Individualism

by Robert Villegas

  Many children and adults deal with chronic anxiety (chronic fight/flight response) by fixating their life choices on a particular set of acts or attitudes (rituals). These fixations tend to limit and restrict the child by providing rationalizations that enable action and denial at once, thereby giving him the impression that the chronic anxiety has been dealt with. In fact, oftentimes the rationalizations are self-destructive and become habitual and/or addictive. Because the source of the pain, chronic anxiety, becomes lost in denials, the Individual moves forward without the ability to reason logically about his choices. The result is the feeling of being out of mind.

  We must understand the psychological role of a ritual collective mask in modern society. The collective ritual mask[4] is the source of the nightmares many people experience from early childhood. The mask is a symbol for the collective and it communicates disapproval to the Individual facing it. It serves as the subconscious disapproving face of the collective against anyone who exposes any form of selfishness or Individualism. The subconscious ritual mask performs the role of “un-authorizer” of the individual. It serves to alienate and scare the Individual into the fold of the collective and to control him into acting in the interest of the collective. It severs from consciousness the idea "I" and turns attention, thought, and action toward "we" out of fear of "them.” It engenders the anxiety inherent in the fight/flight response and makes the Individual feel that he is in chronic, constant fear of disapproval from others. It creates in many young children a debilitating humiliation felt in the pit of the stomach that feels so bad and becomes so chronic that the child does not know what to do to be rid of it (and does not know its cause). Most often, he learns to deny it in order to move forward. The ritual mask ensures that the Individual will never feel happy, free and unencumbered.

  Many people are so incapacitated by the principle of the subconscious ritual mask that they live lives of quiet desperation never realizing that the debilitating pain in their stomach, the avoidant choices they make throughout their lives, are caused by nothing more than the fear of disapproval from the group and the self-humiliation that such fear engenders. Whether the collective mask of disapproval is worn by a bumbling uncle trying to scare his nieces, or by a President trying to scare U.S. Steel, is only a matter of degree. The message is the same, be afraid and submit.

  That the Individual cannot properly be motivated by fear is not understood by collectivists. The psychological damage done by this idea is enormous and horrendous. Such masks truly create an unreality wherein the person feels under attack at all times. This creates a fear of his own thoughts. The result is repression, denial, unhappiness, decay and decline. The collective mask of disapproval is, virtually, the battle against the individual. It programs the young for obedience. In terms of ancient mythology, it turns men into monsters and women into submissive objects.

  The person under the power of collective masks learns to self-discriminate, to block himself from full living because he is controlled by other peoples' methods of dominance, other peoples' ideologies and agendas. Collective masks create paranoia and the fear that others are constantly critical and controlling.

  Another consequence of collective disapproval is the split personality. When the individual’s own personality creates chronic anxiety (fight/flight), he must create a new pseudo-, non-fearful personality that enables him to copy or imitate the values of the collective that he feels he must appease. This personality requires a constant pretense in order to maintain a semblance of normalcy. Such an Individual has learned that in order to satisfy the collective, he must disconnect from his true feelings and fake a dedication to the collective.

  The fundamental dilemma for someone confused by the collective myth is found in the question, "How can I live, given the overwhelming power of the collective? How can I deal with the fear?" Given this, repression of fear becomes a short-term solution that becomes long-term. To not think about the confusion and the fear allows one to function (although on a limited level). Most modern individuals do not know that subconscious collective masks are creating their identity crises, their feelings of worthlessness and their problems in life.

  Psychologically, the fear of the collective, the mob with the moral upper hand, engenders the fight or flight response (primarily the flight response), where the person engages tension in his body whose purpose is to run, to flee the source of the danger. If the source of danger is constant, then the fight or flight response is constant—this anxiety creates avoidance (another form of running). The result is physical discomfort and a desire to be rid of the discomfort (which cannot be removed without changing one's thinking about the danger). The body becomes numb to the pain of physical tension and eventually other functions are affected. This is the psychosomatic nature of fear and repression.

  This in-bred response to fear created by collective disapproval makes collectivism responsible for many of the poor decisions and judgments people so often make. Instead people take leaps of faith and build failure and self-doubt into their actions. Figuratively speaking, the Individual swings on a pendulum between guilt feelings for having received pleasure and feeling rigid and controlled from the avoidance.

  Some people negatively influenced by collective disapproval develop split personalities. One personality could be the "blocker", a misguided form of conscience that always stops a person when he is about to assert himself. The blocker believes it is bad to be assertive and selfish, and inevitably tries to stop the individual whenever he "wants" something for himself. The blocker is metaphorically the superior and "all-knowing" father, the pious priest, the dominating and fearful adult, who has always told us that what we wanted was forbidden to us.

