Understanding Individualism vs Collectivism

Making that post about individualism and capitalism yesterday, I got some questions, that showed me the same problem as the person I was talking about had: A lot of people do actually not know what individualism and collectivism mean. So, let me try to explain.

I had kinda hoped that Abigail from Philosophy Tube might have made a video on this, but no such luck. So, I guess I have to try and explain it, even though I mostly know it from sociology, rather from the philosophic origins where it comes from.

Basically, both concepts originate with socialist philosophy in the early 19th century, which correctly identified the early capitalist society as individualist and saw the dangers coming with it. It argued that an individualist society will be harmful on a societal level, because the society at large would always focus on the self, rather than the other. Capitalist philosophy however picked this up was like: “Yeah, awesome, right?” And especially in the 20th century they really started to run with it, realizing that they could use it to make people into better consumers.

Now, individualism does not mean “a sense of self”. This is not connected to it. You will still have a sense of self in a collectivist society and nobody says that you shouldn’t have. Rather it means that the focus of everyone should be on the individual. Both themselves – but also the individual actors in society. It is as such not a surprise that the idea of “Great Man Theory” came up and started to thrive during early capitalism in the 19th century.

So, if individualism does not mean “a sense of self”, what does it mean?

I would argue there are two aspects to it. Once the aforementioned tendency to put the individual above the society and apart from it, but also to create and sell a personal philosophy that people are defined by their differences from others, rather than what they have in common. It tells people that they are all so very different from everyone else, which is a useful political tool for capitalism to fight collective actions such as unions, but also collective action for things like environmental protection. In the same vein it is used to keep people riled up against one another within society, as they focus on their differences, rather than what they have in common.

The most anarchistic professor I had at university put it very well: “If you as a worker talk to a factory worker from Bangladesh, you will find you have a lot in common. In fact you will always have more in common with this other worker rather than any billionaire there is.”

Which brings me to the other aspect that individualism is about: It sells you an individualistic dream. Which is why capitalism focuses so much on those rags to riches stories (that tend to be lies most of the time). “See, this millionaire started out his business in daddy’s garage. So you can also become a billionaire if you have the right idea.” Fellow leftist might know the saying: “You are just one bad day away from homelessness, but you will never be a billionaire.” Which is basically the counter argument to this.

See, capitalism tries to convince you, that “I am the better system, because in me you could become a billionaire,” to sell you not only on your own exploitation, but the exploitation of the masses.

And more than that, capitalism also has realized that it can use individualism to make you a better consumer. I alluded to this a bit further up. But the long and short of it is, that capitalism pushes this idea of “you are, what you consume”. Your individuality is defined by the things you spent money on. Maybe by you having the most expensive things, but also by you having maybe the weirdest things or something. You know, the “not like the other girls” girl will probably spend as much, if not more on the things that make her special, as “the other girls”.

This also goes into the whole idea of greenwashing, pinkwashing and rainbow capitalism. All this is about getting you to consume something to gain some sort of individual aspect from it. Basically, through buying the “green” stuff, you are a better consumer.

Ironically this also goes into the entire anti-shipping discourse, which basically also says that your goodness as a person is defined by the things you consume.

Capitalism is selling you your identity. Your individual identity.

But sadly this is an idea very, very deeply engrained into the heads of most who have grown up in capitalism. Because it is everywhere in media. Sure, there is some media that calls it out, but most of it actually peddles the idea of the individual.

Because this is the second aspect at the core of individualism: The myths that only individuals can change something, rather than a collective. Which is what I call out so often when I am talking about the entire punk-genre stuff.

Even though it is less punk, let me take Star Wars as an example, because it is an amazing example of this. Especially the original trilogy, in which the Rebellion battles the Empire. However, the evil Empire is not defeated because the Rebellion manages to somehow outwit or outmaneuvre the Empire. Or because maybe the collective of the workers in the Empire turn against it. Rather it gets defeated because Luke, the individual, turns Darth Vater, an individual, and defeats the Emperor, the individual. Which goes back to this idea of the “great man”. It is those unique individuals who will save the world, rather than collective action.

This idea of some individuals being the ones to save the world, rather than we – the people – as a group and ourselves, is used to keep the people pacified under capitalism. They are waiting for “a good billionaire” to solve climate change, homelessness and all the other problems for us, rather than getting active themselves. They keep telling themselves: “Hey, under capitalism everyone can be a billionaire, including myself, and also my life isn’t that bad right now. So who cares that under socialism/communism everyone could be lifted up?”

