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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I personally see collectivism as a vestigial trait some people are left with from a time when it actually mattered for survival. Studies have even shown it to be a largely genetic trait. When we lived in small tribes, the fate of the collective directly affected my ability to reproduce. Today, it makes very little difference, and is largely illogical.

Call me a nihilist, but I don’t particularly care about people I don’t personally know. I honestly think it’s unhealthy to do so, particularly in the age of mass media. If you’re worried about 7 billion people you will never find happiness.

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Why not embrace both individualism and collectivism?

Entrepreneurship and the military completely embodies this. We allow the individual to prosper and the collective pays to be protect us and our right to individually prosper.

Arguing which one is better seems like arguing if the hammer or the screwdriver is bet. Why not treat individualism and collectivism as tools?

Agreed. Eventually the dispute comes to a head around issues like taxation. The argument is usually framed as such:

"If one individual does not have the authority to take another's property, where does a group of individuals collectively source the authority to violently expropriate wealth from another individual?"

There are various approaches to this. Some suggest that while the above is immoral, it is an inevitable function of political sausage making. Absolutists demand that it is entirely unacceptable in any amount and others propose that it should be tolerated, but minimized where possible. On the other end of the spectrum there are those who propose that the sum is greater than the whole.

It is a tired discussion which has been hashed out in-depth elsewhere.

To "own" anything, everyone else needs to acknowledge your ownership ... get too greedy and the majority may suspend their granting of that acknowledged ownership ... just for you, everyone else continues along as before.

Aggressors can almost always find a way to rationalize their violence. When they are in the majority, they can self-congratulate, claim that they were only following orders or social norms. Defending one's self requires no such mental gymnastics.

No matter how you slice it, violence is an inescapable part of the human condition. People debate the non-aggression principle in depth and try to reach idealistic conclusions. Principles are important, but human affairs rarely neatly fit with these ideals.

Take that stance too far and you get spree killers. Or, as they always seem to argue, "oppressed individuals defending their rights against a social majority by any means".

For me that is the problem with the original quote at the top of this thread and much of the article.

> The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone.

If you start with a political bias and simply argue towards your predetermined goal, you become nothing more than an ideologue. From that point it is easy to make sweeping generalizations about perceived enemies. That brand of collectivism isn't compassionate or community forming. Similarly, individualism taken to an extreme can be dehumanizing as in your example.

Partisan pundits will rarely concede that they don't have all of the answers. Humility and generosity is key.

I agree with you. I don't think there is a silver bullet - individual or collective.

> Humility and generosity is key

bingo

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