Against Individualism

I suspect modern individualism is a cultural artifact rather than being inherent to human nature. It was taken to an extreme with Western Civilization and in particular capitalism, but it seems to have it’s origins with the Axial Age. Julian Jaynes proposed the theory that earliest literature such as from the Greeks doesn’t show signs of individualism as we know it. Modern individualism is based on the idea of an objective world of objects, but early humans experienced the world animistically.

I’ve noticed that the objective world of objects is particularly appealing to conservatives. Many conservatives use capitalism as a metaphor for all of life. They see life as a meritocracy where everything has to be earned. They see the fundamental fact of life is ownership where all the world can be owned and where people even own themselves and can sell themselves to the highest bidder. According to this view, anything that doesn’t have monetary value has no ‘objective’ value.

I’ve been in a number of arguments with conservatives who believe individualism is the basis of all reality. Their ultimate argument is perceptual. They see a world of separate individual objects including humans, but they don’t seem to be able to see their own cultural biases. Many conservatives seem less aware of factors that are subjective and intersubjective which has always bewildered me. I’ll bring up social science research, but to many conservatives such research seems irrelevant or somehow missing the point. To me, it just makes sense.

Even though I don’t think individualism is inherent to human nature, I do think there are psychological predispositions that make one more likely to accept the cultural biases of individualism. For example, Ernest Hartmann has done research on boundary types. Thick boundary types tend to experience the world in terms of separation: between themselves and others, between waking and sleeping, between past and present, etc. They have minds that tend to narrowly focus excluding everything outside of that focus.

Conservatives tend to mistrust the subjective and the intersubjective, the abstract and the theoretical. They tend to trust what is practical, concrete and tangible. They tend to want fundamental truths and rules.

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The first video about individualism seemed to have some connection to another video I just watched. In the following video, UFOs are discussed in terms of perception of reality. Maybe part of the connection I sensed relates to Jung’s having written a book about UFOs in terms of mandalas as a symbol of the self. Jung saw UFOs, whether real or imaginary/imaginal, as being manifestations within human experience of a symbol of wholeness.

This is part of Jung’s theory on individuation. Modernism has created an individual sense of self that is disconnected from the world. The fears brought on by globalization and world wars has forced a creative tension where the human psyche is seeking a new experience of wholeness.

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I have one last point. All of this isn’t just philosophizing about humans and society. There is obvious relevance to politics, economics, and environmentalism. The latter I pointed out in a post about capitalism having failed in the past in terms of taking into account the values and costs that aren’t easily measured by ‘objective’ and monetary standards.

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/does-poverty-rise-as-biodiversity-falls-pavan-sukhdev/

There are collective costs to modern civilization that require collective solutions. This isn’t idealistic. I just came across this next video which explains the practical potential of collaboration. The competitiveness of individualism is no longer working, if it ever did work, now that populations have become so large and concentrated and now that diverse societies have become so interrelated.

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Here are some posts that relate in various ways to the above videos and comments:

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/nde-spirituality-vs-religiosity-2/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/religious-syncretism-paranormal-experience-and-democrats/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/psychological-research-uncertainty-and-spirituality/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/the-paranormal-and-psychology/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/psychology-and-parapsychology-politics-and-place/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/psychology-of-politics-development-of-society/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/conservative-mistrust-ideological-certainty/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/conservative-mistrust-ideological-certainty-part-2/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/integral-the-paleolithic-and-the-liminal/

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/enactivism-integral-theory-and-21st-century-spirituality/

The Elephant That Wasn’t There

I was talking to someone the other day who was telling me about a recent family visit (by the way, her telling of it reminded me of the type of story David Sedaris writes).

It was her older sister who was visiting and they were discussing the past. The older sister claimed that she used to go for rides on a pony that a neighbor had. The neighbor gave pony rides somewhere for money and would allow the sister to ride the pony home. However, the older sister also claimed that this pony owner also owned an elephant who would also sometimes follow along. The woman I was talking to didn’t believe her sister’s story about the elephant and so investigated by asking other family members and some old neighbors from the area. No one else remembered the elephant, but the older sister was absolutely certain about the elephant’s existence. It was real in her mind.

I find that amusing. None of us really knows how much of our memories are correct. Few of us are ever motivated or capable of fact-checking most of our memories. Stories we’ve encountered over our lifetimes (especially when young) can become incorporated into our own personal story. I mean it’s logical that where there is a pony there might be an elephant. Science has proven that we literally re-member every time we recall something. The more often we recall something the less reliable the memory becomes. We don’t remember the thing itself. We remember our own retellings.

We all live in our own private fantasy worlds. I’ve been drawn to this idea. I think I first encountered it with Robert Anton Wilson’s writings about reality tunnels. It’s not just individuals but whole societies that get caught up in reality tunnels. In the case of personal memories, another person who knows us can offer a reality check. A collective reality tunnel is different because everyone within the society will reinforce the shared view of reality. Our collective retellings are rituals that remake the world in the way the Australian Aborigines remake the world by retracing the pathways of the gods. What if there is some truth to this? Maybe scientific laws and evolution are simply forms of collective memory.

This avenue of thought is explored in great detail by Philip K. Dick and by those influenced/inspired by PKD (for example: Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon and Ursula K. Leguin’s The Lathe of Heaven). I just finished reading PKD’s Eye in the Sky. I was mostly reading that novel while at work which led me to contemplate the world around me. I work late at night and staring into the concrete interior of a parking ramp (where I work) offers an interesting opportunity for contemplation.

My job at the parking ramp is cashier. In the large picture, it’s kind of a pointless job. With developing technology, it’s almost obsolete for all practical purposes. I sometimes envision myself working their in the future after the robots have taken over the job and my only purpose will be to wave and smile at the customers as they drive out. My job is merely representative of most of the pointless work humans occupy themselves with… but is it really pointless? Or is there some purpose being served that is less than obvious? Work is a ritual that sustains our society, the reality tunnel of our culture, of our entire civilization. From a practical perspective, most jobs could be eliminated and many things would run more smoothly and effectively without all the wasted effort of keeping people employed. But if all the pointless jobs were eliminated, there would be chaos with the masses of unemployed. Employing the mindless masses keeps them out of trouble and keeps them from revolting. Make them think their life actually has purpose. Still, a purpose is being served even if it’s simply maintaining social order. My point is that social order is merely the external facet of any given collective reality tunnel.

In PKD’s stories, the protagonist is often faced with a true reality that is hidden behind an apparent reality. This true reality isn’t somewhere else but is instead all around us. This is a gnostic vision of the kingdom on earth. PKD had a few spiritual visions which inspired his theologizing and his fiction writing. I too have had some visions that have made me question the status quo of normal reality.

In enacting our social rituals and retelling our social myths, what kind of reality are we collectively creating? When I look upon a structure like an ugly parking ramp, what kind of world am I looking upon? Why are we creating such a world? What is the motivation? If we stopped enacting these social rituals and stopped retelling these social myths, what would happen to this consensus reality of civilization we’ve created and what would replace it? Or what would be revealed?

“As long as we keep ourselves busy tilling the earth, there is no fear of any of us becoming wild.”
~  J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur