[MD] A Place for the Principled Person

[Gene M]

That's just it, there Was a big move towards collectivism for a while. A
very misguided one that ended te only way any misguided attempt can, badly.
So people are moving away again. Society ebbs and flows, and a lot has
happened since WWII. In fact I'm sure many of the people in the new
generation are now gauche enough to type WW2. Although frankly I hope not...

Nowadays everyone is moving back to the self-importance that individualism
gives people! Sure after WWII the country may have been united, everyone
helping out against the outside threat. And it seems like the government
keep trying to push that ideal with their talk of commies are terrorists
coming to getchya! But really, people these days aren't even interested in
recycling because it is too much work for them individually, with no visible
benefit.

However I think we both have a higher ideal for what an individual would be.
I'd like to think everyone has realized that socially mandated behaviour is
rarely, if ever the answer. The utopian society would be one comprised of
true individuals who choose to act in unison individually, for each others
and their own benefits. A distributed net of people, acting in everyone
else's benefit of their own free will. As unlikely as that is.

However I think individualism has lost it's way, and just become a way for
people to be stupid, and arrogant, and lazy. To not have to contribute or be
conscientious of their environment and others. Because we're all
disconnected, disparate, racing to the top and kicking everyone in the face
on the way up.

People need to understand their responsibility, as individuals, to society.
That's what I think.

-Gene

I'm flabbergasted that anyone could think we are trending in the direction
> of individualism.  I guess this just goes to prove that, given sufficient
> indoctrination, people can believe almost anything.  Not since Barry
> Goldwater's "Conscience of the Conservative" and Ayn Rand's "Atlas
> Shrugged"
> have I seen anyone of prominence promoting the virtues of individualism.
> Quite the contrary -- except for a handful of radio talk show hosts --
> ministers, CEOs, educators, social engineers, politicians, philosophers,
> artists, journalists, and celebrities have all renounced individualism as
> self-serving, greedy, even "undemocratic".
>
> When I started what used to be called "grammer" school in 1938, my uncle
> gave me a book called "Little People who became Great" which simply told
> the
> story of humble people like Abe Lincoln, Tom Edison, and G. W. Carver who
> rose to prominence by their personal achievements.  A year later America
> entered WWII with its citizens showing their support by purchasing war
> bonds, collecting foil and fat, and contending with food rationing.  Some
> time after our victorious soldiers returned home in the years following
> 1949, we began to lose our patriotism and the value of our individuality.
>
> American industry, which had risen to the challenge of defeating an
> overseas
> enemy for six years, now had to confront "organized labor" at home.  We
> began to hear of the tyranny of capitalist power from socialists like
> Norman
> Thomas.  Other political contenders were preaching "One Worldism", an
> ideology fostered by Woodrow Wilson who had been influenced by a Marxist
> adviser in the 1920s.  At the same time we were facing a new threat from a
> communist dictator who had many U.S. sympathizers.  America's resolve was
> weakening under the spread of collectivism.
>
> The noted economist Friedrich Hayek, a member of the Chicago School that
> included Milton Friedman, warned of the perils of collectivist "planned
> economies" in his "Road to Serfdom" back in 1944:
>
> "We are rapidly abandoning not the viewsa of Cobden and Bright, of Adam
> Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient
> characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the
> foundations
> laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans.  Not merely nineteenth-
> and
> eighteenth-century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by us
> from Erasmus and Montigue, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and
> Thucydides,
> is progressively relinquished.
>
> "...Individualism has a bad name today, and the term has come to be
> connnected with egotism and selfishness.  But the individualism of which
> we
> speak in contrast to socialism and all other forms of collectivism has no
> necessary connection with these.  ...But the essential features of that
> individualism which, from elements provided by Christianity and the
> philosophy of classical antiquity, was first fully developed during the
> Renaissance, and has since grown and spread into what we  know as Western
> civilization -- are the respect for the individual man _qua_ man, that is,
> the recognition of his own views and tastes as supreme in his own sphere,
> however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the belief that it is
> desirable that men shouild develop their woen gifts and bents. ...
>
> "Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single
> purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated. To a
> limited extent we ourselves experience this fact in wartime, when
> subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is
> the
> price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run.  The fashionable
> phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learned.to do
> for
> the purposes of war are completely misleading, for it is sensible
> temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the
> future, but it is quite a different thing to sacrifice liberty permanently
> in the interests of a planned economy. .
>
> "To those who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at
> close
> quarters, the connection between the two systems is obvious.  The
> realization of the socialist program means the destruction of freedom.
> Democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is
> simply not achievable."
>                         --[F.A. Hayek: "Road to Serfdom"]
>
> What is good for the self is good for the whole.  Moving back to the
> collective, as we're now doing, is the subordination of the individual
> which
> leads to social tyranny.
>
> Regards,
> Ham
>
>
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