Only Individuals Matter

How should society be organised, if at all?

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RCSaunders
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Only Individuals Matter

Post by RCSaunders »

I recently wrote:

"In the entire history of the world every advance in civilization, every gain in knowledge, and every improvement in the human condition has come solely through the efforts of independent individuals. They and they alone are the creators, innovators, and discoverers of the world. These men are all there is of positive importance in all of history; all the rest, the tyrants, the dictators, the famines and plagues, earthquakes, floods, the mass of ignorant and superstitious humanity, the crimes and the wars were important only in the negative."

I was immediately questioned: "And you know this how? Empirically or a priori?" The following is my answer to that puerile question.

What I Mean By How I Know

The question I am answering is how I know that in the entire history of the world every advance in civilization, every gain in knowledge, and every improvement in the human condition has come solely through the efforts of independent individuals. The answer is that I know it in four ways: I know it from the irrefutable evidence of history; I know it because all non-individual (collective) efforts have been the source of all that is evil in the world; I know it because human nature makes no other explanation possible; and I know it from long experience with true creators and innovators.

I note only that the question was, "you know this how?" and the answer is to explain how I know it. It is not meant as an argument to convince anyone else or to change what they think they know. Everyone has their own mind and must use it to come to their own best rational conclusions.

The Evidence of History

One has to wonder how anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the world's history could not know that every advance in civilization, every gain in knowledge, and every improvement in the human condition came through the work of individual thinkers, innovators, and creators.

No matter what the field, the history of all advances in every field from the sciences to the arts is the history of individual accomplishments.

The record of the accomplishments of individuals such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, William Harvey, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Francesco Redi, Sir Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, Leibniz, Antoine Lavoisier, Edward Jenner, Alessandro Volta, John Dalton, Georg Ohm, Amedeo Avogadro, Michael Faraday, Lord Kelvin, Louis Pasteur, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Dmitri Mendeleev, William Crookes, J.J. Thomson, Marie Curie, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Alexander Fleming, James Chadwick, and many other individuals is the history of science.

The record of the accomplishments of individuals such as Johannes Gutenberg, Gerardus Mercator, Evangelista Torricelli, Zacharias Janssen, William Oughtred, Christiaan Huygens, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Thomas Newcomen, John Kay, James Hargreaves, James Watt, John Wilkinson, Jesse Ramsden, John Wilkinson, Martinus van Marum, Andrew Meikle, Edmund Cartwright, Eli Whitney, Edward Jenner, Friedrich Serturner, Robert Fulton, Nicolas Appert, Charles Babbage, William Sturgeon, John Walker, Moritz von Jacobi, John Bennet Lawes, Sir Henry Bessemer, Heinrich Geissler, Gaston Plante, Alexander Parkes, Louis Pasteur, Alfred Nobel, Nikolaus August Otto, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Sir Charles Parsons, Carl Gassner, John J. Loud, Whitcomb Judson, Rudolf Diesel, Orville and Wilbur Wright, John Ambrose Fleming, Leo Baekeland, Jacques E. Brandenberger, Alexander Fleming, Ernst Ruska, Edwin H. Armstrong, and many other individuals is the history of technology and invention.

The record of the accomplishments of individuals who have written every history, novel, play, opera, journal, and all poetry (of which a tiny fraction of the list would fill many pages) is the history of literature.

Surely there is no need to include the history of art, the history of music, the history of exploration and discovery, the history of mathematics or the history of philosophy, all of which are the records of the multitude of individuals whose accomplishments are the history of those fields.

History of the Collective

In contrast to all the benevolence individual creators, producers, and innovators have contributed to the world, all war, oppression, failed social systems, organized crime, and economic failure are caused or produced by the collective efforts of social reformers, politicians, government and government agencies, criminal gangs, and corporations. Of course there have been individual criminals, but compared to the evils foisted on the world by collectives, their crimes are little more than petty nuisances.

Some of the collectives that have wreaked the most horrors on the world are organized religions (think the inquisition and modern-day Islam), environmental movements (think the banning of DDT and the global-warming scam), social/political movements (think of every totalitarian atrocity), and NGOs (think the United Nations).

Human Nature


Even if there were no historical record, human nature itself would demonstrate that all creative value must come from the productive effort of individuals using their own individual minds to determine their action.

Minds are distributed one to an individual, and every individual is required to use their own mind to do their own learning, their own thinking and to make their own choices. In other words, what every individual is and does is determined by how they use their own mind to learn, think, choose, and act.

While the vast majority of human beings live by repeating the thoughts and actions they have learned from others, all innovation, all discovery and invention come from the minds and efforts of individuals who choose to think something new and to do something no one else has done and to follow a path no one else has taken.