Look, folks. I am saying this lovingly. But you are not as much of an individual as you think. You are your own person, but you are not unique. In fact, if you talk to a random person on the street – no matter who they are – and you and them are not instantly judging each other for one reason or another, you will find that you have a lot more in common than you think. Capitalist individualism just taught you to not see this, because your empathy can be its undoing.

2024 the year you fall deep deep deep in love with the world despite everything you've ever been through

i dont even have the capacity right now to make as robust of a post as i would like but i really think we all need to be aware of these updates regarding the stop cop city movement taking place in atlanta, georgia, united states of america. bold added for emphasis in the quotes below:

According to the state of Georgia, buying $11.91 worth of glue can land you on a RICO indictment, if the glue is used to protest the police. That’s exactly what it says in yesterday’s indictment against 61 people who have allegedly been protesting Atlanta’s potential Cop City. If you don’t know what Cop City is, it’s a plan to spend at least $90 million and destroy over 300 acres of forest to build a sprawling training center with a mock urban neighborhood to practice police tactics, specifically tactics of repression. Now, sweeping and overreaching charges claim that “militant anarchists” are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to stop this repression training center from being built. But, the indictment proceeds to lay out actions like handing out fliers, giving people food, and even running a bail fund to help arrested protesters as grounds for this case. The social media activity of people involved is referenced, simple acts of free speech are cited, and even ideas like solidarity and mutual aid are discussed as problems which somehow add to the necessity for this indictment.

...

U.S. police killed more people than ever last year and have not changed or reformed since the murder of George Floyd, and the people in Atlanta organizing against Cop City are very much aware of this. Yet instead of acknowledging the simple fact that cops should not kill, and that their power should not be endlessly expanded while they murder without consequence, the state of Georgia is instead choosing to grossly overreach. They’re instead trying to tie the movement to Stop Cop City to George Floyd and say that efforts to limit police violence are criminal rather than justified. Regardless of whether or not activists and organizers fighting the massive police repression training center were in the streets in 2020, they are informed by the knowledge that sparked the biggest protest movement this country has ever seen: police murder without consequence, and expanding police power, means more violence, more killing, and more repression of movements to improve society. We must be clear that anyone who opposes police murders and the expansion of the police state is fighting on the side of justice. The details listed in the RICO indictment, like small Venmo charges, an individual signing their name as ACAB, and people attending a concert show that the state is very much on the other side, the side of ruthless oppression. But maybe even more clarifying is the broad, sweeping condemnation of basic tenants of human goodness. The state lists, “mutual aid, collectivism, social solidarity” as tenants of anarchism that run rampant in the movement to stop Cop City. The charges condemn, word for word, “the notion of social solidarity,” which, “relies heavily on the idea of human altruism.” In a tale as old as time, the indictment of these activists and organizers, of these people, these residents of Atlanta, is more an indictment of the state than of the movement opposed to the state’s interests. The state is revealing itself to be the real villain.

...

The state has given the people of Atlanta, and everyone opposed to the eradication of democracy, no choice but to fight tooth and nail. They have gone for the nuclear option, and in doing so have exposed themselves. They have revealed the fascist underbelly they typically try to keep hidden. They have exposed that when people exercise every democratic avenue available, and are on the verge of success, they will resort to anti-democratic tactics to crush dissent. Beyond just this RICO case, the city of Atlanta is challenging the 100,000+ signatures gathered by grassroots organizers and volunteers working their asses off. Mayor Andre Dickens and his team are using the exact same regressive signature checking and discounting strategy he formerly opposed now that he wants to ram Cop City through against popular opinion and against the democratic process. Between the Mayor, the police, and the state, what choice do we have but to fight. When the government declares itself opposed to the very ideas of solidarity, mutual aid, and care for one another they seek to crush resistance. But instead they spark it. People everywhere are seeing the illegitimate nature of the institutions that kill, repress, and incarcerate anyone struggling for a better world. People everywhere see that institutions opposed to collectively looking out for each other, which seek to ban compassion and care with the threat of violence, have no legitimacy and must be opposed. They cannot be upheld or sustained. In a world where we need each other more than ever we can’t abide a repressive state that would rather police us into an early grave than grant us the resources we need to survive. And although it won’t be easy to overturn the system of capitalism and the violent police state that works to uphold it, we’ve been given no choice. We will Stop Cop City in Atlanta, and we will stop every attempt to build a Cop City anywhere. Officials in other Georgia counties, Baltimore, Ohio, and elsewhere are currently proposing their own Cop Cities, mimicking what they see in Georgia and attempting to build up their capacity to suppress dissent rather than building up their capacities to help people survive and thrive. We will out organize and out mobilize and out build the oppressive systems and institutions that seek to turn this country and the planet into one large police state. We have to. Be careful, but be determined. And get organized. Solidarity.

