Chapter 9: Individualism vs. Collectivism

Chapter Nine
Individualism vs. Collectivism

It seems obvious to me now—though I was slow coming to the conclusion—that the institution of private property, the dispersion of power and importance that goes with it, has been a main factor in producing that limited amount of free-andequalness which Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution.

— Max Eastman

The most materially and spiritually depressing systems of social organization are those that embrace the mechanistic and degrading premise of collectivism. Mankind has, for thousands of years, suffered under these most oppressive and dreary social systems. In its political manifestation, it provides society with a herd-oriented image. Perhaps it is genetic memory—certainly not pragmatism—that is recapitulated in the appetites of so many moderns for collective systems.

The twentieth century demonstrated to thoughtful men and women the totally inhumane nature of any system premised on political collectivism. A sign on a church in the former East Berlin that read “nothing grows from the top down,” succinctly identified the anti-life nature of all forms of institutionallydirected, collective control over people. Collectivism is the ultimate expression of the pyramidal model of the universe. It is the epitome of power-based thinking (i.e., that it is appropriate for some people to exercise coercive authority over the lives and property of others). Judged by its own materialistic premises, collectivism is unable to withstand any rigorous economic analysis. If the twentieth century resolved anything, it is the superiority of free market economic systems over commandand-control state systems in the production of goods and services. And when measured against such spiritual needs as the sense of personal dignity and self-worth that come from having complete authority over one’s life, collectivism is even less attractive. It was so thoroughly discredited in the Iron Curtain countries as to help bring about the collapse of those regimes, and remains held together in China only through vicious military repression. It has proven itself both an economically and spiritually bankrupt system.

As suggested at the outset of this book, in discussing collectivist thought and systems, one must clearly distinguish collective and cooperative behavior. As social beings, cooperation is both natural and essential to our well-being. None of us would have survived birth for more than a few hours without a family—or someone filling the family role—caring for us. We might otherwise have been dropped beside a trail or, currently, placed in a dumpster shortly after having been born, a practice which, if generalized, would have led to the extinction of our species. Cooperative undertakings arise when individuals freely choose to associate and “work with others in a common effort.”¹ The focal point for cooperative efforts is individuals coming together, voluntarily, to further mutual purposes.

A number of our allegedly “primitive” fellow humans have developed some sophisticated tribal forms of group cooperation which, at the same time, inhibit the development of political power. Tribal chiefs, far from being coercive authorities over others, are often the means by which centralized power is discouraged. Tribal chiefs—a role that does not even exist in some tribes—have been burdened with so many ceremonial functions as to deprive them of opportunities to pursue power over their fellows. His failure to perform the prescribed rituals would cause him to lose face within the tribe.² As Pierre Clastres has observed: “Humble in scope, the chief’s functions are controlled nonetheless by public opinion. A planner of the group’s economic and social activities, the leader possesses no decisionmaking power; he is never certain that his ‘orders’ will be carried out.”³ Such cooperative, non-coercive forms of social organization contrast with the systematized violence of the modern nation-state, whose very existence depends upon the inculcation of an enforced collective mindset.

Collectivism is “a social theory or doctrine that emphasizes the importance of the collective (as the society or state) in contrast to the individual.”⁴ By definition, the collective entity is the focus, both as to purpose and direction. With the exception of voluntarily organized communal societies such as the religious or philosophical communities that sprang up across America in the nineteenth century,⁵ or twentieth-century cooperatives, collectivism has generally been coercively constituted. In comparison with the mutually-supportive, face-to-face relationships in smaller, cooperative groups, modern institutionalized collectives such as the state have had to rely on artificial, abstract identities through which total strangers can be compressed into contrived multitudes. As we saw in the discussion of “ego boundaries,” collective entities are comprised of persons who subordinate themselves to a group identity. Organizations, particularly the state, encourage and exploit such behavior in order to channel the energies of individuals into group-serving purposes. It would be impossible to organize massive forms of social destructiveness such as wars and genocides unless sufficient numbers of people first had their sense of identity mobilized into the collectivist mindset. When we so organize ourselves, we become alienated not only from all who do not share our abstract identities, but from any inner sense of self that cannot be harmonized with group purposes.

We can also experience a sense of alienation from the material world in which we live as a result of allowing coercive collectives to usurp control over our lives. The defining characteristic of political collectives is the centralized authority over property within the group. This, in turn, produces within people a fragmented, depersonalized relationship to property. We learn to think of property as something apart from, rather than a part of, our lives. We babble political catechisms that “human rights are more important than property rights,” not being aware that such thinking strips away any real world meaning to the exercise of liberty, leaving us clinging to empty abstractions for an understanding of what it means to be free. In embracing such hollow bromides, we participate in the Orwellian delusion that we can enjoy liberty even as the state directs, regulates, and confiscates what we like to pretend is “our” property. The debate over private, individual ownership versus collective, political control of property, has nothing to do with “social responsibility,” or “greed,” or “economies of scale,” or “fairness,” or “public goods” analyses, or “equality,” or protecting the environment, or ending racism, or helping the poor. Such purported ends are simply the sales pitches used to rationalize the transfer of authority from individuals to the state. The real debate, which institutionalists do not want to see staged, has to do with where the locus of control over our lives and property is to reside. All “human rights” are property rights, the issue always turning into the inquiry: who has the “right” to do what, and with what?

