When people say 'you shouldn't care what other people think', they mean that you shouldn't let others think for you or dictate your life. Think for yourself, make your own decisions, do what you feel comfortable with.
Individualism is stupid
- Thread starter Dismal purple
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Let me play Devil's Advocate for a bit.DrownedAmmet said:
I think it makes sense for a civilized society to hold it's members to certain standards even if they are arbitrary at times. Don't dress in potato bags, don't walk around topless, do wash yourself regularly, don't grow potatoes under the floorboards. If you do more than one of the above at the same time then you have demonstrated a lack of regard for convention and that is scary. If you don't care about our conventions then maybe you don't care about laws or morals either. So I can see a point to looking down on potato bag fashion.
In my experience, that's precisely backwards; people who don't care for convention are deeply concerned about morals, while people who are intensely concerned with maintaining appearances frequently don't give a fig about the underlying morals that inspired those conventions in the first place.
Uh, that thinking doesn't really follow. How do you jump from dressing in a potato sack to not caring about morals? Do you think that it's the same thing that compels someone in both cases? I sure don't.Dismal purple said:
Definitely think this is more true. If your reason is just following convention then you don't really care about the underlying reasons and possibly don't even understand them.Pyrian said:
Any idea taken to its logical extreme, or in this case, its illogical extreme, seems stupid. Better to focus on what the OP was actually suggesting, whatever that was.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
In any case, the whole individual vs. the collective is a false dichotomy. The collective is made up of individuals.
It's perfectly valid given that one can act in a way that is beneficial to a single individual but harmful on the whole to the general populaceR Man said:
From my perspective, I can tell you that not only is it definitely NOT tempting, it's downright terrifying.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
In the collective consciousness you propose, the individual ceases to exist. You, as a person, become nothing more than a single cell within a greater body. "You" do not experience all the wonderful expanded consciousness of the 'Borg mind any more than your toenails enjoy your vacation. You cease to exist. You become nothing more than a bit of meat in the digestive track of the larger animal.
Your 'seed and feed' idea that you've broached before is nothing more than systematic genocide and annihilation, NOT uplifting anyone into anything.
OT: Humans are social animals, so being concerned with what others think simply is part of the system. You just have to find the balancing point between one's own self-interests and those of society.
How so? If an individual act helps oneself, but harms society, it is likely that society is harmed because individuals are harmed. Individuals often oppose harm to the collective, because doing so harms individuals such as themselves, their family, or their friends.The Decapitated Centaur said:
The reverse is also true. Individuals helping other individuals helps society as a whole by default, while certain practises that help the collective, help individual lives.
Someone arguing an issue on the basis of its benefit to society as a whole may be thinking of its effects on individuals, while someone thinking of an individual issue may be thinking of the impact on society.
This is what I mean when I say that collectivist v. individualist is a false dichotomy. The two are not really distinct.
No, the world is still incredibly intolerant. Humans actively judge every single thing we see. I see people dress terribly, and look bad, and yet I don't go and call them out at the mall.Dismal purple said:
I judge the shit out of everyone, but I choose to not be an asshole about it.
Most people are such asshats that it hurts me mentally. Like you have no idea how many times I hear people speak, or type completely idiotic things on facebook, and I judge the ever living shit out of their intelligence. But I realize a couple seconds later, that they are just ignorant, and decide to try and educate them.
Society should judge less, if anything.
Maybe if you don't want a flippant response from people, you shouldn't ask them about trivial things.
Right, but that assumes I value the human condition. As I wrote in my first post why I think post-humanist brainbank seems like a pretty idyllic experience. The self, inherently lonely, broken by chance, and ill equipped to deal with the vagaries of misfortune. The human condition breaks people. The idea that it should be saved seems like a joke. Being human is perhaps the ugliest thing we will ever know.davidmc1158 said:
Majestic, yes. But still so very flawed that being a functional unit of a whole seems preferable. Driven by impulse rather than being driven by impulse, and crying yourself to sleep because of it.
Human civilization is at best 10,000 yeard old. The only reason we have it is a break in what is otherwise 2.4 million years of ice ages. When you're the great devourer of the cosmos... I find it difficult to rationalize doing anything else. It's monstrous only because being human allows you to empatheticslly evaluate the nature of the periodic suffering. But frankly you're not comparing humans with humans. You're comparing a gestalt entity of immeasureable deviation.
