in fact crowdism hides a codependent conformity which forms a false unity around the socially acceptable form of anarchy that peer pressure makes perennially popular.

Some argue that individualism is merely a response to overpopulation, since this makes competition between individuals paramount, and atomization follows as the group becomes dedicated to rationalization of its desires as positive for the group when in fact they serve the individual.

Psychologically, individualism represents a form of fatalism which has its roots in self-pity which is why the third world adopts individualism and the warlord political machines it creates: socializing enforces mutual individualism and creates oppressors to enforce it, even affecting parenting.

At its philosophical core, individualism represents a fear of mental change and a tyranny of the behavior of the majority, although it justifies itself with Leftism which creates ideological zombies who are opposed to realism, nature, culture, biology, genetics, and Darwinism in any form.

On one of the forerunners of this site, individualism was described as a social virus overwhelming the few who notice reality before the more vivid signals of their own desires, judgments, feelings, and moralization:

The individual, destabilized, demands that itself come before all else. For this reason it demands an order that supports the cult of the individual; a crowd of uniques, a mob of iconoclasts, an army of freestylers. We refer to “individualism” as the philosophy which (a) puts the individual above all else and (b) interprets all else through its impact on an individual considered alone and isolated from all other factors.

Others have identified it as self-expression against reality by people feeling the pain of mortality and insignificance, leading to individualistic valuation of the individual before tradition, nature, and reality itself:

Individualism is a social theory or ideology which assigns a higher moral value to the individual than to the community or society, and which consequently advocates leaving individuals free to act as they think most conducive to their self-interest.

This means that the “ism” in “individualism” reflects a central belief: the individual above all else, which requires ignoring consequences beyond the individual such as to nature, culture, or civilization:

Individualism endorses the principle that the ends or purposes of the human individual possess dignity and worth that take precedence over communal, metaphysical, cosmological, or religious priorities.

In politics and religion, individualism forms a parallel emphasis on the “moral worth of the individual” as more important than the needs of society, honor, principle, or even simple realistic function:

Individualism, political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.

Following the upheaval of the French Revolution, individualisme was used pejoratively in France to signify the sources of social dissolution and anarchy and the elevation of individual interests above those of the collective. The term’s negative connotation was employed by French reactionaries, nationalists, conservatives, liberals, and socialists alike, despite their different views of a feasible and desirable social order.

In Germany, the ideas of individual uniqueness (Einzigkeit) and self-realization—in sum, the Romantic notion of individuality—contributed to the cult of individual genius and were later transformed into an organic theory of national community. According to this view, state and society are not artificial constructs erected on the basis of a social contract but instead unique and self-sufficient cultural wholes.

Others see it as a loosening of social connections so that the individual has fewer obligations to anything but themselves:

Individualism (IDV) focuses on the degree the society reinforces individual or collective achievement and interpersonal relationships. A High Individualism ranking indicates that individuality and individual rights are paramount within the society. Individuals in these societies may tend to form a larger number of looser relationships.

Years ago, we called individualism “egoism” to reflect its pathological nature:

We can see some of egoism’s many traces in what the West seems to value through its literature, films, art and politics. First is pity, or the ability to feel better about oneself for seeing another as downtrodden and through condescension and compassion, “helping” or at least empathizing with them. Second is egalitarianism, or the science of making us all equal; those who preach it the most do so to liberate themselves from outside criticism so they can make a bundle (“some are more equal than others,” he said, counting his cash). Third is altruism, or justifying one’s behavior as better for others, and thus feeling good about oneself because one exists to help others, although most commonly…it is used as a shield for one’s own enrichment.

All of these are symptoms, but the crowning and identifying factor is individualism: the human personality is seen as an island, and expected to act only in its interests regardless of the impact on its surroundings (self-interest is a paradox: in order to fully enjoy it, you have to make sure you don’t destroy that which sustains you, e.g. environment and society). Individualism in perverse ways justifies the above symptoms because those who believe it will justify pity, egalitarianism and altruism by claiming those make them feel better, and therefore they have the “right” to pursue them. Very little in life corresponds to its surface definition, and here we have two excellent examples: altruism justifying individualism, and individualism justifying an altruism which serves the altruistic individual more than those “helped.”

Others see individualism as an expression of the rising middle class and its bourgeois cosmopolitan values, specifically its need to suppress hierarchy outside that of wealth earned through middle class professions:

Along with the Enlightenment’s intellectual demand for liberty, the growth of commerce created a middle class of merchants, prosperous farmers and urban craftsmen who believed in private property and unhindered individual wealth accumulation. So individualism was a partnership of ideas and business such as contemporary universities dream of. But underlying both factors in this revolutionary development was Christianity’s even more revolutionary idea – a shocking novelty in the classical world – that all human beings are of equal value.

This comports with the idea of individualism as a moral — and soon economic, political, legal, and social — emancipation of the individual from obligations except to its own desires:

According to MacPherson, individualism refers to “a social theory or ideology assigning a higher moral value to the individual than to the community or society. It consequently advocates leaving individuals free to act as they think most conducive to their self-interest” (Mac Pherson 1989, p. 149).

As Britannica elaborates, individualism has a Left-wing dimension (subsidies) and a Right-wing dimension (libertarianism):

In the United States, individualism became part of the core American ideology by the 19th century, incorporating the influences of New England Puritanism, Jeffersonianism, and the philosophy of natural rights. American individualism was universalist and idealist but acquired a harsher edge as it became infused with elements of social Darwinism (i.e., the survival of the fittest). “Rugged individualism” — extolled by Herbert Hoover during his presidential campaign in 1928 — was associated with traditional American values such as personal freedom, capitalism, and limited government.

Philosophers use methodological individualism to describe how people make decisions in the absence of cultural and genetic influences:

In Economy and Society, Weber articulates the central precept of methodological individualism in the following way: When discussing social phenomena, we often talk about various “social collectivities, such as states, associations, business corporations, foundations, as if they were individual persons”(Weber 1922, 13). We talk about them having plans, performing actions, suffering losses, and so forth. The doctrine of methodological individualism does not take issue with these ordinary ways of speaking, it merely stipulates that “in sociological work these collectivities must be treated as solely the resultants and modes of organization of the particular acts of individual persons, since these alone can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action” (Weber 1922, 13).

We navigate now between rugged individualism, collective individualism, and the only remaining option, realism and transcendence mobilized for order through realist conservatism which emphasizes parallelism between individual, civilization, nature, genetics, and the divine.

Tags: egalitarianism, hubris, individualism, methodological individualism