  One issue negatively affected by the blocker is passionate love with one's entire soul-- that totality of feeling is often blocked by inner choices that say "No." The blocker is the collective metaphor that will always stop one and keep one in mental chains.

  A young child, struggling to apprehend the world, does so at a precarious time, when his intellectual development is not complete. Verbalizing the questions that lead to an amelioration of self-doubt can prove difficult. Parents heavily influenced by collectivism, who have it in their bones, so to speak, can present their child with a frightening world. Many of these adults are merely "acting-out" childhood conflicts of their own and are teaching their children to do the same. The effort to destroy individuality (which is easy for people whose own individuality has been destroyed) can present the child with a bewildering chaos. This brings the child to a crossroads, a decision that is of vital importance: Since the world presented by collectivism is frightful and menacing, hateful to the Individual -- he must decide either to confront the world or to give in. Deep down, he knows that the honest thing to do is to struggle to understand. But for this, he needs to know how to use his mind.

  The pain of feeling confused is unbearable. Very often, the Individual will choose to forego the effort to understand, telling himself that he is putting it off for a time when he has more knowledge. He will refuse to think about the problem and pretend he is not confused. He will fake his mental state. This is because he does not understand what is happening in his body when he is afraid. His body is poised for defense or flight and the muscles are tensed in order to invoke action. Since he is paralyzed by inaction, he misinterprets the physical discomfort, particularly the discomfort in the pit of his stomach, back and neck as mental rather than physical and wonders what is wrong that he cannot act or think. He questions his own inadequacy when there is no inadequacy involved. The result is rationalization, denial and collective joining.

  Collective joining, like ritual, is an effort to reverse cause and effect, to obtain one's identity and value by means of a collective activity or membership. True identity comes from within, not from a relationship with others. The choice of what one will pursue in relation to others must come after one has a firm sense of self-understanding. One cannot get one's identity by pursuing the a
ctivities others pursue. This is especially true when social and sexual activities are sought to make one feel good or loved. Additionally, collective joining can become addictive as well while providing further justification for other activities such as joining in drug use and sexual abandon.

  Whenever two or more people get together for any purpose, the first “great idea” that comes up is that they should form a collective, an organization, a company, a club, a corporation, a union, a marriage. So many of these collectives fail because the new group demands conformity, loyalty, self-sacrifice and social agitation from the members—and the members are, after all, individuals.

  If we look at some of the most prominent collectivist leaders in our history, we find that the one unique quality each possessed was the ability to motivate people to sacrifice for the collective. This is how these men were able to create havoc. Even after centuries of witnessing the disastrous consequences of collective organizations, people still think that joining forces with others is the best way to get things done.

  When an Individual connects morality (good/evil) to the disapproval of others and defines proper action on that basis, he loses the ability to think about reality and morality (in other words the requirements of reality). In such a state, he can have no standard of judgment since he is at the mercy of the opinions of anyone who happens to be near. Without a standard of action based upon reality, the Individual is lost, confused and has only his emotions as guides. He is at the mercy of the most extreme emotions and therefore the most extreme opinions of others.

  There are times, of course, when joint action and cooperation are good. However, successful organizations with good causes can succeed only if they recognize the inalienable rights of individuals. Collectivism has co-opted good ideas like family, love, hard work, dedication, benevolence, etc., to such an extent that we cannot even think of these ideas without thinking of them in a collectivist context. Yet, outside a collectivist context, these ideas would function in human relations much more effectively.

  The best example of this is the idea of marriage as collectivism. When two individuals join together in marriage, it is most often after a period of learning about how unique and wonderful is the other party. Then as they plan their union, they decide which sacrifices each is to make, each convincing the other of their dedication to the union. Then after each treats the other as a sacrificial conscript demanding unquestioning loyalty, doling out ridicule and criticism, the original intentions break down. Both parties forget just what it was about the other that they admired, both wishing that they could bring back that lost feeling of wonderment.

  What they lost is the one thing that they took for granted: that early in the relationship each had treated the other as an Individual with unique qualities that were desirable and worthy of respect. Once the "collective" of their marriage took shape, they started treating each other as pebbles on the walkway of their union. Manipulation, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, disrespect, loss of love, and increasing demands increased as the marriage descended into an intolerable and burdensome disunion. Collectivism always requires an enemy and when that enemy is a loved one, there is no way to regain the original respect that two individuals once had for each other.

  Individualism does not mean being alone or hating society--as it is often characterized. An Individualist is not a person who wants to be alone. The characterization found in Kipling’s famous line, "He travels the fastest who travels alone" does not apply to the desires of an Individualist. An Individualist would rather be in the company of people who respect his individuality and love his unique qualities. He is confronted, instead, by the collective and its flagrant dismissal of his value and importance, and by the constant onslaught of discrimination and hatred that he receives from people trained to attack any sign of self-respect. Culturally, we have taken legitimate social compacts and turned them into collectivist compacts that involve force and self-sacrifice, thereby ruining the intent of the proper social compact and achieving oppression. Instead of freedom and wellbeing we wind up with slavery, unhappiness and economic decline.