We become collectivized not through force of arms, but by our willingness, brought about through years of careful conditioning begun in our childhood, to identify ourselves by reference to one or more abstractions. We are, by nature, social beings with need for companionship, cooperation for the achievement of mutual benefits, and a sense of community. Such needs, however, have been exploited by institutional interests desirous of having us organize ourselves around abstractions that serve organizational purposes. Through words, ideas, symbols, and other images, we develop the “ego boundary” identities discussed in chapter four. By reference to nationality, race, gender, religion, language, or any of a number of other abstractions, we come to think of ourselves not as individuals, but as members of some collective. Although we still act within and upon our world in order to further our survival— activities that necessitate decision making over property—the purpose of our action shifts from enhancing the well-being of specific persons (e.g., our selves, spouses, children, parents, etc.) to that of various abstract entities (e.g., the state, church, corporation, etc.). This depersonalizing, collectivizing process is nowhere more evident than in the methods used by the military (e.g., shaving one’s head, wearing uniform clothing, and formal training to get the soldier to repress his individuallydirected behavior in favor of obedience to constituted authorities) to mold troops into an institutionally-cloned mold of fungible robots.

As we move from personal, individualized priorities in our lives —David Riesman’s “inner-directed” person⁶—to abstract, collectively-defined persons, our relationships to property also change. In becoming “other-directed,” we make ourselves subservient to institutional interests, transferring decision-making power over our lives and other ownership interests to such entities. By creating “individual” versus “collective” divisions within ourselves, we experience both internal conflict, and conflict with the “others” who are behaving as we are toward the objects of their ego-boundaries. This is how our world got into its present mess, and only a reversal of our thinking will get us out of it. But just as we cannot end conflict without privatizing our sense of self, i.e., by withdrawing our energies from institutionally-managed ego-boundaries; we cannot move to a system of privately owned property without dismantling the divisive, conflict-ridden thinking that has collectivized our sense of who we are. Our sense of humanity is not to be found in either an isolated hermitage, or as undifferentiated members of a herd.

It would be gratuitously generous to the state of intellectual discourse in this culture to imagine that there has been a significant debate over the competing values of “individualism” and “collectivism.” To undertake such an inquiry would force a close examination of the nature and importance of property, including the central question of self-ownership. Ideologues and members of the institutional establishment would find such a focused discussion destructive of their principal purpose: to promote their respective interests through the control of human beings. This, in turn, would necessitate asking the most spiritually relevant of all social questions: does life belong to the living, or to institutional collectives? It is the Dred Scott question again: is each of us our own property, or the property of others?

Institutions provide the most poignant examples of behavior that is highly energized yet lacking in the spiritual dimension of life. Their energies are supplied by men and women who, in order to advance their individual interests, largely have to repress those values that do not serve the institution. While a kind of ersatz spirituality is provided to people as an added inducement for their participation in organizational purposes (e.g., “patriotism,” “comradeship,” “holiness”), such values are always secondary to the paramount interests of the institution. They arise from outside rather than from within the individual. Any display of spiritual dimensions that arise from within the individual as an expression of his or her independent sense of being may be tolerated by established authorities, but not if they are taken seriously so as to interfere with preeminent systemic purposes (e.g., “conscientious objection” to participation in wars). The temptation to experience or express such inner energies is discouraged by admonitions such as “don’t get emotional.”

While people often express their spirituality in association with others, such sentiments have transcendent meaning only if they resonate within the individual independently of any purposes external to the person. Just as emotions such as love, happiness, or excitement can occur only within individuals, spiritual expression arises from inner voices speaking from both the collective unconscious of mankind and the personal experiences of the individual. We may share our endeavors with one another, our transcendent experiences are peculiar to each of us. There is no more of a “collective spirit” to mankind than there is a collective DNA, an endless cloning of some idealized person. Furthermore, experiencing our spiritual nature necessitates that each of us have a realm of authority in the world that is inviolate from the intrusions of others. Only as we insist upon the liberty to actualize our “inner” being in the “outer” world, can we end the conflict-ridden division in our lives and discover a genuine connectedness with others and the rest of nature.

The spiritual and emotional bankruptcy that affects so many of us is reflected in our inability to integrate psychic and materialistic needs so as to live without contradiction and be able to express a sense of wholeness in our daily lives. We cannot discharge our bankruptcy and learn to live with a sense of integrity until we assert the will to be the owners and controllers of our own lives. It is in this sense that the personal ownership of property becomes inextricably intertwined with an emerging spiritual renaissance: if we regard ourselves as a sufficient reason for being, we will enjoy a realm of unfettered authority —as defined by our property interests—with which to express our personal sense of being.

Because such inquiries threaten the reduction, if not total withdrawal, of our energies from institutional purposes, there has been an understandable resistance to this spiritual reawakening. Institutionalists bleat their contempt for what they label the “irresponsibility” of the “me generation,” hoping, thereby, to shame us back into our assigned organizational stalls. The statists condemn us for our preoccupation with acquiring material wealth, all the while scheming to despoil that which we have accumulated. We are urged to limit our sense of wonder to institutionally crafted technologies, and to confine our inquiries to those amenable to the scientific method. Admittedly, science does a wonderful job answering the kinds of questions science is willing to ask. But more and more of us understand that the kinds of questions we are in greater need of asking are those that offer little in the way of material, quantifiable answers.

Whether we approach our understanding of economics from a socialistic or free-market perspective, very little inquiry is directed to anything but materialistic considerations. Marx’s “dialectical materialism” seems to have set the tone for most modern comparative analyses of “command-and-control” versus market-driven systems. There appears to be an implicit agreement, even among most free-market advocates, that quantitative “bottom-line” outcomes are sufficient to measure the superiority of one system over another. But mankind’s material prosperity, important as it is, is not the only factor in the equation. The collapse of state socialism did more than alter the means by which material values are best provided for in our world. It also raised the question about how we regard both ourselves and our neighbors; do we see ourselves as autonomous but cooperative individuals, or as interchangeable “units” in one or another collective?