No new idea, invention, or method comes from those who submit their own minds and thinking to that of the mob, the crowd, the consensus, the popular, the, "team," "what everyone knows," or "what we've always done." The creator is the individual who avoids the mob, has no use for the crowd, disagrees with the consensus, does the unpopular, knows something everyone else does not, and does what no one else has done before.

My Experience With Creators

For over forty years I worked in the computer, IT, and telephony industry managing technical writing and publishing departments, board and system test departments, and design departments, in both small cutting-edge development companies and large international industries. There was one problem I observed in all companies, which was much more serious in the larger ones. Most managers were neither creators nor innovators and had no understanding of what true creators and innovators were and all their policies and management styles always only interfered with the productive efforts of my best designers, writers, and technicians.

My job as a manager was to ensure that projects were completed on time, coordinated with all other relative departments, and that the quality of the work was the best possible. Practically, that meant most of my time was spent running interference for my engineers, artists, writers, and technicians, protecting them from the absurd meddling of upper-management who were perpetually trying to force their ideas of "teams," "training," "SOPs" and "endless meetings," down their throats.

I was very fortunate that most of those I managed were individualists, self-starters, and competent. They were all different, had different methods of working, different skills and abilities, but were imaginative and creative, because I did everything I could to give them the freedom to think and choose for themselves how they worked and how they accomplished their assignments.

I held them to very high standards, but the standards only applied to the product of their effort. I frankly did not give a damn how they accomplished their work, only about the quality of their work. Almost every project required cooperation between workers in my departments and those in other departments, and because my workers knew they had the freedom to achieve their objectives in whatever way was best for them, my departments gained a reputation for being the most cooperative.

The irony was that my workers had nothing to prove to anyone and were only concerned with their own achievement and accomplishments. They never worried about being part of some fictitious, "team," or "a contributor" to some corporate cause or image, but it was always the workers in my departments others would come to when inevitable difficulties in the development processes arose, because they were competent, and because they were as free as I could make them in a corporate environment, and therefore chose to cooperate in any effort they enjoyed being part of.

All evidence and reason convinces me there is only one source of any true value in this world in every aspect of human life—the self-initiated effort of independent individuals in pursuit of their own chosen goals and objectives.

[Originally piblished on the Free Individual.]
uwot
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by uwot »

RCSaunders wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 6:10 pmOne has to wonder how anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the world's history could not know that every advance in civilization, every gain in knowledge, and every improvement in the human condition came through the work of individual thinkers, innovators, and creators.
That's because anyone with a bit more than a cursory knowledge of the world's history knows that is an absurdly misleading claim. Of all the individual thinkers you list, not one could claim their insights didn't have a context and weren't a response to earlier thinkers. The people who do come up with stuff completely independently are nutters and their ideas are invariably bollocks.
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by mickthinks »

lol

RC, you are neither am historian, a scientist, nor a philosopher. If you were any one of those, you would be too embarrassed to publish such a load of cock.

Of course there have been individual criminals, but compared to the evils foisted on the world by collectives ...


... like the United States Declaration of Independence? That was foisted on the world by a collective, wasm't it?

... but it was always the workers in my departments others would come to when inevitable difficulties in the development processes arose

You make them sound like a collective! Is the development process something one of your team could have done entirely by themselves, or is it not always a collaborative effort? You have not even named any of these "creatives". I'm wondering why that is ...
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RCSaunders
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

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uwot wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 9:32 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 6:10 pmOne has to wonder how anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the world's history could not know that every advance in civilization, every gain in knowledge, and every improvement in the human condition came through the work of individual thinkers, innovators, and creators.
That's because anyone with a bit more than a cursory knowledge of the world's history knows that is an absurdly misleading claim. Of all the individual thinkers you list, not one could claim their insights didn't have a context and weren't a response to earlier thinkers. The people who do come up with stuff completely independently are nutters and their ideas are invariably bollocks.
Thanks for your very original thoughts and opinion.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by RCSaunders »

mickthinks wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 10:11 pm Is the development process something one of your team could have done entirely by themselves ...?
Most likely.
mickthinks wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 10:11 pm You have not even named any of these "creatives". I'm wondering why that is ...
To protect them from the kind abuse idiots who have never had an original idea in their entire lives like to direct at true creators.
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by uwot »

RCSaunders wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 1:15 amThanks for your very original thoughts and opinion.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

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uwot wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 5:27 am
RCSaunders wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 1:15 amThanks for your very original thoughts and opinion.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Of course. What made Newton a unique individual is, he was the only one who stood on those shoulders to see what he saw. It is always only individuals who, "advance," knowledge. No one implies any one discovered everything, only that each one thought for themselves what no one else thought and discovered what no one else discovered or produced what no one else produced.
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

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Only Individuals Matter

Only Individuals: that's all there is, was, or ever will be: individuals, cooperating with, competing against, teaching, learning from, organizing with, organizing against, goin' along to get along with, strikin' out on their own from, other individuals.

