bookmark_borderCommunalism and individualism

Something that is said over and over again in our society is that there is too much emphasis on individualism, and not enough emphasis on community. In other words, there is too much emphasis on “me” and not enough emphasis on “we.”

Take, for example, a recent Instagram post by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in which she wrote: “Community and collective good is our best shot through our greatest challenges – way more than discorded acts of ‘rugged individualism’ and the bootstrap propaganda that we’ve been spoon-fed since birth.” Ocasio-Cortez also claimed that “much of the emphasis of media conversations on COVID are individualistic.” 

I could not disagree more strongly with these sentiments.

When I look at the world around me, the vast majority of the propaganda being spoon-fed to people emphasizes communalism, togetherness, selflessness, giving, and caring about others. The concepts of individualism and individual rights are underappreciated in today’s society. Contrary to AOC’s claim, almost every institution in our society – from schools to churches to governments to charitable organizations – places an enormous amount of emphasis on community and collective good, at the expense of the individual.

This is particularly true with regards to the Covid pandemic. “We’re all in this together,” goes the familiar slogan. Ad nauseam, people are urged to sacrifice for the greater good and to “do your part” in ending the pandemic. Anyone who dares to disobey or even question the rules made by public health experts is condemned as selfish. With all the emphasis on public health, individual rights have been lost. Individualism has been almost completely abandoned in favor of community and collective good. 

And that is unfortunate, because individualism, not community or collective good, is the key to a good world. Individualism is the key to happiness, fulfillment, and a life worth living. 

Individualism does not need to be “rugged,” as AOC describes it. Individualism means that each person is different, and what is right for one person may not be right for another. Individualism means that that each person has the fundamental right to live according to his/her values, tastes, desires, needs, and preferences. This might mean living off the land, or driving a pickup truck, or owning lots of guns, as seems to be the popular stereotype. Alternatively, it might mean living in a big city, riding the train, working at a grocery store, and doing art in one’s free time, to give a random example. Individualism might mean holding unpopular opinions and expressing them on social media. It might mean dressing in a unique way, being interested in things that are considered weird or uncool, or simply being quirky or eccentric. Whatever form it takes, individualism means that people get to make their own decisions about their own lives. People get to live where they want, use their money to buy the things that they want, wear what they want, eat and drink what they want, do the activities that they want, get the medical procedures that they want, et cetera. 

A world in which people are told to sacrifice their own goals for the public good is a world in which no one gets what they want. A world in which people are told to sacrifice their happiness and well-being for that of others is a world in which no one is happy. Without the freedom to make one’s own decisions, and to live as one pleases, there is no purpose in being alive at all. 

There is quite enough emphasis on community and collective good. In our public-health-obsessed society, individualism gets a bad rap, and its proponents are all too frequently dismissed as selfish, entitled, ignorant, and stupid. A world that puts individual rights first may be a more dangerous place, but it is the only type of world in which true happiness is possible and in which life is worth living. The answer to what ails our country and our world is more individualism, not less. 

bookmark_borderThere’s nothing ugly about individual rights

A few weeks ago I read a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe which I strongly disagree with. Numerous people in our society seem to share this viewpoint, particularly with respect to the coronavirus pandemic, and I find it deeply wrong. In a letter published on May 16, 2020, Jeffrey Halprin of Natick wrote:

I read selfishness disguised as patriotism in the comments of a gun shop owner who sued to reopen, when he said that “the second Amendment should not be suspended during a health pandemic.” I realized how close the connection is between the quarantine protesters and the gun lobby. Both are all about “me” instead of “us.”

Guns make it easy to sit in a high window and randomly pick off dozens of people listening to county music in Las Vegas. Not my problem. Uncontrollable virus racing through nursing homes, hospitals, and neighborhoods? Ditto.

The Second Amendment, written, ironically enough, to protect the community, with a “well-regulated militia,” is now the cover that people use to turn their back on the community so that they can sell a few more guns.

As for the people who turn their backs on the request to pitch in and sacrifice until we find a way to keep the virus from randomly picking off their neighbors? What an ugly way to live.

In this letter, Halprin is harshly criticizing gun shop owners who fought for their right to open, as well as protesters who have been bravely standing up to authoritarian government policies in general. His criticisms are baseless.

As inconvenient as it may be to those who value the community above all else, people have rights. Specifically, people have the right to live their lives as they please, so long as they do not violate the rights of anyone else.

People are not obligated to take on the problems of others and make them their own. Mass shootings such as the one in Las Vegas, as horrific as they may be, are not the fault of innocent gun owners. They are the fault of the mass shooters. Innocent gun owners are not required to “pitch in” to solve this problem by sacrificing their freedoms.

Similarly, people are not obligated to sacrifice their freedom of movement, assembly, speech, or religion, their privacy, or their livelihoods in order to lower the risk of virus transmission for the community as a whole.

A world in which people are required to put the needs of others above their own would be a truly ugly place to live. Halprin is demanding that each person “pitch in and sacrifice” by giving up a certain amount of freedom for the sake of the community. But how much does he think people should be required to sacrifice? Where is the line drawn between being sufficiently community-minded versus unacceptably selfish? And more importantly, what is the purpose of demanding that everyone pitch in and sacrifice for the sake of the community, when by doing this you are depriving every member of the community of the right to live according to his or her own preferences and values, the very thing that makes life worth living? This might create a safer society, with fewer shootings and fewer cases of the coronavirus. But it would also create a society in which people are not free to live their lives in the way that makes them happy, in which people are not entitled to use their time and energy on what they believe is important, and in which no person’s life truly belongs to him or her. The fact that other people are sacrificing for your benefit, just as you are sacrificing for theirs, does not even begin to make up for the loss of freedom and self-determination. All that is accomplished by requiring people to put others first, is to create a world where everyone is worse off.

Freedom is not something that should be pitched in and sacrificed. It is something that rightly belongs to each individual. The honorable thing to do is to defend one’s rights, as gun store owners and anti-lockdown protesters are doing, not to meekly give these rights up.

A world in which each person is free to make his or her own decisions and live in the way that best suits him or her is best for all people. There is nothing wrong with valuing the “me” instead of “us.” Nor is there anything wrong with focusing on one’s own self, as long as one does not harm other people in the process. The idea of individual liberty is simple, logical, fair, egalitarian, and beautiful. To insult people who are bravely standing up for their rights, because they have not demonstrated what you consider to be an adequate amount of concern for the community? Now that is ugly.