For over seven years, the fund—a nonprofit fiscally sponsored by the Network for Strong Communities—has provided legal defense and bail support for Atlanta. For aiding #StopCopCity protesters, the three fund organizers were arrested on charges of money laundering and charity fraud. Of what did this “fraud” consist? The warrants cited standard nonprofit reimbursements such as COVID tests and forest clean-ups in their rationale for the arrests. In the words of Kamau Franklin, an organizer with the Atlanta-based collective Community Movement Builders: “This is an arrest which is meant to, again, criminalize the movement, chill dissent, stop organizing, and stop activism from happening to stop ‘cop city’.” In so much as the work is radical, it will be under attack. Organizing that challenges capitalism, White supremacy, policing and prisons, and imperialism always carries risk. In the case of the bail fund, for example, what can movements do in the face of state repression? Potentially by shining a light on how mutual aid funding strategies are under siege, a clearer picture may emerge of ways to protect this valuable activity. Multiple people have noted that the Atlanta arrests represent yet another novel authoritarian and growingly fascist tactic to intimidate grassroots organizing and also draws on a long tradition of state repression against the Black freedom struggle. If successful, it could have far-reaching impacts on the swell of bail funds, abortion funds, transgender healthcare funds, and immigrant justice funds that have grown in recent years.

...

The Atlanta Solidarity Fund arrests did not occur in a vacuum. There is a long history of state repression against radical, grassroots power-building efforts—and those efforts continue today. Historian Say Burgin and political scientist Jeanne Theoharis aptly point out that across 1960 Southern sit-ins, 1961 Freedom Riders, and 1964 Freedom Summer, bail funds were a critical organizing effort for crystallizing and sustaining solidarity action. Where politically motivated captivity for civil rights activists loomed, bail funds responded. Mutual aid funding for these bail efforts were not just tactical, they were cultural. Mutual aid fundraising, in these contexts, gave everyday people a way to invest and engage in the very struggles they supported and needed. Mutual aid would provide yet another cultural outlet for radical, anti-repressive intent. This opportunity to mobilize people in radical efforts clarifies a threat to stakeholders in White supremacist institutions.

...

There are also increasing examples of state actors co-opting both the language and practices of mutual aid. In an interview with mutual aid organizer and writer Dean Spade, the Chicago Community Bail Fund highlighted examples of sheriffs welcoming the arrival of bail funds to support unaffordable bonds, city council-supported ordinances to protect bail funds “while continuing to take the money of Black and Brown community members paying bond for their loved ones,” and the city of New York’s own philanthropically backed bail fund created in 2017. As members of the Chicago Community Bail Fund reflected on New York’s system: “In effect, New York was funding the arrest, prosecution, and release of people caught in its criminal legal system instead of not arresting or prosecuting them in the first place.”

Comrade duck sharing his food with his fishy friends

third spaces and building community are so important

On Individualism and Collectivism

I saw a post promoting collectivism over individualism going around a while back, which inspired me to write a post about a philosophical issue I've been thinking about for a while. I was going to reblog a version of that post with some interesting commentary added, and add even more commentary to it, but it was getting incredibly long, so I thought it was best to make my own post, and just include a link -- here -- to the post with the relevant commentary, to which I will occasionally refer in the discussion below.

I got into a disagreement a few years ago with another academic philosopher about whether feminists must be individualists, in which I attempted (unsuccessfully, I'm afraid) to explain a distinction between what I have since started calling surface and fundamental individualism and collectivism:

Surface individualism or collectivism describes the emphasis of the cultural ethos that members of a society are taught.

Fundamental individualism or collectivism refers to where the fundamental locus of ethical value is taken to lie: the individual or the community.