There are no fleshy, permanent umbilicals between and among individuals; there are only relationships, interactions, and transactions, the best of which are voluntary and mutually beneficial (the worst, of course, are enforced and are usually one-sided).
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

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henry quirk wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 4:55 pm Only Individuals Matter

Only Individuals: that's all there is, was, or ever will be: individuals, cooperating with, competing against, teaching, learning from, organizing with, organizing against, goin' along to get along with, strikin' out on their own from, other individuals.

There are no fleshy, permanent umbilicals between and among individuals; there are only relationships, interactions, and transactions, the best of which are voluntary and mutually beneficial (the worst, of course, are enforced and are usually one-sided).
Why do you think so many people, most people it seems to me, despise the idea of individualism?
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by mickthinks »

Only Atoms Matter

Only atoms: that's all there is, was, or ever will be: atoms, combining with, competing against, attracting, repelling, other atoms.

There are no material links between and among atoms; there are only forces, attractions, and bondings, the best of which are covalent, the worst, of course, ionic.

Molecules are a progressive delusion.
Last edited by mickthinks on Wed May 12, 2021 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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henry quirk
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

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RCSaunders wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 6:06 pm
henry quirk wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 4:55 pm Only Individuals Matter

Only Individuals: that's all there is, was, or ever will be: individuals, cooperating with, competing against, teaching, learning from, organizing with, organizing against, goin' along to get along with, strikin' out on their own from, other individuals.

There are no fleshy, permanent umbilicals between and among individuals; there are only relationships, interactions, and transactions, the best of which are voluntary and mutually beneficial (the worst, of course, are enforced and are usually one-sided).
Why do you think so many people, most people it seems to me, despise the idea of individualism?
Cuz the current iteration of (any) public education (a factory system for generatin' citizens) and the culture (any culture) at large, denigrates the individual and favors the group. Thing is: I believe this has caused a deep cognitive dissonance.

Joe knows he's a self-directing, self-responsible, individual, but he's been taught (indoctrinated) over the years that his individuality is secondary to his membership in a group (race, gender/sex, ideological, cultural, social, etc.). This makes Joe nuts. He eats, drinks, medicates, too much. He's depressed or neurotic or plain psychotic.

They've been tryin' to breed out and educate away man's natural unruliness (what I call ownness) for generations (lot longer, actually): so far, they've only succeeded in makin' men whackadoodles.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by Immanuel Can »

henry quirk wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:06 pm ...the current iteration of (any) public education (a factory system for generatin' citizens) and the culture (any culture) at large, denigrates the individual and favors the group.
There's a reason for that.

The chief task of public schooling is this: mass management. It's not teaching truth, or producing job skills, or anything else. It's taking a bunch of disparate people, and training them in not fighting, in cooperating, in getting along under the control of the governmental system. And in aid of that goal, things like individualism, truth, particular values, political diversity and so forth are all problems. They easily become occasions of conflict. And the system does not want conflict.

So the system mutes everything distinctive, particular, individual, unique and so forth -- it doesn't deny them, but vigorously soft-pedals them, so that they don't become a problem. And it maximizes values like cooperation, being 'nice,' not contradicting each other, not having distinctive beliefs or values, and not exceeding the norm in any way that interferes with public peace. The individual is suppressed, and the collective is emphasized. Individual wishes, achievement and greatness can only be accepted within the scope of that which also works within the overarching goal of mass management.
Joe knows he's a self-directing, self-responsible, individual, but he's been taught (indoctrinated) over the years that his individuality is secondary to his membership in a group (race, gender/sex, ideological, cultural, social, etc.). This makes Joe nuts. He eats, drinks, medicates, too much. He's depressed or neurotic or plain psychotic.

They've been tryin' to breed out and educate away man's natural unruliness (what I call ownness) for generations (lot longer, actually): so far, they've only succeeded in makin' men whackadoodles.
And worse. Not just whackadoodles, but people who are trained in yielding their individuality to the collective.

They have to be tractable and mass-manageable, not genuinely exceptional. So Joe gets this languid feeling that he's not very special, in spite of anything he may have achieved. He's just a cog in the collectivist machine, he feels, no matter what he has done or could do. So he becomes depressed, weak, languid and disillusioned, and doesn't really know why. Life just seems kind of pointless. Everything is so...normal.

But at the same time, his mass managed efforts become part of the giant political apparatus that puts power into the hands of the incompetent and corrupt at the top of his government. Joe alone feels useless...but a thousand Joes become very useful to the State, and can be used to bludgeon any other individualist Joes who step out of line.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:41 pm
henry quirk wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:06 pm ...the current iteration of (any) public education (a factory system for generatin' citizens) and the culture (any culture) at large, denigrates the individual and favors the group.
There's a reason for that.
I agree with you both. The entire education system promotes the collective view and systematically represses individualism in all the ways you both suggest.

