Comment by bsanr2
5 years ago
>It necessarily requires stifling the motivations of individuals so that they can work together.
This assumes that people are naturally and totally individualistic, which is untrue even at a biological level. People work together instinctually, and they also decide, rationally, to work together. Individual and collective motivations are often the same; and while collective motivations sometimes stifle individual motivations, the former often (if not more often) replaces a LACK of motivation. In fact, the appeal to engaging in collective action in order to fill in a hole of individual meaning (motivation) underpins some of humanity's strongest and most common institutions: military service, volunteer service, protest, religion, work. That is society: individuals working in concert, by each's determination.
>I'm making 0 moral judgements on whether the motivations of an individual are or are not valid.
You're making a moral judgment privileging individual motivation, separating it from collective motivation.
Your argument is simply wrong on its face. It tries to generalize a solipsistic perspective to the rest of humanity, to which it very clearly does not apply. Perhaps only in this thought are you truly as much an individual as you seem to think people must necessarily be.
You're putting words in my mouth at this point so I don't know what else I can contribute to this discussion to move it forward.
I share the same argument David Graeber was making in Utopia of Rules, you should give it a read.
No, I simply addressed your statements re: individual vs collective motivation. This reply of yours is simply a way for you to avoid interrogating your viewpoint in light of my response, which I think is a shame.
But people ARE naturally and totally individualistic. Even when they cooperate, they do it for their own individual interest. It's due to the nature of our evolution.
Read "The Selfish Gene".
That's a misunderstanding of the thesis. Because humans tend to have trouble surviving completely alone, our nature is to privilege others and the group in many circumstances, over our individual wellbeing. Sacrifice - of comfort, health, even life - in order to secure the survival of our children and tribe is common because it is often so much more effective at allowing for the perpetuation of a given line than purely individualistic behavior. That's what's so profound about the concept presented in "The Selfish Gene": the meta-impulse to preserve one's genes often overrides the meta-impulse to preserve one's own life.