Individualism and Collectivism

In UNLV, I am a Psychology major and a Philosophy minor (undeclared). I have been spending a lot of time trying to prove, in a philosophical manner, a central tenet of individualism. If you read my previous posts I have made, my obvious bias toward individualism can be seen. When I was little, I thought that it was an undeniable fact that I was right, and that if logic were followed, everything I believed in would be proven. I now know this was naive and ignorant of me. This is because I had accepted, as an absolute, an axiom that I now seek to prove should be accepted by everyone. I said I would focus more on theory now that news is calming down, or to be more precise, is becoming more repetitive. (You can only do so many “Obama's taking away our rights, or violating our constitution” posts in a row) I shall focus on two axioms that most people seem to take for granted as being correct. I shall try to make this sound as non-philosophical as possible because, well, most people hate philosophy for that reason. So I will tone down the language so as to not bore the crap out of my > .01 reader per day. If someone happens to come across this and mistake it for an intelligent conversation, then feel free to post objections to me or my argument.

A crap load of people call themselves individualists or claim at some point that individual rights are important. This is probably the reason I began to believe my axiom was absolute. Alas, natural law theories like that are easily destroyed. I realized this when I was talking to a guy on campus at UNLV. He was an Obama stumper and naturally we got into a heated argument. Eventually I tried to get him to tell me what premise is his argument must be based of off for what he was telling me to be acceptable. Naturally the reaction I got was the question repeated back at me to which I gave the often used reply, “I believe that individual liberty and responsibility are the most sacred things in this world.” I was rebuffed with the reply “but how could we build a society?” Though memory may not serve me well enough for that to be an exact quote, his reply allows me to begin describing what believe, what I think everyone believes or should believe if they are conservatives or libertarians, and what I have begun to learn about the opposing ideology of the man I had that argument with.

Consider what I was saying first of all. Essentially I was explaining that I believed in liberty; which, in this case, is defined as freedom to choose. This is a central tenet of a philosophy called individualism. This is primarily a political philosophy, but I am trying to extend this to ethical debates as well. On the political side, this states that the smallest unit that possess its own rights and therefore must be respected in its own opinions and choices with regard to itself is an individual. To be more clear, every person must be respected and counted as far as their voice, opinions, beliefs, desires, and freedoms go. To be even more clear about this, it is an accepted fact that every individual possesses their own rights and these rights cannot be determined from an outside source without their own consent. This means that there is no reason that is good enough to deny any individual's rights unless that right is freely given. I am making the assumption that the word 'freely' leaves out all forms of coercion.

In this respect, I was making a statement about what I believe is right. That being that I have rights that cannot be taken from me, as Jefferson would put it, rights that are inalienable. If you are a conservative or a libertarian then you likely already believe, or think you believe this whole heartedly. The man I was talking to made a statement that spoke to the heart of the opposite belief. This belief is the negation of individualism, or that 'It is not a fact of the world that any individual has a right that cannot be violated under any circumstances.' In other words, if it serves some purpose that is deemed worthy, then an individuals rights may be violated if it serves that purpose. This is the axiom that a collectivist must take as being true to be considered a collectivist. (It could be argued that a collectivist must also believe that these violations must be for the 'collective good', but this is not integral to my argument. If it does bother you, then simply note that a collectivist is an anti-individualist and that my arguments would apply to all anti-individualists as well.)

Let me put this into context. If I were a politician who was also an individualist, and say there were people starving in Calcutta that I wanted to save, then I could do anything that I wanted so long as I never violated another person's rights. For instance, it would be wrong obviously to kill a man and feed him to the children in Calcutta as that would probably violate his right to make choices with regard to his own life. Pretty simple huh? It would also be wrong to steal money from people, or otherwise compel them through force to give their money to the people of Calcutta. This is because I would be violating their own individual rights to choose what they should do with their possessions. I personally do believe in charity, but this belief does not grant me the right to violate others rights. A collectivist on the other hand would have no qualms about doing any of this if he or she decided it was a good thing.