From the perspective of institutions, individuality becomes a form of entropy (i.e., energy otherwise unavailable for their productive purposes) that they insist on repressing. Liberty is a very volatile condition, conducive to all kinds of uncertainties and unpredictabilities. Institutions prefer uniformity, standardization, and the sense of security that comes from knowing that their interests will not be upset by diverse and spontaneous influences that cannot be exploited for organizational ends. A society of free-spirited, self-interest motivated individuals cooperating with one another for their own productive purposes will be quite vibrant, but unsettling to established entities that regard their interests as ends in themselves. For such reasons, since institutions regard the fate of both civilizations and human beings as secondary to their own purposes, individuality must be quashed in favor of a more standardized and controllable humanity.

Collectivist systems have depended upon the mechanistic, reductionist paradigm represented in Newtonian thinking. A belief that nature is structured in relatively simple patterns capable of being reduced to identifiable and measurable calculations, is essential to hierarchically planned and controlled societies. To a collectivist, the world consists largely of “matter”— human beings included—whose qualities and differentiations are largely confined to chemical or mechanical description, and whose essence is to be servo-mechanisms in some giant, institutional purpose. Thus does the soldier become little more than expendable cannon fodder,⁷ whose appearance and behavior is uniform in every respect; while other individuals are vulgarly dismissed as “the masses.”

As we saw in chapter five, most collectivists find comfort in such self-contradictory sentiments as Pierre Proudhon’s “property is theft,”⁸ and George Bernard Shaw’s “property is organized robbery.”⁹ Were their thinking more focused, they would have become aware that for “theft” and “robbery” to occur, there must be an owner to be despoiled. From whom do they imagine such property to have been taken, and upon what basis did these phantom prior owners base their claims? If the answer is some amorphous “mankind,” how is control exercised by an entire species, and what are the boundaries by which such interests are defined? Is it not clear that these very statements negate the legitimacy of the alleged earlier claimants? If it is an act of “theft” for a specific individual to assert a claim of ownership over a precise item of property against an undefined “owner,” how does a “claim”—and made by whom?— advanced on behalf of a nonexistent collective over undefined property, rise to a level worthy of respect? Such is the confused and wholly abstract base upon which collectivist thought rests.

Because collectivism presupposes a uniform and undifferentiated treatment of people, it has long embraced the doctrine of “egalitarianism,” a concept wholly inconsistent with the inconstancies and variations implicit in individual liberty. The notions of equality and stability are closely related, each implying a resistance to practices that generate differences among people. Many acknowledge the importance of diversity and pluralism in fostering the life-sustaining adaptability of a species or a culture, and then turn around and embrace a doctrine that erodes the foundations of such negentropic values.

The study of chaos informs us that liberty, which is essential to a diverse culture, is a necessary condition for both producing and responding to the fluctuations upon which far-from-equilibrium systems work to generate the more complex patterns that help resist entropy. Adaptability to turbulence is essential to any vibrant system. Those who insist upon conditions of uniformity tend, much like brain-injured people, to be challenged by complexity and the processes of growth and change that are necessary for creativity and life itself. Creativity necessitates change, and change is a most uneven process. By contrast, the doctrine of equality is premised on a commitment to inflexibility and nonvariation (and with it, the suppression of individual liberty), requiring the maintenance of equilibrium conditions that further the entropic decline of a society.

This is why, contrary to our accustomed thinking, political systems based on egalitarian sentiments (e.g., state socialism, welfarism, social leveling) are inherently conservative in nature. The turbulence that accompanies change is most threatening to those with established interests, many of whom now have an incentive to promote political policies that discourage change. Such programs are focused upon the redistribution of some existing body of privately owned property, and the enactment of governmental policies (e.g., graduated income tax, antitrust or licensing laws, or other regulatory measures) that impede the processes of creativity and change that produce greater diversity. It is yet another example of the paradoxical nature of our world that such political programs, while appealing to the sense of envy and resentment upon which egalitarianism is based and purporting to dismantle the benefits of concentrated wealth, have had the opposite effect. It is no idle coincidence that the most firmly established institutions (e.g., the state, major corporations, churches, and universities), whose well-being depends upon preserving the status quo in order to protect their wealth, have been some of the most vocal advocates of egalitarian policies.

Contrary to such doctrines, liberty, as a catalyst for change, provides the best opportunity for wealth to be both created and subject to a continuing process of redistribution. A condition of liberty is no friend to those allied to the status quo, who see it more as a form of entropy to be eliminated. In the engineering concept of “equipartition of energy,” we get a partial explanation of how energy tends to get evenly distributed throughout systems.¹⁰ The way in which heat gets evenly distributed within a pan of boiling water illustrates this principle. It provides a metaphorical example for why, in an unrestrained marketplace, wealth that is produced tends to get redistributed throughout the economy without anyone having intended to bring about such a result. Wealth provides a means for enhancing one’s wellbeing by securing the cooperation of others—be they employees, suppliers, or customers—which will occur only if others expect to better their own conditions in the exchange process.

