Collectivist
Individualism
Elsewhere on this blog I have
called into question the existence of money. I call this philosophy ‘aplutism’;
it calls money an illusion. Any money system’s reality is at best social; money’s
value is determined by a market, which is by definition transpersonal.
Therefore there is no such thing as “my” money system; it is by definition “ours”.
Therefore money is collectivist! It
has to be, otherwise it wouldn’t be fungible. The same goes for language. Words
have to have shared meanings, or they have no meanings at all. Or take Reason; there
is certainly no such thing as “my” rationality, distinct from “ours”. If anyone
has Reason, then Reason is the common property of all mankind.
(Once Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes,
was told to answer a test question “in your own
words”. A loophole! So he answered in gibberish.)
A curious political paradox
emerges. Money, speech and Reason are the gods of libertarian individualism,
but they’re also as collectivist as the fire department! Money, speech, reason
and much else (for instance the Rule of Law) is collective by nature. We all
have rule of law or none of us do. In such a situation the only rational policy
is to build government relating to such things on collective principles.
The money that you make is yours;
but it is denominated in terms that are ours. Your speech is free, you may say
whatever you like, but you’d better use
English, and not some private language of your own, if you wish to be
understood. You have your individual rights under the law; but the law is a
creature of the State. And so on.
The individual and the collective
are interdependent; they only make sense in terms of each other. Yin and Yang.
The paradox works in the other
direction as well. Every collectivist movement ends up being run by a powerful
individual, usually an alpha male. The army needs a general, the church needs a
priest, the commune needs a manager.
The human dilemma remains; we are
individual but social. Monty Python phrased the paradox in this passage from
their “Life of Brian”:
Brian to crowd: “I mean, you’re all
individuals!”
Crowd: “YES, WE’RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!”
Lone man in crowd: “I’m not!”
Signed,
the illusion of
the individual Nathaniel
No comments:
Post a Comment