Collective Individuality

                Collective Individuality

 

             I call into question the existence of money. I call this philosophy ‘aplutism’; it calls money a fiction. 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 the comic strip 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 is that we are individual yet social. Monty Python parodied the paradox in this scene 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!”

 

            Rudyard Kipling celebrated the paradox with:

            The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

 

             Signed,

            the illusion of the individual Nathaniel