Such are the consequences of the dynamic produced by the interplay of individual self-interests in a setting in which parties are free to respond to the specific conditions before them. Furthermore, unrestricted entry and free competition would be the most effective means of redistributing wealth out of the hands of those who lack the resiliency to respond to energized rivalry. But by impeding the processes of change, government taxation and regulatory policies have helped entrench the positions of the more established economic interests. Standardization becomes a tool for narrowing the range within which others, who might otherwise emerge as competitive threats—may operate. This is why established institutions have been consistent supporters of the political structuring of the marketplace.¹¹

Even more compelling is the fact that egalitarianism is premised on the illusion that wealth consists of some fixed body of property, and that the rich have taken from the rest of mankind more than their “fair share” of such wealth. Proudhon’s and Shaw’s descriptions of the nature of property are grounded in such fanciful thinking. Furthermore, unlike most other species, humans not only consume wealth, but create it, an attribute that has been our greatest source of resiliency. We have not simply taken from nature, but have transformed resources to produce what did not previously exist! There is, of course, one expression of equality that collectivists are most anxious not to permit. As long as each of us has an unrestricted decision-making control over our own lives and property, there is an equality of authority that prevails among us. This is what institutionalists fear the most, and why there is such widespread hostility to the private ownership of property. It is in the practice of evenly distributed authority throughout mankind that “liberty” and “equality” are quite harmonious. But when egalitarianism was seized upon by the politically ambitious as a tool for gaining power over their fellow humans, the divisive nature of all political systems ended up destroying this harmonious and mutually respectful relationship. Rather quickly, “equality” came to be regarded not as a claim to immunity from state coercion, but as a condition to be conferred upon people by political force! But the exercise of the power to redesign and alter the lives of others—an authority enjoyed by a select few—can hardly be reconciled with notions of equality. If one scratches any egalitarian deeply enough, one finds a very deep-seated animosity to expressions of individual liberty as well as a commitment to totalitarian thinking and behavior.

All political power is premised on the unequal distribution of authority in society, for some people (e.g., politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and the special interests who enjoy the use of such power) are permitted to exercise control over not only themselves, but others. The allegedly “classless” Iron Curtain countries, with government officials living in comparative luxury and enjoying special privileges vis-à-vis their so-called “comrades,” were a clear example of this phenomenon. But the practice prevails in every political system, by virtue of the coercive nature of politics itself. Thus, an egalitarian principle, in which each of us exercises 100 percent authority over our own lives and property, becomes corrupted into an elitist undertaking, in which our personal autonomy is reduced to, let us say, 70 percent, while the effective decision making of state officials, along with those who advance their special interests through political means, is increased far beyond the range of their own self-ownership. This is why a politically based equality is both self-contradictory and totally incompatible with a condition of individual liberty.

Egalitarian thinking squeezes such nonlinear factors as individual uniqueness, spontaneity, and autonomy out of the meaning of life. Inquiries into the quality of life become subjected to a quantitative analysis, with linear calculations and comparisons dominating and standardizing the mind.

As long as we conceive of the world in reductionist, mechanistic, fragmented ways; as long as we accept Cartesian mind/ body dualism as part of our understanding of “reality,” we are inclined to look upon life in behavioristic ways. We are then disposed to the operant conditioning of systems intent upon exploiting us for their purposes. From there, it is easy to consider ourselves as little more than a given organic mass that goes through life acting, and reacting, on the basis of causal factors lying outside us. At the same time, we see one another as human billiard balls, responding to forces that we neither influence nor direct, and delude ourselves that our movements around the table are the products of “free will.” It is just such a dreary, Skinnerian view of life that has sustained the institutionalized slaughter and human degradation that defined the twentieth-century and works to stamp its imprimatur upon the twenty-first. Whether political regimes parade under the banner of “communism,” “socialism,” “God,” “fascism,” “Keynesianism,” “corporate statism,” “Allah,” “democracy,” “welfare statism,” or the “New World Order”—systems whose superficial differences mask their fundamentally synonymous nature— they all share in the collectivist premise that existing lives and property are subject to a superior claim of rightful authority by the state.

Our institutionalized training has conditioned us to fear individualism, to assume that it equates with isolation from and antagonism toward others. The “individualist” is often portrayed as the “loner,” the misanthropic recluse who exhibits no regard for the interests or well-being of others. We are told that, only through collective agencies—the state, the church, the corporation, the labor union, etc.—can we find a sense of cooperation and wholeness. The debate between individualism and collectivism has arisen out of our willingness to allow institutions to insinuate themselves into our thinking and our lives.

We ought to have learned from basic biology that the individual is not only the carrier of DNA (hence, life itself) from one generation to the next, but also the carrier of the values upon which a civilization depends if it is to retain its vigor. Individuals have produced the art, music, literature, philosophies, scientific discoveries, inventions, and engineering and technological innovation that underlie great civilizations. The statue of David was conceived and sculpted by Michelangelo, not by an artists’ guild. The Mona Lisa derived from the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, not from some corporate “paint-by-thenumbers” kit. Philosophic and religious thinkers—from Plato and Aristotle to Locke and Marx, and from Zoroaster to Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Martin Luther—continue to have their personal influence upon the minds of subsequent generations. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and numerous other composers, discovered deep within themselves musical compositions that have greatly enriched the human spirit. The writings of Shakespeare, Milton, and Dante were the products of individual minds, not a writers’ workshop. It was Thomas Edison, not a local labor union, who worked in his simple workshop for long hours, often at subsistence levels, to invent many of the technological underpinnings of modern civilization. Entrepreneurs such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and countless other creative individuals produced the commercial and industrial “instruments of expansion” upon which the American civilization has depended for its material well-being. In turn, merchants and other tradesmen exchanged such wares with the rest of the world, extending their benefits to others and receiving the goods of other peoples in return. None of these works were mandated by state coercion; they arose out of the liberty of individuals to pursue what their minds and spirits drove them to accomplish.

