Is the Left Collapsing in Real Time?

 The left seems to be experiencing cognitive dissonance. A poet friend, politics well to the left, responded to the release of the Epstein files with these lines:

Individuality, 
Sinful seed that 
It is, discounted 
From the congress, 
Shell game intent 
Leads us towards 
Discord & murder.

He blames the Epstein pedophile cult on “individuality.” 

Individuality was obviously not a feature of these crimes. That would be, for example, Jeffrey Dahmer. This was a group—a cabal, a conspiracy. But this presumably does not fit in with the leftist world view: that the collective is good by its nature and even gets to determine good and evil; while the individual and individualism is bad.

The Epstein Hellfire Club is actually the perfect application of the left-wing postmodern idea that reality, and morality, are "social constructs." By these lights, the Little Saint James crowd had every right to decide among themselves that, for them, there was nothing wrong or immoral about pedophilia, or cannibalism, or rape, or murder. QED

In the same discussion, he then condemns globalization as “colonialism nouveau.”

This seems to be to be pulling away from the leftist line. Isn’t the left in favour of globalization? After all, Trump is famously opposed to it. And logically, they should be: it is the ultimate in collectivization. The ultimate move away from the individual.

It seems incoherent. Perhaps he is mulling things through in his own mind. He may be turning into an individual.

Individualism

 

The height of selfishness

My students, asked to explain “individualism”—it comes up in our readings—invariably come up with “selfishness.” Xerxes seems to think the same. 

I suspect that this is the baleful influence of our Marxist/fascist education system. Which would sneer at "rugged individualism" and "cowboys." No doubt that is "White supremacist and "partiarchal."

If you think “individualism” means “selfishness,” then you must think Oskar Schindler was selfish; or Socrates, Qu Yuan, Thomas More, the Buddha, or Jesus Christ. Not to mention Einstein, Newton, Tolstoy, Picasso, Casey Jones, Father Damien, or Pasteur.

Individualism means you believe it is the duty and right of the individual to make decisions for himself or herself. To exercise free will and make ethical choices. No more going along with the crowd.

Without individualism, there is no morality, and no human progress. Only evil and decline.

“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.”

The Wisdom of Magpies

 

The proverbial thieving magpie

Friend Xerxes believes magpies can teach humans a thing or two. In an Australian experiment, magpies fitted with tracking devices pecked them off one another. This, to Xerxes, was a display of altruism, shaming humans, who fetishize competition instead. We ought, like the magpies, to learn to cooperate.

He blames the human love of competition, surprisingly, on Darwin, not on Adam Smith.

What the magpies did was cooperation, but not true altruism. Cooperation is not altruistic, as it implies a quid pro quo. As Darwin himself could no doubt point out, herd animals derive a survival benefit through cooperation. By cooperating, they increase each individual’s chance of survival.

Altruism: OED: “Behaviour of an animal that benefits one or more others (typically of its own species), but which carries a cost for the individual concerned.”

True altruism would therefore be conduct that actually reduces the ability of an individual organism to survive, while increasing the ability of another organism to survive. Such cases have been found in nature, but the Australian magpies do not qualify. A magpie incurs no significant cost by pecking something off a fellow. He might do as much out of curiosity.

Xerxes’s larger point is to claim that cooperation, which he identifies with collectivism, is more moral than individualism, which he identifies with competition.

This does not work when you realize that, in microeconomics, cooperation or collectivism means a cartel in restraint of trade. 

Sometimes cooperation is more moral than competition; sometimes competition is more moral than cooperation. Do you cooperate with a rapist? With a bully?

On the other hand, individualism, which can involve either cooperation or competition as circumstances require, is reliably more moral than collectivism. Collectivism is the central premise of fascism, expressed in the fasces itself. A lynch mob is a collective endeavor.

Flag of the Italian Fascist Party

The problem is that only individuals have a conscience; groups or collectives do not. The pull of the group—peer pressure—is a force operating against conscience. Altruism, when it occurs, almost necessarily occurs at the individual level. Even if a moral leader leads a group to act for the greater benefit, he or she is not acting morally: it is not moral to demand self-sacrifice of others.

Sermons from Nature

 

Old growth forest, Alaska

My distaff buddy Xerxes has been on vacation, hiking happily through the high coniferous forests of Vancouver Island. They have inspired him with religious insight. He uses the term “cathedral.” 

His insight is that all nature is interconnected:

“A forest is more than the sum of its trees. The forest itself is a living, breathing, organism.

“The forests challenge our obsession with individualism. We have made cult of standing alone, of being ruggedly independent. We are so immersed in the cult of individualism that, as Robert Bellah noted years ago, when we think of breaking free of individualism, the only route we can imagine is to be more individualistic.

“No matter how tall it stands, a Douglas Fir, towering in lofty isolation over a clear-cut hillside, will never say, ‘Every tree for itself.’ Or, ‘I won! I won!’”

This falsely conflates individualism with selfishness. While that is a possible sense of “individualism” in common speech, it is not a fair account of the Western philosophy of individualism. Here is Oxford’s (OED) definition:

“The principle or theory that individuals should be allowed to act freely and independently in economic and social matters without collective or state interference. Opposed to collectivism, socialism. Cf. LAISSEZ-FAIRE n.”

Here is Merriam-Webster’s:

“A theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action, and interests.”

Nothing about that implies selfishness.

The “cult of individualism” which he refer to as permeating Western thought is, in fact, Christianity. That is where it comes from, and why the West is different from other cultures here. The Catholic Church teaches the principle of “subsidiarity”: that is, decisions should always be made at the individual level, or as close to the individual level as possible. As little as possible should be left to the state. For only the individual is a moral agent. God creates individuals, in his image. Social structures are created by man: they are, as postmodernists will aver, “social constructs.”

But Christianity also and more adamantly holds charity to be the highest virtue. It would condemn such sentiments as “every man for itself” or “I won! I won!”

Christianity holds it to be morally evil to go along with the crowd, rather than take responsibility and act as an individual—the proper sense of “individualism” as a social or political philosophy.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Salvation is individual, and cannot be reached by following the crowd.

“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.’”

Political and social structures are under the control of the devil.

“The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

“This world” means the social world, for the physical world is not sentient and cannot have idols. What the social world values is idolatrous and antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

Christianity’s essential opposition to social conformity is probably best illustrated by the fact that its God is condemned to crucifixon by the civil authority and the social elite.

Does the interconnected forest offer us a good model for society? 

No. 

The group is intrinsically more likely to be selfish, not less, than the individual. The group avoids personal responsibility, and so can give the individual cover and sanction for selfishness. After all, everybody else is doing it. In the magnificently interconnected forests of Vancouver Island, the high conifers kill all undergrowth with their acidic needles. Their high canopy denies the light that might be necessary for competing species to emerge; they kill off all diversity. Like most groups, the high conifers cooperate in their own self-interest against outsiders or those judged “different.”

It is the fascist model, that “the forest is greater than the sum of its trees.”