Here's my overall thesis, fully explained and argued for under the "keep reading" link (which may be similar to what @reasonandempathy was trying to get at in the first reblog comment on the post linked above):

Surface collectivism is probably better than surface individualism because it promotes the well-being of more people; but fundamental individualism is necessary to justify the protection of individual rights to autonomy over one's life and body.

Neoliberal individualism is surface individualism. The culture emphasizes individual choice, individual action, makes individuals feel like they must always support themselves and rely on no one else, tells them that that is what constitutes real "freedom." This is the outlook that the other philosopher was (correctly) arguing is wrongly thought, by some white Western feminists, to be necessary to feminism; it is sometimes promoted by Western aid agencies that encourage women in the Global South to start their own businesses to achieve financial independence from (apparently) oppressive family and community structures. Surface collectivism would mean a culture that tells people to always think about their relationships with others, how they are embedded in a community, what they can accomplish by working with others. That sounds a lot better, especially to those of us who are well-acquainted with the pernicious, alienating consequences of surface individualism.

Fundamental collectivism says that only the collective matters in itself, or has intrinsic value, and any given individual has significance only a means to the survival and flourishing of the collective. It's ambiguous, but this seems to be the attitude being articulated in the tweet at the top of the linked post. And that is what @conservativemalarkey talks about in the third comment on that post as a justification for forcing anyone born with a uterus and ovaries to give birth: according to fundamental collectivism, that person's reproductive capacities are in the first instance a resource for the community to reproduce itself, and their individual preferences about what to do with their body do not matter. There is no individual right to bodily autonomy; there is only the duty to perpetuate the community. To put it in the terms that @nothorses brought up: the collective has rights but no obligations/duties to its individuals; individuals have obligations to the collective, but no rights that it is required to respect.

That's why I have come to believe (and was attempting to argue with the other philosopher) that fundamental (not surface) collectivism is incompatible with feminism: it provides no grounds to protect individuals' rights to bodily autonomy. That, of course, harms everyone; historically, communities have often forced men and boys to risk their lives going to war to defend the community, or to add to its wealth and territory. But it especially notably harms those who are assumed to have the capacity to gestate and bear children (gendered by cisnormative society as women and girls, giving rise to sexism and misogyny that affect anyone associated with that category), because that capacity is, so to speak, the "limiting reagent" for reproduction in the community: it is a scarce resource, far more limited in the lifespan, costly in time and energy, and dangerous to the life and health of the possessor than the capacity to fertilize. For that reason, patriarchal societies (incredibly widespread historically and geographically) effectively regard the reproductive capacities of potential child-bearers as community property, or as a commodity regulated by the community. A (presumed) woman*'s value, and the purpose of her life, consists in her ability to reproduce within the socially approved constraints; women's sexual activities are everyone's business; everyone feels entitled to comment on the bodies of women of reproductive age, especially when pregnant, and how they raise their children.

[[*Meant to encompass anyone perceived as a woman, which in most contexts, historically, also means being assumed to have childbearing capacities; includes AFAB people who do not identify as women as well as trans women who pass as cis. The general attitude also, of course, affects trans women who don't pass as cis but are understood to be communicating a self-identification as a woman.]]

Can a community be said to flourish if a large number of the individuals in it are miserable? Structurally, yes: it can successfully perpetuate itself, grow, become wealthy, while all its individuals dutifully sacrifice themselves to it. Ironically, for a society based so heavily on surface individualism, modern capitalism looks a lot like that: individuals are expected to sacrifice themselves for The Economy, which grows and maintains itself like an organism without regard for whether the vast majority of the individual 'cells' that make up its organs and tissues are satisfied with their lives. This is also true of patriarchal cultures in which at least half of the population is limited in the way they can live their lives, and are taught to see this as natural and inevitable.

Fundamental individualism, by contrast, says that the locus of value is the individual: what matters is the well-being of individual human (or sentient) beings, and communities are valuable only insofar as they contribute to the well-being of their individual members. Fundamental individualism is perfectly compatible with surface collectivism, and it is very probably true that most individuals will be happiest if they live in communities that emphasize their communal ties and encourage them to think of themselves as enmeshed in and dependent on a community. BUT fundamental individualism will say that this kind of culture is good because it is what is best for the greatest number of individuals.