Even the most well-intentioned collectivists have never been able to divorce their genuine desires to benefit others from their need to exercise coercive power over the lives and property of their fellow humans. To such minds, “good” motivations excuse harmful behavior. Nor are their egalitarian sentiments able to transcend their collective leanings to embrace the individualistic sentiments in e.e. cummings’ observation that “equality is what does not exist among equals.”¹²

The holographic model provides a fitting metaphor for ending the institution-serving division between our individual and social natures, allowing us to see that they are complementary aspects of the same dynamic of self-interested behavior. The boundary lines in our dualistic thinking that help to separate us from one another, begin to dissolve once we see them as fabrications of our minds. In their place, perhaps, may arise the vision of ourselves and our neighbors as interconnected individuals. Each of us is a biologically and experientially unique person who, at the same time, needs the companionship, support, and cooperation of others in order to survive. We are neither isolated hermits nor fungible cells in some monstrous, sixbillion headed leviathan that moves about the earth in response to an imagined collective will. The individual and the numerous are manifestations of the wholeness that lies hidden beneath our dualistic divisions of reality. A jar of beans, for instance, can appear to us as an individual bean-filled vessel, or as a combination of individual beans, whose absence leaves only an empty jar. Recall how the examples of Seurat paintings or newspaper photographs remind us of the interconnected nature of the singular and the general.

There is a popular notion, so long unquestioned as to rise almost to the level of a settled truth, that individuals are motivated, in large part, to preserve and promote the well-being of the species. In his book The Selfish Gene,¹³ Richard Dawkins proposes a more realistic explanation of behavior: we are motivated at an unconscious level by a desire to perpetuate our individual genes. Just as the member of any other species acts to advance its own interests, our genes seek to perpetuate themselves from one generation to the next. To accomplish this, of course, requires the cooperation of another individual equally driven by this need. Such individual self-interests combine, through sexual reproduction, to produce the uniqueness of each child. This, in turn, fosters genetic diversity, an unintended consequence of which is to enhance the resiliency of the species itself. Just as we see in the dynamics of the marketplace, self-interest driven behavior can, without anyone intending to do so, bring about the well-being of an entire species or society.

The collective model upon which pyramidal systems are grounded prefers the institutional entity (e.g., the corporation or the state) as the fundamental reality, the “person” for whom human beings function as little more than subservient, fungible units. Those who would discourage the separation of the individual from the numerous do so solely as a means for gaining collective control over human beings. Through the divisions generated by thought, we come to distrust others, save those who, in exchange for the authority they demand over our lives, promise us protection from these contrived fears.

A holographic system of social organization, on the other hand, is one in which both the purpose and the authority for decision making is distributed throughout the social system through the principle of private ownership. Only as decision making is horizontally distributed can a peaceful and creative social order emerge from the boundless diversity and imaginations of free individuals and autonomous groups each seeking the full expression of their sense of being.

The fanciful nature of collectivist thinking has kept us confused in such matters. The holographic model presumes all of us to be composed of a seemingly endless variety of traits, dispositions, preferences, values, beliefs, ambitions, and other qualities. It presumes that in the pursuit of individually defined interests we are likely to bump into one another on occasion, or to desire the same resource, and that, in order to accomplish our purposes, it is desirable for each of us to minimize the conflicts and injuries we might have with one another in these pursuits. This holographic paradigm is premised not on some collectively defined undertaking, but on a recognition of the limitless diversity that inheres in the individualized nature of our being and, as a corollary, the common interest we share in a social environment that allows for the full expression of such diversity. It is the spontaneous, autonomous, and diverse nature of our individuality that is spread across the holographic film, not the homogenized image of some make-believe “common man.”

Because institutions have set their purposes apart from and superior to those of people, their existence depends on an e pluribus unum, “melting pot” mentality that turns otherwise decent and responsible individuals into masses to be manipulated and directed toward dehumanizing, collective purposes. In the words of Doctor Murnau in the motion picture Kafka: “A crowd is easier to control than an individual. A crowd has a common purpose. The purpose of the individual is always in question.”¹⁴

It is the uniqueness and energy of life, as reflected both in the singular nature of our respective DNA’s and our autonomous and spontaneous character, against which collectivism wars. What is both remarkable and ennobling about life is its personal and insistent struggle against the inevitability of the second law of thermodynamics. It is another example of the interconnectedness of what, to our dualistic thinking, appears to us as contradiction: we live in a terminal state and yet are open systems who can take in energy from outside ourselves as we valiantly act to overcome, or at least delay, our fate. Though our lives may have no greater purpose beyond what we give to them, we search for some transcendent meaning to our existence that we hope will have eternal significance. But our pursuit of such ends requires us to be open to and supportive of this creative process, including having an awareness of the conditions that make possible such responses to our entropic destiny.

By eliminating distinctions among individuals, egalitarianism fosters the centralizing thinking and practice of dividing people into exclusive groups, within which people are expected to find meaning and direction for their lives. The increased centralization of authority in institutions has come about as a consequence of the enlarging of our “ego-boundaries” to embrace various abstract collectives. Because most of us have not found a capacity for generating transcendent experiences within ourselves, we enlarge our ego identities in the hope of realizing a fuller life experience in the greatness we imagine to lie in certain institutions or other abstractions. As we have seen, however, in attaching ourselves to a collective identity, we increase the likelihood of bringing ourselves into conflict with others (i.e., those who identify themselves with other abstractions). Because we now have an expanded boundary definition of ourselves, usually in forms that assume national or worldwide dimensions, “our” interests are bound to confront a much wider range of persons. When our boundaries become enlarged, we experience an increase in trespasses by others. As wars and genocides amply demonstrate, millions of men, women, and children, with whom we have never had a personal dispute, can suddenly become our sworn enemy, not because of anything they have personally done, but because of our respective ego attachments. Wars and other conflicts are most likely to occur along the boundaries that separate us, whether geographical, religious, ideological, or economic in nature. This makes the ego-boundary game a much more confrontational practice than relating to others from an individually-centered perspective.

