so i decided i hate the idea of ultimate freedom/individualism. not in the sense that people should be forced to act certain ways but i think its a contradiction to believe that a society should strive for freedom yet still set social and legal standards for everyone to follow. clearly we struggle with this problem in our every day life but i dont understand why our ideology needs to contradict our innate need for socialization.
do we struggle for the good of the community or the good of ourselves? to quote my favorite author
“Human beings have always been supported and comforted and disciplined and amused by stable lattices of many relatives and friends until the Great American Experiment, which is an experiment not only with liberty but with rootlessness, mobility, and impossibly tough-minded lonliness.”
- vonnegut
its a fundamental philosphy that seperates western greek originated socialization with eastern confucius originated socialization. im not quite sure which side understands this development thing better.
Or you could take the anarcho communist position that real individual freedom can only be won through socialisation, mutual aid and voluntary cooperation. You “realise” yourself through interaction with others. Always bearing in mind:
“my right to swing a frying pan ends were your nose begins”
Actually I don’t even think you’d have to be a fully fledged anarcho communist to go along with that…
You lose individualism when you find apathy in your mind and commercial jingles stick to your mind like glue. You must fight that diobolical entrapment. The advertisers work for the CIA and control what we hear and see. The secret messages are filtered through brand name products and their commercials. Even radio and reading media are in on it. Its terrible everywhere you turn they are sucking your individualism and freedoms away by getting you used to being told what to buy, where to go, what to do.
Mindless purchasing robots is what they want and in another generation they will succeed. How do I know? They encrypted a secret message on a Cheerios box that my cat translated for me by putting a wet hair ball on it. I saw through the shadows on the box highlighted letters and the moistened letters confirmed the message. We have one generation to fight back. Workers unite! Fight back against the apathy and jingles! Run!
Yes but, what if she really is wanting you to stick it to her or making you think she wants you to stick it to her, then are you really sticking it to her or is she sticking it to you? And what the hell Would you be sticking to her or him anyway? Is it like counting coup?
On the contrary, individualism is the greatest means of oppression ever invented by the ruling classes. Keep the masses divided and they are easy to conquer. Individualism keeps them divided, for obvious reasons. Look at the death of trade unions and the international labour movement…
Hive mentality gives me the hives. Herd mentality means I can’t be heard, pack mentality sends me packing. Gaggles make me gag, flocks are just flocked up.
Individually I won’t get trampled in a stampede. I have always hated crowds they give me the heebie jeebies. It just feels too much like a round up.
I think there’s a sort of “in duh vidual ism” (after Scott Adams!) offered by capitalism via consuming certain products, skipping queues for health, owning a big fat SUV etc…
Even at that only a very tiny minority have any deep or real control over how their lives or society is run.
To my mind this narrow “freedom†offered by the system has nothing to do with truly being yourself and capturing stuff, making it your property in Stirner’s (after Hegel?) sense.
Meantime if trade unions returned to being voluntary cooperative organisations created by workers for workers instead of protectionist guilds run by semi criminal and unelected “officials” (certainly the case here in Ireland)
I think “the left” has handed the territory of individual liberty to the right.
A free being would be able to choose what it wanted, and what it was.
It choose where it lived and when it died.
No-one on earth is free.
All ideals of “freedom” are actually just emotions supporting the goodness of variety.
Once humans can alter & rebuild their DNA entirely, then they will be close to real freedom. The ones calling for equality would absolutely detest this idea. Why? “Freedom” is a form of self-determination, which becomes anarchy when applied to a large sum of individuals. Conformity exists because of a fear of that anarchy returning & destroying civilization entirely.