According to fundamental individualism, the collective, qua collective, has no value independent of the individuals in it. Individuals have rights to autonomy and to have basic needs met which the community must respect. Do individuals have obligations to the collective? Yes, but only as a surface shorthand for their obligations to all the other individuals that make it up. Communities, cultures, collective forms of life have no intrinsic value, because they are not independently sentient: they cannot feel pain, pleasure, desire, or satisfaction. The loss of communities and cultures is terrible because of the harm that it causes to the individuals who lose their sense of connection, identity, and purpose. But if a way of life systematically fails to promote the well-being of a great many of its members, and/or systematically violates their rights in a way that cannot be remedied without ending that way of life, then it deserves to be ended. Again, most of us here have no trouble saying that about modern capitalist society, but it's equally true of any form of social organization.

Are people (outside of academic philosophy) generally familiar with Ursula K. Le Guin's story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"? Here's the text, available from libcom.org (short for "libertarian communism," apparently). Spoiler alert: episode 1.06 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach," is very obviously based on it. That is one of the starkest, most evocative illustrations of collectivism that is not balanced by consideration of the rights and well-being of individuals: one individual is forced to live in unending misery so that the rest of the community can be happy.

"But that's not real collectivism!" someone will protest. "Real collectivism means everyone takes care of each other! They would have compassion for every member of the community and never allow that to happen to one of them!" Well, it depends on what you mean by "real." Many forms of surface collectivism could mount an argument against that arrangement, on the grounds that a healthy community must care for all its members, even (or especially!) the humblest and most vulnerable. From the perspective of either surface or fundamental collectivism, it might be argued that permitting any member of the community to suffer in this way would damage the cohesion of the community by encouraging callousness regarding the suffering of (certain) other members.

But nothing about fundamental collectivism says that a community must care for all its individual members in order to flourish; on the contrary, it says that individuals do not matter for their own sake, but only for what they can contribute to the community. Fundamental collectivism can only offer an indirect, instrumental argument that allowing the Omelas situation would harm the community because of how it would affect the community ethos. In Le Guin's story, all members of the community do know about the condition of their society's thriving; that's how some of them decide that they should walk away. But in the SNW episode, most people do not understand what their happiness rests on; they can blissfully believe that the community does care for all its members, so fundamental collectivism could not find anything wrong with the arrangement.

Crucially, fundamental collectivism cannot capture the real reason most of us will think the Omelas situation is horrifying: that it violates the rights of an individual who does not choose to sacrifice their well-being for the sake of the community, but is forced to suffer so that the community can thrive. If you're thinking it would be OK if, and only if, the individual did choose to be the sacrifice for the community: that's something that might be promoted, even glorified, by surface collectivism, which would encourage people to see their individual happiness as less important than the well-being of the community. But fundamental collectivism could not account for the profound ethical difference between a chosen and a forced sacrifice: the importance of individual autonomy; the principle that no one should be able to make such a momentous choice about the course of an individual's life except that individual.

Mind you, this does not mean that a fundamentally individualistic ethics will necessarily rule the Omelas situation impermissible. There are some forms of fundamental individualism that could justify it -- notably, utilitarianism, which would say that the suffering of one individual, however appalling, is far outweighed by the perfect happiness of thousands or millions of other individuals. Fundamental individualism is not sufficient to rule it out; and you might not think it should be ruled out, considering the numbers involved. But fundamental individualism is necessary to even say what the problem is. The only objection that fundamental collectivism could offer doesn't even locate the problem in the terrible forced suffering of the individual, but in the way that knowing about it might affect the cohesion of the rest of the community.

So while I'm generally in favor of a surface-collectivist ethos, I'm convinced that any fundamentally collectivist ethical theory has profoundly immoral consequences. The ultimate locus of ethical value must be the individual. It's fine for a culture to encourage individuals to prioritize the community over themselves, but there is something genuinely wrong with the community forcing sacrifices on its members, and that can only be accounted for with reference to irreducible individual rights.

So Okay, Massive props to my boyfriend (<3) for pointing this out because I doubt I'd have this thought without him, but now that it's in my head I can't stop thinking about it.

So here is: Why You (The American/Western European Reading This) Don't Understand Griffith, and Maybe Never Will.

TL;DR, details under Cut (v long): Berserk is an allegory for the struggle between Collectivism vs Individualism, which to very Indicidualism-Centered Westerners makes the Collectivist Griffith very unsympathetic.

And obviously, spoilers ahead, as well as a TW for death, violence, and sexual violence.