Furthermore, in identifying ourselves with such large-scale collectives, we greatly restrict our felt sense of purpose in, and control over, our lives. Collectivism deadens the spirit and, in so doing, helps to produce a passive humanity. People succumb to the mass of power that confronts them in the form of an external, collective body and, feeling overwhelmed, may simply give up trying to discover a deep meaning and purpose in their lives. A more inner-directed man or woman, on the other hand, might find the designing of a building, or the raising of a child, or the creation of works of art, or the competent performance of one’s work, or the development of a centered base of awareness, sufficient to satisfy their needs for transcendent, spiritually-grounded experiences. Because such ends, and the means of accomplishing them, are more narrowly focused, the achievement of their purpose is more within the capacities of the individual. Such man or woman has the power to develop a personal sense of order by acting upon the resources within his or her immediate control. The woman who seeks fulfillment in sculpting need only improve her skills, discover more interesting materials with which to work, or continue her own insightful explorations as to what is meaningful for her to express in her work. She need not concern herself with satisfying legislative committees, or getting the right candidate elected to office, or hoping that others will experience a change in consciousness.

But once we identify ourselves with an abstraction, the focus of our activity shifts from our individual selves to collectives. The externally-directed feminist who can find satisfaction only in changing what she perceives as male-dominated cultural patterns; or the “God-fearing American” who will not be content until his religious and political visions are enforced upon all; or the animal rights advocate who will not rest until the lives of all animals are respected by all humans, will eventually discover that the conditions necessary for their sense of accomplishment are not within their power to control. Having projected their sense of self onto abstract collectives over which they have no genuine control, they are left without the resources upon which to act in furtherance of their desired order. The “butterfly effect” illustrates how effective we can be when the focal point of our actions is more individualized. But most of us still cling to our collective image of “self,” basking in the reflected light of some institution, a practice that generates personal frustration and infuriation. Such anger, partially explained by the “frustration-aggression” hypothesis,¹⁵ has been a major contributor to the modern environment of confrontation and violence that accounts for so much of our social—and all of our political— lives.

By its very nature, collective ownership generates confusion and conflict due to the bifurcation of the elements of claim and control. Who is entitled to make decisions over property, and who is responsible for the consequences of such decisions? When property is privately owned, these elements are integrated in the hands of the owner, and we know to whom to look for answers to both questions. In a system of collective ownership, by contrast, there is uncertainty as to who the “owner” actually is and, as a consequence, confusion in answering both these questions. Who does own Yellowstone Park? Is it the President of the United States, or the Secretary of the Interior? Is it the head of the United States Park Service, or perhaps the camp rangers who are actually in control of the park? Presumably not, since none of these people could sell the park and pocket the proceeds. If the answer is the abstraction, “the United States of America,” what human decision-maker exercises his or her ultimate will on behalf of this entity?

If you were to telephone the Park Service and ask them this question, you would probably get one of those high school civics class answers that “the American people” own the park. And if you go on to ask: “does that mean that I am an owner?,” you will probably receive an affirmative reply. But, if you then ask the Park Service to identify your portion of Yellowstone so that you can exert your control over it, you will quickly discover that your alleged interest does not, in fact, exist. Should you insist on entering “your” park at times contrary to the posted admissions signs, you will probably be arrested for the crime of “criminal trespass.” If you were to engage in an activity prohibited by park officials, you would likely be arrested for this offense as well. The absurdity of the arrangement regarding collective property ownership was reflected in a sign in a city park somewhere in Kansas that declared: “No loitering! No bicycle riding! No picnicking! No ball-playing! REMEMBER: This is Your Park!”

The idea of collective ownership explains why there is so much conflict and confusion over the policies and curricula of government schools. First of all, by being taxed to support these schools, taxpayers erroneously believe that they have some property based interest that entitles them to control what “their” schools are doing and teaching. Once again we are reminded of the conflicts over government school curricula and methodologies that have become a regular topic in news reports and on radio talk shows.

Like two children fighting over a CD player given to them jointly, the parents of government-school children angrily insist that their schools teach their values to their children. Privately-owned schools experience fewer conflicts, not because they have more intelligent administrators or better curricula, but because there is no illusion as to who owns the school. The owners announce school policies, curricula, and other matters of interest to parents who then make decisions as to whether to enter into a contract with the school for the education of their children. If the school later decides to change its policies, the parents can freely enter into a contract with another school that is more to their liking or, if no such alternative meets their standards, they may decide to home-school their children.

The individual liberty that is implicit in decentralized systems not only fosters more options for both the suppliers and consumers of goods and services, but in so doing, generates individual responsibility. In selecting from numerous alternatives available to them, parents must engage in a more critical assessment of the curricula and teaching methods of schools, become more aware of the developmental stages of their children, formulate expectations they have of schools, and create a sense of mutuality of purpose and respect for their children. In the case of alternative health practices, individuals become more active in identifying and communicating symptoms to doctors or other practitioners, and seeking out alternative explanations and/or treatments for their ailments, instead of being passive recipients of standardized evaluations and treatments. In matters of a spiritual nature, individuals seek alternative forms of expression that appeal to their inner, spiritual sense, rather than wrenching and conditioning themselves in an effort to conform to externally derived dogmas and rituals. With an environment of liberty allowing individuals to control their lives and property in furtherance of their chosen options, each becomes an unrestrained free agent, rather than a fungible subject of a captive audience.