That is the difference between individualism and collectivism, it is that simple. However, both have extreme consequences as well that I have been wrestling with. Starting with collectivism, some people may not yet have a problem with this yet. After all, the collectivist could argue, what is wrong about taking some small percentage of everyone's income if it ends world hunger. Peter Singer actually makes several claims and even alludes to the idea that someone ought to do just that in “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, though to be fair, this is mostly a result of his argument pattern. Who could argue that famine is a worthy cause? Most religions actually state that it is a moral obligation of all their followers that they be generous. Ignoring that, could it be hard to accept that people's lives are unimportant?

This line of thinking may get you jumping on the bandwagon a little too early though. Note that I could use the same sort of logic to argue that all children in the world must be given education. After all, would it not be a crime to allow a single child to go without this benefit? Imagine being unable to get a job somewhere that does not include saying “pull up to the next window please”. In fact, if it could be argued that any cause imaginable could be undertaken in this manner given the proper argument. If the cause is good, then the collectivist must agree that an individuals rights can be violated to achieve it. This is dangerous. Take Obama for example. No one will doubt that he believes that we must strive to help the working poor and so he supports all sorts of programs and taxes to do so. Consider though the possibility of an ideological shift. Now it is considered true that it is in the best interest of the population to be taught a certain thing. Maybe this thing could be argued to help the working poor as well if everyone was taught and and believed this thing. Imagine now this thing was that certain people or groups of people should be made infertile. Margret Sanger believed that “the idiots and morons should not be allowed to reproduce” and see sought funds for her crusade, successfully might I add.
The collectivist might argue now “That is obviously wrong and should not be allowed.” I could argue back though, “consider how much food is being wasted on the useless. If the useless could no longer reproduce, then there would be more food left over for the poor. Also production would likely increase faster ending poverty on a planet wide scale. Is it not more right to save the lives of millions over the mere ability to reproduce? In order to avoid this type of trap, the collectivist would now be forced to add qualifiers to his original axiom; qualifiers like “unless it leads to personal mutilation” or “unless it leads to death”. These qualifiers are just arbitrations and therefore up to arbitration. Could I not argue that back then we thought it wrong to castrate people on the basis of who they are, but now we no longer think that. Unless a rule is an absolute by virtue of being itself or being based upon something that is based upon itself, then there is no foundation strong enough to keep an arbitrary rule like that from being violated.

This may make collectivists run to become individualists now. I myself am an individualist and I have done a great deal of thinking about what it means to be an individualist. As I believe there is no circumstance that justifies violating someone else's rights, then I must also believe that even if it meant the death of children in Calcutta, I cannot choose to take someone else's rights to help another no matter the circumstances. This is an obvious point and almost all conservatives and libertarians will agree with this. This goes much further too. For instance, take a hypothetical many people have encountered. Suppose you are the president and you are kidnapped by strange terrorists who take you to a secluded room. In this room you are confronted with your grandmother who is bound and gagged. You are told that you have only two choices, either shoot your grandmother or blow up a city in your country. What is the right choice? A lot of people would answer “the first one” and this is used often to prove what is called Utilitarianism. However in this case I would say that neither choice is right by the strict definition of it. Pretty simple and agreeable right? That fact that shooting your grandmother might not be as bad as nuking a city, does not make killing your grandmother a good thing. Further, as an individualist, you would be forced to try for the 'third option' so many action stars try in movies. This is because the other two choices violated someones rights and this option, though its success rate is probably very low, does not.

Even the last point I made could be accepted by conservatives and libertarians, though it would be remarked as being impractical and so could not be exercised in the way I described it. I would not disagree with such a statement; though we should strive to create that perfect world where no one ever needs to have their rights violated. Now I find it necessary though to point our some places where conservatives and some libertarians cease to follow the logic of the axiom. The first point is at torture. Obviously torture is wrong if your are torturing for the hell of it, but it is applauded if it is done for what is considered good. Obviously, if you believe that an individual has certain inalienable rights, then barring the possibility that you would argue the person being tortured lacks these rights for some reason, you must agree that torture is wrong. I am probably hated at this moment but read on for a second. Torture is wrong, but the same argument regarding grandma and the terrorists could be used to argue for torture. Note though that this still means that torture is still wrong, not that it is right. What is we had our hands on a terrorist and discovered through some reliable source that he possessed information that could stop a nuclear bomb from going off. Would it not be right to get the information by any means necessary? No, it would not be right, but it may be unavoidable. This argument sounds pretty impotent if I were trying to stop torture. My real purpose is not to stop that though. My point is to make apparent the fact that torture is not a good thing, or even an okay thing. As such, it should never be regarded as such and should be used as a last resort at all times. This attack is more an attack against the attitude about torture than an attack against torture itself.

