I want to disagree with him and I want to agree with him in almost equal measure, I think that is ambivalence. My cynicism says that people like him, people who create psychologically dense pieces for the BBC, are actually on the side of conformity. I've felt since I was young that we are being sold our revolutions. They've firmly commoditized the opposition.

I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in this piece, there is an implicit call to political action underneath his attempted reframing of individualism. He wants us to see the power in being a member of a group. It is some kind of call to group-think, to pretend you are an individual and yet still act within a political body seeking power.

The real question I have is much deeper. Sapolsky has been on the podcast circuit pushing his new book that insists we have no free will whatsoever. Žižek claims that we are locked inside our ideologies. But I keep going back to ancient Greek philosophical ideas that entreat me to "know thyself".

I heard on a podcast recently that Sartre's lament that "hell is other people" is best interpreted as the observation that our instinct to mimic others invades our own freedom. When our peer group expresses strong virtues we are pressured to conform by threat of ostracization. This leads to anxiety as our own sense of virtue may be misaligned according to the group.

Yet I have a growing belief that finding my own virtue, something that completely originates within myself independent of external influence, is the real key. And Curtis here is suggesting that technology can be used to that purpose, to unite like-minded individuals based on their genuine virtues.

I suppose it is the power-seeking aspect of this piece that sits poorly with me. That I would (or should) seek other like-minded people for the purpose of exerting some political influence. It seems to me that just identifying and remaining true to virtues that I feel originate within myself is hard enough. To also consider the political consequences of grouping up with others and combining our resources to affect societal change is more than I want.

It reminds me of the conversation Jesus is said to have had with Pontius Pilate. He asks Jesus if he is trying to raise an army to overthrow the Roman order and Jesus responds that the Kingdom he is interested isn't of this Earth. There is something to that religious language which I think we've forgotten.