To put it very directly: Griffith is a Collectivist (someone who is focused on the well-being of the collective above the well-being of one's self or other individuals), whereas Guts is an Individualist (someone who is focused on the well-being of one's self or other individuals above the well-being of the collective).

Griffith has individuals he cares for, wants by his side and wants to see succeed, but in his mind, nothing and no one is above the Collective. That collective is, initially, the Band of Hawks, and then his own Kingdom, and presumably eventually the whole world. Griffith's primary and sole desire is to improve the broken world he grew up in, and there is no one he won't sacrifice for that goal, because he thinks that by achieving it he will be making a safer and happier place for an immesurable amount of people. And by no one, I do mean no one - he puts his own health and well-being on the line as well, physically, mentally, or otherwise. Most notably, the time where he, still as a child, allows a grown man to sleep with him to win his favour. Griffith is not above the collective, he's not above putting himself at stake if it means a safer future for more people. He won't let himself /die/, but that isn't because he cares about his own life more, rather because he thinks he's the only one who can achieve that ideal future, and so his survival is linked to the survival of the collective.

And Guts eventually becomes aware of this. Whether consciously or not, he realizes that however much Griffith may care for him, he would also sacrifice him for the greater good if need be. Guts is not above the collective, and he so desperately wants to be. He wants to be someone who will stand out to Griffith, who will be more important to him than anyone else (and it makes sense - Griffith is the first person that ever actually treated him as an individual, and the knowledge that he's still beneath the collective must be painful), and he thinks that the way to achieve it is to pursue his own individuality. That if he chases his individual growth, he will eventually become bigger than the collective.

Thing is, you can't pursue individual growth in a collective. You can't focus on yourself and the collective at the same time. That's why he wants to leave, and that's why Griffith can't let him - however hard Guts may try, you can't become a big enough person to outweigh the collective. Doing that is tantamount to destroying the collective, and Griffith can't let that happen. He can't let Guts become so big that he'll destroy everything he works so hard for, and so however much he cares about Guts becomes irrelevant. By just trying to become bigger than the collective he is threatening the collective, and so he must be killed.

(Note here that this scene has multiple meanings and this is only one of them. The other and much more obvious meaning is that he is outright in love with Guts, and can't bare to watch him leave. This analysis is NOT trying to argue against this, I am a staunch believer that any non-romantic reading of Berserk is outright factually incorrect. Do NOT use this to justify your weird homophobic erasure).

Here's where the Western part comes in: A lot of western countries, and particularly the U.S., are extremely radically individualist. For a lot of Americans, though of course not for every individual (ha) one, the idea of having to sacrifice yourself (whether literally or metaphorically, in a "Give Up On Your Dreams" sense) is absolutely unacceptable. And so seeing this character who will destroy anyone for the sake of the collective is immediately perceived as a threat to their very way of thinking.

Japan, meanwhile, is extremely radically collectivist. To a detrimental degree. Individuals sacrifice their dreams and health and mental well-being for the sake of making the country thrive. This is why this conflict is so important in the manga.

It shows collectivism at its natural extreme - but it doesn't villanize it. Everywhere that Griffith ends up ruling thrives. People love Griffith, they worship him, they consider him a saviour. Collectivism works, it does make the world better for the whole, objectively this is true even with the individuals left behind. But this doesn't erase the crimes committed, the lives ruined or lost. It doesn't absolve anything - it looks pretty and peaceful on the surface, it's happy and kind as long as you're not in the way of it, and as soon as you are it crushes you underfoot.

Individualism, on the other hand, it portrays as free and brave - but also selfish, lonely. Guts is an asshole to most people he comes across, he's extremely self-serving, and even when he cares about people he's very selective about them. He has to be, he has to draw that distance, because ultimately he HAS to focus on himself first. That's what makes him "greater" than the collective he wants to dismantle. And isn't that evil, too? Sure, it's revenge for what's been done to him and his loved ones, but in exacting it he'll be burning down a peaceful utopia, one which was built on the corpses of the ones he cared for.

There is no easy answer.

Guts is not a hero. He's a selfish loner, one who is free and cares fiercely for those he loves. He's the protagonist, because Japanese people need to see that individualism is an option.

Griffith is not a villain. He's a peacekeeper, a visionary, one who masks and justifies his horrible crimes and cares fiercely for everyone in the world, but never quite enough. He's the antagonist, because Japanese people need to see that collectivism can be taken far too far.