The sharp contrast in responsibility between privately- and state-owned property is nowhere better illustrated than in comparing the care and maintenance of a private amusement park, such as Disneyland, and almost any city-owned park. Disneyland is immaculate in its cleanliness; no youth gangs run loose to annoy people; and crime is virtually nonexistent, thus permitting families to wander freely without fear of being molested or attacked. By contrast, many city parks are overrun with trash, graffiti, unsavory characters, and muggers. No responsible parent would dream of taking his or her family to such a park for an evening of enjoyment. Or, compare the upkeep of a private school with that of all too many government school buildings with their broken windows, graffiti-covered walls, and prisonlike steel fences. Nor can we forget the lessons learned from the erstwhile Iron Curtain countries: privately owned farms were much more productive than collective farms, just one of the many liberalizing influences that helped to dismantle the system of state ownership in such countries.

There are a number of motivational factors that cause privately-owned facilities to be better managed and more productive than those that are owned collectively. Where property is owned privately, there is a direct correlation, to the owner, between the costs and the benefits associated with the use of such property. Because I will reap the benefits of doing so, I have a greater incentive to incur the expenses of repairing a building that I own than I have to contribute to the repair of the city hall. We can recall Robert Ardrey’s observation that among animals, personal territory carries with it a sense of energy sufficient to provide an owner with the capacity to repel trespasses even by stronger attackers.

Collective ownership, by contrast, fosters both the “tragedy of the commons” and “free rider” problems, wherein individuals are neither motivated to ration the use of a collective good or service, nor to incur the cost of providing such a good or service that they are able to enjoy without doing so. Still, politicized minds would rather use coercion to compel participation in state-owned activities than to rethink their assumptions by privatizing collective activities. As a result, we witness the inevitable increase in state coercion that accompanies rejections of private ownership and control of property. It is no coincidence that the bloodiest police-states in recent history (i.e., the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, China) practiced collective ownership and/or control of property.

Such examples should remind us, once again, that whatever is said to be owned by everyone is owned by no one. It should also remind us of the earlier point that blurring the boundaries of our information systems—be it language, knowledge, or property—helps to generate the social disorder that is essential to the interests of the state. Wartime slaughter, genocides, and other forms of state tyranny have, like the atrocities committed by other organized mobs, been produced by the illusion that we can collectively pursue ends for which none of us need be personally responsible. Few of us would have the stomach to personally confront a neighbor, or even a total stranger, and do to him what we thoughtlessly approve of government officials routinely doing to millions of others through their collective authority.

By identifying both ourselves and others with any abstraction, we externalize our sense of reality. Inquiries into “the good, the true, and the beautiful” produce standardized responses that conform to the interests of those entities with which we associate ourselves. We think of ourselves as being in a world that is “out there,” beyond us, a world that operates on the basis of “objective” principles that we learn to substitute for our inner, intuitive sense.

The collectivist mindset has depended upon a belief in objective values, particularly in economic matters. The presumption is that the price for which a product sells in the marketplace, which price is objective, correlates with the value of such product to market participants. In fact, the exchange value of a product will never equate with its price. Because we are motivated to act only out of an intention to be better off afterward than we would be had we not acted, any transaction between a buyer and seller is premised upon each anticipating a net gain. This means that the seller will subjectively value the item less than the money the buyer is willing to pay for it, while the buyer will value the product more than he will the money he is prepared to exchange for it. But subjectivity necessarily implies individualized decision-making and a multiplicity of preferences and actions, a condition that would be fatal to all collective systems. This process by which subjective values get translated into objective prices is what makes the study of economics—particularly microeconomics—such a fascinating window into human behavior.

Believing that economic values have an objective quality to them, has led to the popular belief that any price received by a seller in excess of this “value” constitutes “exploitation.” One sees this attitude expressed following a natural disaster, when retailers are able to sell scarce commodities at higher prices than usual. The mindset also surfaces in eminent domain cases, when the state pays a supposed “fair market value” for property taken from an unwilling owner. A “market price” for anything can be determined only when an owner’s claim is voluntarily transferred.

Were this idea simply confined to the economic analysis within a system of thought that has proven itself unviable in human affairs, it might make for only a footnote here. But the underlying sentiment persists beyond the realm of economics and permeates much of our social thinking. We hear it commonly expressed in the idea that there must be a “winner” and a “loser” in every transaction.

I confront this notion quite frequently in my classes. My response has been to ask the student uttering such beliefs if he or she has ever purchased an automobile from a dealer. I usually get a “yes” answer to my inquiry. The student will then go on to recite another article of faith in this view, namely, that the businessman, by virtue of his more abundant resources, enjoys an “unequal bargaining power” over the buyer, enabling him to “exploit” the buyer. One such discussion continued as follows:

“Are you aware of this ‘unfair advantage’ before entering into the transaction?,” I ask.

“Yes,” the student proclaims.

“So that, before agreeing to purchase the car, you know that you are going to be taken advantage of by the seller and, further, that you will ‘lose’ (i.e., be worse off afterward) in this transaction?”

“Yes,” the student responds.

“Then why would you enter into such an agreement in the first place?,” I ask. “If you have voluntarily entered into an economic transaction, knowing that you were going to be exploited, what would have motivated you to do so?”

“Because I have no choice,” he or she answers.¹⁶

This is the kind of muddled thinking produced by collectivist thought, a confusion that feeds the interconnected strands of personal irresponsibility and popular demands for political remedies for imagined “wrongs.” Such thinking conflates the exploitation that does exist in the world—such as acquiring the property of another through acts of theft, fraud, eminent domain, taxation, embezzlement, etc.—with one’s failure to anticipate the consequences of his or her voluntary acts.