Maybe most people could come to terms with the above. However, this is not the only problem I have come across. Consider gay marriage. It is my opinion that both sides have the proper solution wrong. The left overwhelmingly believe it is our duty to legalize gay marriage both on the state and federal level as no one has a right to say no to anyone regarding who they love or who they can marry. Many people who call themselves conservatives believe that gay marriage should be banned to protect the sanctity of marriage. Here is the simple truth with regard to individualism, both sides are wrong! The left tends to first make the correct point that we have no say in other peoples marriage practices, but then they throw that away by continuing to use the government. This behavior implicitly acknowledges the government's (and therefore everyone else's) say in what they do. A lovely way to contradict yourself. Of course any conservative that preaches for smaller and less intrusive governments is also contradicting him or herself when they then insist on regulating away a kind of marriage. In reality, government intervention must be removed entirely to avoid this problem. Note that I am not saying we must accept what anyone else does, lets face it, I am not pro-gay. I personally believe that a homosexual lifestyle is a stupid choice of lifestyle. However, if you grant the right to regulate marriage from one group, you have also implicitly given permission to have the same done to yourself. For this reason, and the fact that it is plain wrong, you cannot regulate marriage. For more information on this argument, read my previous post on marriage.

Individualism is obviously very anti-government control and regulation. In fact, if the logic is followed well, then it would seem that the best form of government the world ought to exist under, is the government that most closely comes to Anarchy as possible, while still holding enough power to prevent people from violating each other's individual rights. If ever it were no longer necessary to use government intervention to prevent murder, theft or rape, then it would follow that it was no longer necessary to have a government. This may seem insane but consider what government was used for in the first place. It was created with the sole purpose to prevent chaos and rampant crime, it was also created to protect its citizens from enemies both at home and abroad. If none of these problems existed then what would be the use of such a construct? It would be like keeping a can opener when cans have been discontinued. This once again comes down to practicality. I do not think for a second the Utopian world described above will ever exist, but it is imperative according to individualism that only those rights should be taken that are absolutely necessary for people to live around each other and that the individual gives his or her explicit or implicit permission for all violations of his or her rights.

It is finally time to consider objections to Strong Individualism. I could argue that Individualism is self-contradicting. Imagine a serial-killer decided to use individualism. He claims that he has the right to choose whether or not he can stab a poor woman on the street. This woman would obviously not want this and so would claim that she has the right to choose to live. It seems then individualism protects both people and so contradicts itself. This is so only if you agree that all choices must be respected. If it instead reads something like “An action is wrong if and only if it violates another persons choice intentionally...” then this is no longer self contradicting in this way. This is because the serial-killer never possessed the right to kill the woman and so his rights are not diminished if he is disallowed.

One last objection is that individualism does not prevent fraud or consensual child molestation. To this individualism need to be modifies in a small way. Simply make it wrong to intentionally use information, restrict information, or in some way reduce the number of options the individual is aware of so as to undermine their ability to make a choice. So in the case of fraud, it is obviously wrong to misinform someone to trick them into a certain condition. In the case of consensual child molestation, even if the child were told before hand what was going to happen to him or her, it would be difficult to say the least, to prove that the child understood what was being described. Because of this, it seems that under the age of fifteen, it would be almost impossible to prove the individual had the ability to understand what was going on or the consequences of his or her actions.

I will be the first to admit that this is radical. It is insanely radical. I must point out though that most conservative and libertarians hold these truths to be fact. It would be dishonest to not follow them to their conclusions. While I do not expect most of what I have written here to ever be enacted in full, I do believe that we must at least always move in that direction. It is the right thing to do.