So this idea that Guts = Good and Griffith = Evil is just far, far too narrow a worldview, one affected by very western ideas of morality and justice, and one that, for a work as complex and beautiful and interesting as Berserk is just quite frankly not nuanced enough.

a note about dreams of fame

one of the things i've noticed about my previous dreams of becoming famous is that they're less about being famous and more about feeling like i have community.

i don't want people having accounts revolved around loving or hating me. i don't want to be recognized by everyone wherever i go. i don't want press interviews, paparazzi, stan accounts. i don't want parasocial relationships and for the world to know my every move.

i want to have people in my life that appreciate that i'm there and sometimes tell me as much. i want to be recognized by a couple people when i go places sometimes, and i recognize them too and we have a nice chat. i want to have conversations about my experiences and what they mean to me, and i want people to tell me their experiences and what they mean to them. i want friends, acquaintances, mutuals—people who care about me and i care about them.

i think it says something that i used to think the most realistic way to achieve a feeling of belonging was to become famous. i hardly considered that there was a life outside of gated housing, individualistic career culture and isolated commutes—to the point where i thought it was more likely to win the career lottery than it was to live in a connected community. and i think that's a tragedy.

and another thing i've noticed. ever since i realized this, my perspective on other people has shifted as well. i find myself empathizing with others more, being less self serving and instead wondering how i can serve the community so everyone's lives improve. i find myself worrying less about how i'm gonna do x or y because i know there are people who will help me just like i will help them. i find myself meeting people and thinking to myself, "man, i really want to be their friend."

with this, i care much less about my 'goal in life', being 'the best', or 'succeeding in life'. because life is no longer the static route that i take in order to reach the finish line. life is the world around me. it's here, it's been here, and it will always be here. life is not a competition to see who's the 'best', it's a journey where we all contribute in our own different ways to improve the world for everyone.

after 19 years of living, i think i'm starting to truly understand the meaning of collectivism.

Individualism is a product capitalism sells you

Let me talk about something that is in my mind recently, because someone I know kept harping on about how much better individualistic philosophies were compared to collectivist societies. Which... scientifically is just not true. Which they would just not accept. I could show them studies on this and... they would just not accept it. Instead they kept harping on about how much of an individual they were. Which got me to just sit there and roll my eyes very much.

Because here is the thing: Individualism is a product that capitalism sells to you.

People under capitalism will always go: "I am a total individual!" And... like, they are not. Sure, we all have our individual experiences that formed how we think and how we go about it. But most of what people consider their individualism is... Just stuff that gets sold to you.

Be it your style of clothing, be it your interests and fandoms, be it your music, your make-up, or whatever. Most of it is just something that got directly or indirectly sold to you.

This entire "I am such an individual!" stuff is just basically a "I am not like the other girls" thing on a societal level. It is bullshit.

i am going to give the main piece of advice i have gleaned from myalmost 23 years on this earth and my time learning from incredible organizers, which i said to a friend as she discovered community for the first time in person

Let your love, your connection with community, your care, your passion radicalize you. This world can be cold and cruel, it's true. But we cannot cave to the whims of imperialism, to the whims of colonial violence, to the whims of capitalist oppression and individualism, to the whims of individualism constantly sewing divide as a result of these forces. (This outlook was taught to me through learning from Riot Diaz @juicyparsons, Reaux @reaux07 and Walela Nehanda [@itswalela] in the time I've known and interacted with their content and work online). These forces will us to become cold, uncaring, brutal, uncaring in the face of strife, suffering and violence. They make us go numb and they rely on such. (paraphasing Stefanie Kaufman-Mthimkhulu's posts on the way this is specifically weaponized in the genocide of Palestinians, Oct. 2023) You need to resist this. The boldest act we can have in this world is to love deeply, to feel deeply. we need to learn to connect with this world in a tangiable way to combat the disconnect we've become accustomed to. By connecting with each other, by loving each other in a way where we ACTUALLY support each other, share, collaborate, co-conspire). By learning to love radically again we can build such passion and compassion for the world that we cannot be blind to the suffering of each other. We need to do this urgently. The whole of humanity depends on it (All of the last passage was shaped by a mosaic of wisdom from all above mentioned organizers, along with Lacey Weekes of Idle No More London ON, Layla Staats, an Indigenous land defender who was on the front lines in Wet'suwet'en, Skyler Williams of 1492 Land Back Lane, Emunah Wolfe of @safeusesketches on instagram, Bangishimo Johnston of O:se Kenhionhata:ie, Andrewism on Youtube, and Noname, as well as my friend Ash and one of my students.