Tell me. Would you feel the same way if aliens crash landed on Earth and by *accident* only spread a new type of space plague or something? Suddenly ideas of 'genocide' go out the window. It's merely a galactic accident.
Hell, even comparing humans and humans. All your uncontrolled sufferings happen because of others. You being poor happens because your parents were likely poor. And their parents. And the only justification for it is because the British Empire might have kicked their teeth in. Or introduced opium. Or repeatedly stole the wealth of the land. Or clapped irons on you and dragged them to a cotton field. It's been yhe same story for 8 thousand years and this is apparently the best we can hope for.
This.
The thing that make it disheartening is that part of the brain those in power have already turned off millenia ago. So why the hell should the majority of people on this planet bother playing by the rules that lead to their incarceration of spirit?
It would be horrific and a tragedy. Just because something occurs without malice in the intent doesn't suddenly nullify the value of life. Your 'Utopian vision' is equally horrific except the intent is laden with malice in that it is the intentional destruction of life for personal gain. The idea of genocide is still quite firmly in place.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
You are equating consciousness with mere entropy. One is capable of morality and the other is not. A very fundamental difference.
EDIT: From my perspective, your call for such a 'Borg-style consciousness is a call for not only suicide for yourself but also the systematic murder of everyone else.
Value of life? All the misfortunes... Real misfortunes... is by the providence of the ego. The British Empire has only been dead for 60 years, and throughout its existence it pillaged the wealth of over half the world's people. For centuries. Why then should we play by the rules on some fictitious standard when it inevitably leads to new empires who do the same time and again?davidmc1158 said:
The same systems of denial still exist.
Pretending like others have to play by the same rules when time and again those rules are flaunted by those currently in power is merely to exalt some false paradigm that being free to be perpetually poor isn't a fate worse than being dead. It's no different from slavery. If your choice is to be a subsistent farmer and have some ruthless warlord who treats you like cattle to periodically steal your wealth, and death by refusing to labour... your free will is a curse.
If the grand majority of people on this planet have the choice of "Suffer your misfortunes and survive" and "Suffer your misfortunes and die" then at least remove the suffering. You don't need the Borg Hivemind to have a hivemind. We have it already. It's our survival instinct to put up with misery rather than face oblivion. It's the mindless consumption that casually forgets the constant oil spills that transformed the bountiful Niger Delta that fed millions into a hellish wasteland that allows a select handful to profit. We're already ants in the colony. The difference is all of us, in the back of our head, realize the horror of this.
We're already the devourer of worlds that kill millions. The difference is what I propose is moderating the suffering and removing the horror. The best you can hope for is to remove the realization for everyone they're an ant.
To do otherwise is to be far crueler... Surely you wouldn't advocate an equal level of suffering for all when the other option is the elimination of suffering in the colony?
For all the people that trumpet human nature is something worth saving. I challenge them to spend a month surviving in the Niger Delta or slums of Salsette in India. Just a month. I'm sure that's all you need to realize that being human isn't worth it if *billions* have to live that way to maintain the status quo of our collective 'individuality'. If anything, while there is no proof we are anything more than collective consumers of msnufactured selfhood, I posit there is direct proof that mindless consumption of manufactured individualism leads to damages and unnecessary suffering far beyond the pale.
If a Borg Hivemind would correct that, then maybe it's the only way yo save us from ourselves.
Man, the original post is so lacking of context that the replies are all over the place. If you care about others, then study psychology and read the studies about personality groups (like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), just to understand how lots of people find tiring to be concerned about what others think all the time, and being forced to do so can even make them feel overwhelmed (and that's not a psychological illness)
There are people who genuinely do not care about what other people think at all. These people are called psychopaths. Your definition of individualism is bad and you should feel bad.
Humans evolved, and are, a collective species. For most of our existence cooperation and coexistence were essential to survival, since that was the only way to gather enough food to survive, have enough strength in numbers to protect ourselves from predators, and a varied enough gene pool to not degenerate. Therefore when times get tough (during natural disasters, for example), people will group together and collectivism will inevitably follow. It's only in the last 50 or so years that we've been able to start embracing individualism as a lifestyle, since the first world doesn't live in scarcity.
