2012: When All Else Fails, Try Something New

As humans, we are addictively drawn to anything aligning itself with herd mentality. Everything in our lives s about groups and teams. Every utopian concept we have, we imagine manifesting through some kind of collective. We rail on about the ultimate neighborhood, the ultimate government, the ultimate church, the ultimate company to work for. If we can imagine something glorious, we automatically assume it must unfold through some kind of human collective. 

History says we can’t have that. There is no possible aim of any collective that has not been tried and failed countless times in the past. And yet we refuse to abandon the concept of collectivism as our ultimate savior, on any and all fronts. We can be happy when the government straightens out, when the company we work for gets its act together, etc. Our happiness always has to come through some kind of collective either allowing it or providing it. We have been so deeply conditioned, for so long, to assume that any and all happiness in life must come through a collective of people, that we are essentially past the point of recovery being possible. As such, we are headed for the ultimate fate of all collectives: annhialation.

What conceivable goal in life has not seen a thousand or a million collectives form in the name of realizing it? Which of those countless collectives has ever failed to fail? There is nothing left untried, and unfailed, in the arena of human collectives. Collectivism has never worked because it cannot work; not as a way of life.

In a dire emergency, groups of people can work wonders. With short-term goals, clearly defined, working under the pretense of an emergency situation, they can perform miracles. But people do not look to these situations to bring them happiness in life. Collectives are good for putting out fires and handling emergencies – when there are clear and present goals with a very high level of urgency and a very low level of ambiguity, a collective is the way to go. The team concept simply works. However in the average day-to-day work situation, the average employee devotes the vast majority of his or her resources to coping with, and jockeying for position within, the political landscape. Welcome to the ongoing collective: this is as good as it gets.

Before the Civil War, Sam Brown went on a murdering spree that rivals any in U.S. history – all in the name of saving the slaves. He saved nobody but killed a whole lot. Most are no stranger to history of the Church; even today (Ireland being a prime example) bloodshed in the name of religion abounds. In order to save one group, the next must be exterminated. If we look objectively at the entire spectrum of those out to save – be it the planet, the whales, or some minority – we see wreckage and ruin stretching behind every group existing to further a goal of saviorism. Nobody is ever saved; no large scale problem has ever been erradicated, but the murder and/or terrorism and/or general destruction and/or lawlessness that can be credited to every group from the Sierra Club to ACORN to Greenpeace to [fill in the blank] is perhaps the only constant in life. Nobody is ever saved, but plenty of damage is always done.

The vast majority of the world’s pain, suffering, and evil comes from collectives. Those few who operate as individuals, who see their individuality and its expression as the highest purpose in life, typically change the world as Edison, Tesla, Einstein, Curie, Galileo, etc. have done. The trends are clear, and it is hardly rocket science to predict what the track record of any collecitve – or individual – will become, no matter what point on the timeline of its existence that track record is viewed from. Who pumps more hatred, rage, and violence into society than the anti-war crowd? Who is more racist and discriminating than those out to eliminate racism? Who has caused more environmental destruction than the environmental groups out to eliminate environmental destruction? Who has a bigger carbon footprint than those flying their jets around the world to crusade against large carbon footprints?

If we crusade against anything, we become it, lock, stock and barrel. The harder we crusade against something, the more we become everything we hate. If the road to happiness were to be found through a collective, it would have been discovered by now. It is not there to be found. Placing one’s individuality above all other purposes in life does not mean living a Machiavellian life. When one is focused more on one’s personal integrity than on anything else, that integrity shines. Individuals inherently trend toward doing unto others as they want done unto them. Collectives do not. Collectives invariably deevolve to assume themselves above the law and their end justifies all means. Collectives on a crusade rapidly degrade to give us the worst people have to offer.

The world as it exists today, as well as where it is headed, reflects with perfect accuracy our worship of collectivism as a species. If you’re looking at surviving any given end-times scenario, try an experiment: build all your plans around you and only you. Forget the collective. From one day to the next, one week to the next, see where it leads you. Look carefully at what floats into your life, what migrates away from you, all seemingly by magic; what opportunities you “happen on,” chance meetings, etc. Clearly, if you have children, they will by necessity be included in your plans – but even here you can still view things with yourself as the clear, central authority, since you are the one piecing together all the plans and making everything happen.