For those who are loveless or lack empathy, do not feel guilty. Care is just as powerful as love. Build care in your communities. Build connection. You are not broken and you can be radical too. Community is so deeply important to all of us, inclusing loveless people. Let yourself be embraced, encaptured in a web of people with experience both shared and vastly different. Listen to their every word. Let their kindness and words, and your joy in community radicalize you too.

A really good article from Andre Henry, a talented and thoughtful writer. Some highlights:

"But at the heart of this way of campaigning is a deeply problematic assumption: The notion that, if the worst-case scenario were to play out and Trump became president-for-life, America’s story ends there. "It displays a poverty of imagination and a sense of denial about America’s history, an ignorance about Americans’ collective power. That fatalism is a much bigger problem than another Trump presidency. Trump is a symptom of a larger problem that precedes him, eclipses him and will outlive him..."

"Put another way, our oppression depends on historical amnesia. The opponents of progress want us to remain ignorant of the depths of our nation’s atrocities and the genius of resistance movements in American history. But if we don’t understand that we’ve already fought some previous iteration of today’s boogeymen — fascism, Christian nationalism or something else — we’ll feel powerless to stop them or else reinvent the wheel trying to do so..."

"...when the world got up in arms about Nazism, Black Americans were able to say it was nothing new to them. 'We Negroes in America do not have to be told what fascism is in action,' Langston Hughes told the Second International Writers Congress in Paris in 1937. 'We know.''"

"The Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, a mentor to the anticolonialist activist and writer Frantz Fanon, argued that fascism was nothing more than Europe applying 'colonialist procedure which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.'"

"...I want to remind us that the terrors that seem to loom ahead have been fought here before. Every Black liberation struggle on American soil has been an antifascist struggle, a struggle against Christian nationalism, a struggle against tyranny."

"Democracy has never been secured as simply as casting a ballot. We have always had to contend for it in the streets, and perhaps now it’s our turn. This is not a case against voting, even for what we keep calling the lesser of two evils. It’s a call to remember our past and our power, so we can break this abusive cycle. We need to dream bigger dreams than simply avoiding dictatorship. We need to fight for the promise of democracy."

Collectivism versus Individualism

@gsirvitor @philosophicalconservatism @lockedkey

Could you provide your own thoughts to help me sort out these concepts?

Axiom A: American Conservatives tend to be individualists, whereas Progressives tend to be collectivists. Both in terms of personal versus collective responsibility, and in terms of independence versus codependence. [Some on either side of the divide define 'individualism' and 'self-reliance' to the point of 'living as a hermit', but I think most individualists do not interpret it so.]

Axiom B: Yet American Conservatives tend to believe in the value of family, particularly nuclear family, blood ties, and marriage. Whereas Progressives tend to abandon their families for any ideological disagreement, prefer self-selected friend groups ("found family") over biological kin (and will disown them just as quickly), and put much less stock in getting married or having children.

Axiom C: Progressives / collectivists accuse American conservatives / individualists of promoting the atomization of society, whereby communities break apart into completely disconnected individuals who only look out for their own self-interests.

Axiom D: Yet a society where everyone depends more on government welfare than on their family, and more on social security (paid for by total strangers) than their own children for retirement, and in fact where no one gets married and children are artificially bred and owned by the state... is not only the most atomized that humanity could be, it more closely resembles the society that progressives want than the one conservatives want.

Thesis Question: Why would collectivists simultaneously decry and yet advocate for a fully-atomized society, while individualists would seek to promote and preserve interconnected families and communities?

Hypothesis A: Collectivism dismisses each individual as a fungible, identical, completely-interchangeable member of a larger group. A single grain of sand on the beach. To atomize society is to realize collectivism, therefore collectivists promote that outcome in practice even as they want to believe they act against it.

Hypothesis B: American conservatism sees each individual as unique, non-fungible, irreplaceable. A distinct organ within a living creature, where an eyeball and a kidney cannot be switched without consequence. To see other individuals as sacred is to build families and communities.

“Consumers are now expected to address a wide variety of social issues through their individual consumption choices (e.g., global warming, income inequality) whereas in the past these issues would have been addressed structurally by governments, as part of a broader movement of individualization.”