  A social compact can only be valid and life-serving if it recognizes the rights of the Individual and relies on cooperation. Such a compact holds the premise that a just society must enhance freedom and benefit man, not enslave and exploit him. His Individual life must be better as a result of the compact. When we build society and social institutions on an Individualist basis then cooperation is possible.

  Keep in mind, that our society was the first and only society that successfully fought and defeated collectivism. It was the first to recognize the principle of inalienable rights. That principle, once established, was not fully realized. The contradictions and inconsistencies that played out during our early history served to unravel the social compact. Eventually, this led to the Civil War, the Welfare State, group warfare and the discrimination and prejudice that we see everywhere today.

  One of the most lethal forms of collective joining is altruism. The modern idea of self-sacrifice evolved from early forms of theocracy that demanded ritual human sacrifice. Sacrifice in a theocracy was designed to control individuals. It was constructed so that “justice” could be meted out to individuals who expressed their own self-interest. A civilized person, in such a system, must comply, adjust and regulate himself according to the views of the leading theocrats. He must express the view that the good of the collective is his most important guiding principle rather than his own life.

  Altruism is the modern expression of the ancient view that the Individual must, as a matter of theocratic moral requirement, sacrifice for others or the collective. It is, in effect, slavery. The scapegoats that developed out of that propaganda are today still the Individuals who must appease and propitiate a god. Today that god is society or the community.

  There is no logical, reality-based justification for why an Individual should be sacrificed for the group. People have yet to realize that there is no benefit to be gained by the sacrifice of each to all. In fact, today’s intellectuals have spent little time dealing with how to quantify the appropriate number of sacrifices an Individual should make, nor have they identified the correct percentage of his product that he should be required to give up. They are so busy dividing up the spoils that they have failed to even answer the question: what is natural about self-imposed suicide? Haughty character assassination of those who question altruism is not an argument but an indication that there is no justification for collective joining and human sacrifice. For proof listen to any politician of any political party who ignores the fact that he is stealing the product of citizens when he demands higher taxes.

  Collectivism

  Can a person be a collectivist by honest conviction? Or is there an element of dishonesty involved? It is certainly true that most of us are exposed to collectivism when we are very young, before we have the intellectual ammunition to fight back. It is also true that collectivist teachers expect blind acceptance of their ideas—that they consider collectivism good without question. This is because most of them have lost the ability to connect ideas to reality, and to recognize the very real consequences of those ideas.

  Still others look around and see the problems of the world and decide that collective action is the only way to solve those problems. They certainly care about others and want to be able to solve human problems. Their mistake is that they too easily compromise with a wide range of ideas that include collectivism and altruism. Rather than question these ideas they create their own version of “sanity” by combining love of humanity with collectivism, completely unaware that collectivism is actually hatred of humanity. This compromising view makes it impossible for them to recognize evil in the very ideas they hold so lovingly.

  As a youngster, I remember reading about an Indiana landmark called New Harmony, IN, a town founded on the principles of collectivism. I wondered how such a great idea could have failed and I sought to find out. I learned that the idea of collectivism in
New Harmony had led to much resentment among the able people who found themselves overworked and underpaid. New Harmony had shown that the able resented having to work for those who did not work and as they began to leave the community, the town’s great ideal of collectivism had collapsed.

  It took Ayn Rand, an Arch-Individualist, to explain that collectivism was not about helping the needy but about exploiting the able. During her time, the left controlled everything and, until reading Rand, I believed the lie that the Soviet Union would someday overcome the U.S.A. But if Rand was correct that collectivism is a war against the able, how could the Soviets have had a great economy? Certainly, the collapse that occurred in the society of New Harmony was happening in the Soviet Union too since the same principles were being enacted in both societies. I predicted, among my family and friends, that eventually the Soviet Union would collapse.

  Although some teachers and authority figures are dupes mouthing collectivist slogans because they have nothing original to say (a lifetime of repeating collectivist clichés has killed originality), political leaders must be feared and controlled--lest their power lust lose control, as with Hitler and Stalin. It is these types of people who are not innocent.

  On the other hand, there is some truth to the idea that teachers and authorities are willfully evading the devastation of collectivism. The history of the 20th Century is a testament to the devastating horror created by collectivism. In fact, most educators who deal with the subject are still baffled by the rise of Nazi Germany and can't pinpoint just what caused this lunacy. This is because there is so much collectivism in our culture that we have failed to realize that the atrocities before, during and after World War II, were caused by an adherence to collectivism.