The Collective Good?

What is this “community” our leaders ask us to sacrifice our rights to? Is it our family? Our town? City? Nation? Church? Racial or gender group? The answer is that it is all and none of the above. It really depends on where you’re standing and who you are listening to on any given day.

Several things that all groups, or collectives, have in common: They chose to ignore the fact that all collectives are made up of individuals; they fail to acknowledge that no action can ever benefit every member of a group; and finally, whenever any group is artificially propped up—affirmative action for blacks and/or women in the work place, tax-exemption status for for-profit religious organizations, and the Robin Hood economics of the welfare state—individuals who are not members of the chosen group are unjustly discriminated against.

Individuals house their own brains. There is no such thing as a collective thought. There is no such thing as collective speech. There is no such thing as collective rights. Only individuals have rights.

Consider even the simplest and most close-knit collective possible, the family, and know that even a family is a group of individuals. Families do not think with one brain. There is no such thing as a collective brain even on the smallest scale. A husband and wife do not share a brain. [Twin siblings do not share a brain!] What is good for one may not be good for the other. The hopes and dreams, goals and ambitions of each may be considerably different. There is no such thing as an action that is “good for the community,” even if it is a community of two and they are lawfully married!

So, why do men persist in defining themselves according to race, ethnic, religious group, etc.?

Men forfeit choice for the ease bestowed upon one who follows blindly, the freedom from having to think. They choose instead the security that comes to one as a member of the pack. They have no concept of “self.” They have no self-esteem. Any worth they may assign to themselves is as a member of the group: Black Power, Teens for Jesus, dozens of hyphenated-American groups, labor unions, political parties…and the list goes on for miles. Some substitute patriotism for thinking [which in the case of United States is at least understandable]. Americans are patriots by choice; we are people who love freedom. But, when Americans follow blindly, they too forfeit their freedom.

It goes something like this:

Indoctrination starts when you’re very young. Ninety-five percent of the adults you encounter from the day of your birth through college are members [to some degree] of some pack. Unless you remain vigil, you will think like you were taught to. They demand your mind, and you give it to them. For example, they tell you “to question your faith is sin,” so you don't question it. They tell you blind faith is a virtue, so you are actually proud of the fact that you believe something that defies reason.

Members of the pack are expected to fall in line, follow, and surrender their own thinking to the creed of the pack. A teacher, for example, who is a member of the union, is expected to overlook incompetence in a peer: The strength of the union depends on your willingness to ignore such problems. All teachers’ unions protect the jobs of failed teachers and oppose merit pay [to name but two immoral union tenants]. In exchange for your loyalty, you are accepted and protected.

All collectives punish independent thinking, even families. Children are taught the irrational faith of their parents and risk losing their family if they beg to differ. My own mother cried for three months when I tried to explain my thinking to her for the first time. The fact that I was more stable and clearly happier than she had ever seen me seemed not to matter. I had chosen the freedom of thinking with my own rational mind, but was made to feel I had betrayed my own family.

The only obligations I have to any group were defined for me by John Locke four centuries ago. They are: 1. to take care of myself; and 2. to do no harm.