Article against individualism

[Matt Collins]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/21/individualism-virtue-public-discourse

[BillyDkid]

Voluntary associations are fine. Coercive collectivism is not. He clearly does not understand what individualism is.

[InterestedParticipant]

And here's the lovely author of this series on "Citizen Ethics"... whatever that is....


http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/01/21/rwt.jpg

Here's a link to the full series of Soviet style sensitivity training on how to be a model citizen for the new globalist system.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/citizen-ethics

[mczerone]

This is closely connected with understanding and sympathy for others. If you live in a world where everything encourages you to struggle for your own individual interest and success, you are encouraged to ignore the reality of other points of view – ultimately, to ignore the cost, or the pain of others. The result may be a world where people are articulate about their own feelings and pretty illiterate about those of others. An economic climate based on nothing but calculations of self-interest, fed by a distorted version of Darwinism, doesn't build a habitat for human beings; at best it builds a sort of fortified box room for paranoiacs.

This is the crux of his viewpoint, and it's faulty. First, we all do live in a world where we must, as individual actors, constantly struggle for our individual interests, and many times the best thing for the individual is to work with a group. That doesn't mean this is always true, it just means that you'll get the same returns as the group with which you've aligned.

Second, in a market there are prices that correspond to the needs, wants, desires, and values of others. This is the only way we can really know how other people feel: through their voluntary actions. Talk is cheap, and forced actions often leave the victims with no option but tacit compliance and secret desires.

This fortified room is indeed real, and it's inhabited by all the actual and would-be "societal planners" that think that they can honestly understand other people's complete mindset and, if only they were given complete dictatorial control, the world would be perfect. Give up trying to change others and live as a free man, and you'll be happy and ready to welcome interaction with all others, of any race, creed, or political viewpoints.

Elsewhere he mentions focusing on "people centered economics". I wonder if he's bothered to read "Human Action".