Humans evolved, and are, a collective species. For most of our existence cooperation and coexistence were essential to survival, since that was the only way to gather enough food to survive, have enough strength in numbers to protect ourselves from predators, and a varied enough gene pool to not degenerate. Therefore when times get tough (during natural disasters, for example), people will group together and collectivism will inevitably follow. It's only in the last 50 or so years that we've been able to start embracing individualism as a lifestyle, since the first world doesn't live in scarcity.
OK, let me see if I can state this as clearly as possible so there will be no ambiguity about my position.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Life is inherently meaningless. We are nothing more than motes of dust on the cosmic winds. The only thing which makes any of this existence have any meaning whatsoever is our capacity to be self aware, aware of others and to exist with each other providing some form of happiness when possible.
When a sentient being is co-opted/taken/absorbed by a gestalt intelligence, then that individual being CEASES TO EXIST. They are dead, demised, passed on, no more. They have ceased to be. They have rung up the curtain and joined the bloody choir invisible. As such, the entire point of existence for that person has been erased. Removed. Utterly and completely destroyed.
By advocating for a 'Borg mind, you are effectively, directly and absolutely advocating for the eradication of humanity. Since the only point of humanity is to try to find some happiness within our brief, miserable and all-to-brief lives, you are thus advocating for the very horror and evil you claim you are trying to circumvent.
From my perspective, your proposal has no effective difference from advocating that every single human being should put a gun in their mouths and pull the trigger. After all, life is horror and the only way to end that horror, so you are effectively claiming, is to make certain that people are all fucking dead.
You obviously do not hold that view. I believe you are wrong. You believe I am wrong. I know you are not going to change my mind and that your are not swayed by my arguments. Such is the nature of life. Worth living even with the inevitable pain and suffering that comes with life.
Yes, dead. Or at least what you are now is dead. And that might be preferable than the grand majority of the planet living merely in knowledgeable service to the systems of their own misery solely to survive. Thought experiment. Do you hold the same opinion of euthanasia? Can't you foresee that suffering might be *so great* that erasure of self is seen as a basic human right?davidmc1158 said:
Another thought experiment. What if there were an alternative where instead of mandating equivalent suffering be shared by *all people* to at least try to meet reparations in removing merely unnecessary suffering that guarantees people no longer need to contemplate their existence? It's naive to assume that people shouldn't be given the choice. With neuroprosthetics we may eventually achieve the state where pain and discomfort might be entirely addressed through augmented and virtual reality systems.
I don't suppose you hold the same opinion about how global communications is changing the way we think on a *physiological level* and that's all before we start taking into account futuristic concepts like external sight achieved through directly chipping the visual cortex and corpus callosum now?
Yes. Who we are will inevitably die. How we think will be irrevocably changed. Humanity as it is will be altered. It will come in stages, not at once. And eventuslly you'll feel the same way how a chip in your brain helps people experience life and control through machines on the other side of the world.
And before you know it we'll be looking at machines and not drugs to control pain, to eliminate it, to make communication faster and more direct, to share once indescribable stimuli like a person seeing a particularly beautiful sunset once left to the sole purview of visual artists. What do you think the end of that path leads to? If you can experience anything, anywhere, anytime, what then does the human condition matter and why do you then even need a body ... and more over why even then develop a current idea of self?
Does it even matter if that sunset is even "real" anymore?
Yeah. Compared to what we are *now* it's probably death. But by that point it will be a status quo. Your grandchildren if you have any might be arguing with someone like me how reducing calorie needs by just having a brain in a jar somewhere is more ecologically friendly when you can just directly command robotic avatars anywhere else on the planet.
The same technology that allows for something like Deus Ex also completely removes the need for you to take your squishy, easily damaged brain everywhere "you" "go". And guess what!? People like me are experimenting with it right now. External sight through MMI, etc. We're kind of developing technologies already skipping high transhumanism, right into a post-humanist collective experience territory.
We can digitise a loose approximation of human sight straight into your brain from a special camera and a backpack worn computer unit *now*. What? You don't think we'll expand on technology like this? We won't take it further? We've been heading down this path since Cochlear implants and Soviet era scientists looking into myoelectrics, and the progress we've made tells me that it's a matter of a few centuries before people start asking the question; "Shouldn't we simply end all pain?"
My motto for this type of thing (ie. not individualism vs collectivism, but caring about other people's thoughts vs not) is: Consider what other people think of you, but don't let it control you.