Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:46 am
Greta
Exactly. He is 100% orthodox Republican, in lockstep with their every policy stance. His individuality only lies in his role models, Simone and Jacob, whom I admit are commendably eccentric
I am not Republican. I am an Independent
Do you deny that your views coincide with Republicans on abortion, women's rights, public education, public health, assisted suicide and homosexuality?
Nick_A wrote:https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/is ... lectivism/
The fundamental political conflict in America today is, as it has been for a century, individualism vs. collectivism. Does the individual’s life belong to him—or does it belong to the group, the community, society, or the state? With government expanding ever more rapidly—seizing and spending more and more of our money on “entitlement” programs and corporate bailouts, and intruding on our businesses and lives in increasingly onerous ways—the need for clarity on this issue has never been greater. Let us begin by defining the terms at hand.
Individualism is the idea that the individual’s life belongs to him and that he has an inalienable right to live it as he sees fit, to act on his own judgment, to keep and use the product of his effort, and to pursue the values of his choosing. It’s the idea that the individual is sovereign, an end in himself, and the fundamental unit of moral concern. This is the ideal that the American Founders set forth and sought to establish when they drafted the Declaration and the Constitution and created a country in which the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness were to be recognized and protected.
Collectivism is the idea that the individual’s life belongs not to him but to the group or society of which he is merely a part, that he has no rights, and that he must sacrifice his values and goals for the group’s “greater good.” According to collectivism, the group or society is the basic unit of moral concern, and the individual is of value only insofar as he serves the group. As one advocate of this idea puts it: “Man has no rights except those which society permits him to enjoy. From the day of his birth until the day of his death society allows him to enjoy certain so-called rights and deprives him of others; not . . . because society desires especially to favor or oppress the individual, but because its own preservation, welfare, and happiness are the prime considerations.”1…………………………………
You are an atom of the Great Beast, the grand collective. You just like to make things up in the hope it furthers your secular agenda. Not a good quality for anyone with a professed interest in philosophy
You are also an atom of society - aka your "Great Beast". However, you don't know it. I have no problem with collectivism, as long as the bastards leave me along to do my thing
Laddie, are you capable of thinking ahead? Is that why you like Trump so much - like you, he lives in a bubble of the present, oblivious to ramifications and consequences (borne out by his relentless destruction of nature in both his old and current jobs, which I expect you approve of too).
The problem you whine constantly about is actually real. Yes, there actually are far too many people on Earth and that is increasingly curtailing freedoms everywhere. The more people there are, the more controls are needed to maintain order.
It's a simple choice today - collectivism or diminution. It's a shame. If there were many fewer people then life for the rest would be much more free. That's why, after the Black Death peaked in the mid 1300s, Europe
immediately flourished. People were finally free and opportunities were everywhere. Creativity and happiness flourished not so long after a level of devastation that one might think would reverberate down the generations.
That dynamic may well repeat this century at some stage. If you survive whatever nature's "correction" of our overpopulation and overconsumption brings (your favourite POTUS is working on speeding up the process), you will be much more free afterwards.