I think there is something more, however.

In my Controllers, Meddlers and individualists article I mention it:
I do not believe in psychologizing, or making judgments about others that presume to know what they think, or why they make the choices they do. I do not know why most ... cannot imagine, according to their own testimony, being able to be happy or successful, or even have any meaning in their lives, without being part of some group, or collection, or community of other human beings.

The need to be "joined" to something seems to an individualist a kind of deficiency, a sense that one is insufficient or incomplete in themselves; that they suffer some biological or psychological shortcoming that can only be supplied by being a "member" of something else.

Whatever that shortcoming is, if that is what it is, it apparently makes it impossible for them to understand that only self-sufficient, complete-in-themselves, free individuals are capable or worthy of true social relationships and are the only ones who can truly enjoy others and the only ones capable of real love.
I really think most people, "need," others because there is something lacking, some kind of insecurity that makes them need the approval, agreement, or support of others to have any sense of real meaning or purpose in their lives. Most people seem terrified of having to think entirely for themselves and are never quite sure of themselves without the reassurance of others, especially some others they regard as authorities. I do not have to guess about this, because most people admit this about themselves.

Why is this true? I have my own ideas and it has to do with choice, but I'll await your comments.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:18 pm Why is this true? I have my own ideas and it has to do with choice, but I'll await your comments.
It's not entirely pathological.

We are, after all, social creatures. That's a cliche, but it's not less true for that. When we are born, we are, for many years, dependent on others just to survive. We live in communities. We form families. Needing other people isn't automatically a sign of weakness or conformity.

Independence is a learned skill. It's not easy to be autonomous, or individualist, or even self-controlled; and it's not a trick that even the best of us manages all of the time. It's a challenge many people are not up to at all, in fact. They are, to borrow a phrase, "other-directed," because it's a much easier way to live, and also, in some cases is actually unavoidable. If one wants to live in a civilization, or to experience the benefits of divisions of labour and specialization, then it's going to be, to some extent, necessary.

I don't have an issue with people choosing to form collectives, if they want to do so voluntarily. I do have an issue with them forcing others to do so, whether they want to or not, and with them indoctrinating children to be incapable of self-determination, or training them to subordinate their autonomy to a "collective good" that is really no more than to render them more useful to some collective or the arbitrary dictates of some Socialist or autocrat.

It's ideological collectivism that is toxic. Voluntary collectives...hey, whatever you want. Elective societies...great. Common projects?...good idea. But just don't try to force any of that on anybody capable and desirous of standing on his own feet. Those things have to be chosen, not compelled.
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Re: Only Individuals Matter

Post by henry quirk »

RCSaunders wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:18 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:41 pm
henry quirk wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:06 pm ...the current iteration of (any) public education (a factory system for generatin' citizens) and the culture (any culture) at large, denigrates the individual and favors the group.
There's a reason for that.
I agree with you both. The entire education system promotes the collective view and systematically represses individualism in all the ways you both suggest.

I think there is something more, however.

In my Controllers, Meddlers and individualists article I mention it:
**I do not believe in psychologizing, or making judgments about others that presume to know what they think, or why they make the choices they do. I do not know why most ... cannot imagine, according to their own testimony, being able to be happy or successful, or even have any meaning in their lives, without being part of some group, or collection, or community of other human beings.

*The need to be "joined" to something seems to an individualist a kind of deficiency, a sense that one is insufficient or incomplete in themselves; that they suffer some biological or psychological shortcoming that can only be supplied by being a "member" of something else.

Whatever that shortcoming is, if that is what it is, it apparently makes it impossible for them to understand that only self-sufficient, complete-in-themselves, free individuals are capable or worthy of true social relationships and are the only ones who can truly enjoy others and the only ones capable of real love.
*I really think most people, "need," others because there is something lacking, some kind of insecurity that makes them need the approval, agreement, or support of others to have any sense of real meaning or purpose in their lives. Most people seem terrified of having to think entirely for themselves and are never quite sure of themselves without the reassurance of others, especially some others they regard as authorities. I do not have to guess about this, because most people admit this about themselves.

Why is this true? I have my own ideas and it has to do with choice, but I'll await your comments.
*That's not my experience of people. Given the proper circumstance, anyone, everyone, is capable of competent self-direction. Most folks, however, are well-indoctrinated to reign in their unruliness. But even after 7000 years of civilization (nuthin' but a vast, on-goin' domestication program) the results are uneven, spotty, fragile. Pockets of unruliness (individualism, ownness, overt autonomy, public displays of freedom) break out. As I say: they've been successful in drivin' vast segments of humanity batshit and that's about it.

**I do...gotta anticipate what kinda batshit shenanigans they can get up to...can't do that unless I make some educated guesses about that motivates the other guy (beyond the basics of fleshy furtherance).
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