Just talking about myself here. The individualist lens, as it were. I worry about collectivist thinking because I don’t like the idea of outliers being trimmed out of the plans. Largely because I’m an outlier.

I’ve read history of what happens when class consciousness is the primary method of thinking. I don’t think I would have done well in the Soviet Union, because I have a powerful compulsion to tell the truth, and people who told the truth there got disappeared.

I had an Uber passenger yesterday who got fucked out of her organization because she told the truth, and the story sounded like something straight out of We The Living.

Consider this: collectivism views the primary moral unit as the class. The class is the body. The class has consciousness.

Well, if you see things that way, then removing a person whose presence doesn’t enhance the class success is no worse than trimming off a fingernail or removing a tumor.

I’m an individualist because I fundamentally believe people are not replaceable, not fungible, and that they should merge their consciousness with others only with the understanding that this erases their individual consciousness.

Sorry to rant. I appreciate the support, but it kinda comes across as recruitment. People find meaning in the military, which is the epitome of collectivist effort. A centrally-controlled structure where nobody owns anything, people go through intense brainwashing to remove their sense of individuality, and typical operations involve determining a person’s capacity to extract as much as possible, and then providing that person according to their need.

And what is the product of this way of organizing humans? Why it’s death, destruction, and generational trauma of course. What else could it be?

Really appreciate it, brother. I know people struggle, for all sorts of reasons. Just please don’t use the word class to entice me. I’m an individual, not an instantiation.