The greatest form of individualism

An opinion from the Internet about humanity, individualism, and society:

“I agree that people working together have created civilization as it stands. The problem, as I see it, is when “leaders” come along who wish to promote, via laws and regulations, an agenda that the collective society must follow. Ignoring the individuality of the people.

I read your take on individualism as a “lowly, dark, subjective, self-serving, and self-justifying life experience” to be an extremist rationalization for promoting a collectivist society. Who says that an individualist must live in the shadows of his own selfishness. Cooperation and working together with other individuals is the height of societal advancement and personal growth. This can’t be forced without the loss of personal initiative. The collective theory is a perspective ruler’s wet dream. A mass of people doing what needs to be done without their freedom of self fully allowed to blossom. Why do you think so many people are trying to leave socialist countries to come to America?

And let’s not forget the massive governmental engine that must be in place to make a collective society function. We are already seeing American freedom fading as the government grows beyond its original scope of powers. Our freedoms are being regulated out of existence in the name of political correctness, safety, and social justice. Personal responsibility is being shifted from the individual to a regulatory body of government. And in this shift comes the slow death of personal growth and creativity.

People should have the unhampered right to freely work together in their chosen field of interest without oversight and regulation of a government body beyond that which provides protection from harm to other individuals. Real harm, not some vague foreshadowed possibility of harm ie: Overreaching gun regulations that do not stop violence and only punish and demonize law-abiding citizens and weaken the second amendment.

Humans are social creatures, on one hand, individuals on the other. It takes freedom on both aspects to allow a person to grow into the person they wish to be and have the life they desire.”

Probably I did not express myself properly. Individualism in itself is not “evil” — actually, nothing is evil since we had no free choice about the nature we were born with and there is an evolutionary purpose in humans being born selfish egoists.

Exactly as you said the ideal society is where people are using their unique individual qualities, talents — none of them being suppressed, erased — for the sake of the collective. The problem is — but again this is how we are “created by evolution” on purpose — that by default we all use our individualism, “singularity” in a self-serving way, and knowingly, unknowingly we all survive, succeed at the expense of others.

Critical situations like the pandemic provide us with plentiful examples, proof about that and there were many trials, like the Stanford Prison experiment for example that highlighted the true desires, intentions that drive us as long as we remain on the original, instinctive level of existence.

As I said this is not “evil”, evolution “created” us like this to give us the opportunity to consciously learn and implement a nature-like integration by our own efforts. Then contrary to other animals, that are integrated with each other and nature blindly, instinctively, human beings will achieve that consciously, thus becoming nature’s only “insider observers”, conscious partners.

Let us forget about politicians, the ideologies, philosophies we invented. Here we are talking about nature’s laws, evolution’s plan which is deterministic and has this very unique observer role for humanity.

Our perfect, full self-realization is achieved by following this evolutionary model when we can realize our 100% potential to become the perfect contributors, finding our unique, irreplaceable puzzle piece in the system, sensing that without us performing our role the whole reality suffers. This is the greatest point of individualism, finding our true singularity nobody else has, can replace.

Most importantly this p[process cannot be forced on people, it works only when people fully understand and willingly join this process, seeing their purpose in life in it.