For the collectivists to denounce, as “exploitation,” transactions in which individual property owners freely make decisions with one another, is not only to condemn life processes, but to fail to distinguish peaceful from violent behavior. The exploitation that derives from violence (e.g., an act of theft) constitutes a violation of the property principle. A voluntary act of exchange by an owner, on the other hand, represents not only the very essence of ownership, but is a real world expression of what it means to be a free, independent individual. If a worker’s property interest in his or her work is “exploited” by the worker choosing to be employed by the businessman, under what circumstances will the collectivist acknowledge said worker to be free to make such a choice? When, in other words, does the worker acquire an existential authority over his or her own labor? Such is a moot question, of course, for such independence is precisely what no collectivist can abide.

The socialist, of course, will argue that the worker is not paid adequate compensation for his or her work—as though economic values have an objectively defined quality to them. It is also contended that the employee has no real “choice” in working for “exploitative” wages. From the perspective of the worker, however, such employment is the best of the available options. When collectivists endeavor to prevent the importation of goods manufactured in Third World countries by workers who are paid lower wages than are paid in America, for example, such efforts—when successful—deprive the foreign workers of employment options, thus worsening their lot.

Socialistic thinking, grounded in notions of “alienation” of workers from their work has, ironically, contributed to the disconnectedness many people have as a result of not being able to influence, through negotiation, their relationships with others. Collectivism requires the mindset that the individual is helplessly caught up in a presumed mass of humanity, the powerful forces of which he can neither comprehend nor deal. A.E. Housman’s lament, “I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made,”¹⁷ provides a lyric to the sense of personal inadequacy and vulnerability upon which all political systems depend. Only within a powerful group, it is believed, can one’s interests be effectively pursued. We see, herein, yet another example of the problems that can arise from divisive, dualistic thinking that fails to respect the inviolability of individual decision making. In teaching us to think of voluntarily transacted and compensated work as a form of “exploitation,” employees have increasingly allowed the state to preempt their authority to contract for themselves. Even worse, such dogmas—to the degree they are believed—weaken the listener and generate a sense of helplessness, the very mindset necessary for collective rule.

The same thinking has metastasized into other sectors of human activity. Landlord and tenant agreements, product standards, sales and employment practices, and the relationships of family members to one another, are further examples of the collectivist premise that the state should superintend our dealings with one another. Even the most personal of matters—including what food and drugs people may consume, their weight levels, and how they treat their pets—are now considered appropriate subjects for political/legal decision-making. As we saw earlier, personal behavior that was once confined to the domain of “manners” to be addressed by social pressures, has provided an ever-expanding list of public offenses to which the state is expected, by many, to respond. It is difficult to imagine any facet of human activity that, in today’s politicized climate, could be said to be safely reserved to individuals and beyond the reach of state power. We have become so passive in the management of our own affairs that we regard it as an accusation to want to “take the law into our own hands,” something we do whenever we freely negotiate with one another for the rules, i.e., a contract, that will govern our mutual relationships. In a free society, one supposedly grounded in a “social contract”, in whose hands should “the law” reside? What sense of personal alienation is engendered by the state presuming, contrary to our will, to act for our alleged benefit?

Because collectivist thinking, with its insistence upon objectively-defined values, has come to dominate the material dimensions of our lives, even non-material values (e.g., aesthetics, morality, religious and political principles) have been co-opted by “objective” thinking. That notions of “good” and “evil,” “beautiful” and “ugly,” and the like, are steeped in subjective preferences, has not discouraged many people from selfrighteously imposing their standards upon others.

Having already been taught the importance of security and the dangers of uncertainty, and believing that the state is capable of planning for and managing society for beneficial ends, we eagerly embrace the political structuring and regulation of our lives and property interests. Like dogs who carry their own leashes in their mouths, we readily subject ourselves to the rigid discipline of institutional authorities and channel our energies in ways that serve their ends.

Long before humanity embarked upon the Industrial Revolution, the life process had discovered the evolutionary and survival benefits of a system of exchange for mutual advantage. Might such arrangements in nature suggest to us that the roots of marketplace economics go much deeper than abstract, ideological preferences? Might a system of laissez faire be an expression of the need for life to be spontaneous and autonomous if it is to remain creative and thrive?

As we learn to think of our world more holographically, the divisive exploitation theories upon which all collectivist systems depend, begin to evaporate. At the same time, such a shift in consciousness may likely cause us to see how our well-being, as humans, is dependent upon the well-being of other life forms. It is not just the loss of individual species that should concern us, but the loss of the interactions among various species that could have produced a multiplicity of strategies for survival. It is out of this symbiotic dance, whose complexities, as the study of chaos tells us, are far too numerous to be prescribed or predicted, that biological diversity is strengthened.

To think of the world holographically, we must see through the dualistic processes by which our minds have created divisions in our lives. Nowhere is this more necessary than in our social relationships. We separate our individual and collective well-being, not recognizing that our mutual interests lie in preserving our individual liberty and property interests. The dichotomy into which we have been conditioned works to the benefit of institutions—most particularly the state—that promise to regulate our conduct so as to “balance” our allegedly “competing” interests. But this separation is wholly an artifact of our thinking. Were we to understand that what we have in common is a need to respect and protect the inviolability of one another’s lives and property, this false division would end. As long as we think of our individual interests as opposed to one another and seek wholeness within collectives, we end up institutionalizing the collective, turning it into an end in itself, the result of which is to produce the kind of rigidly ossified, coercive structures that destroy civilizations.

Because of the divisiveness generated by traditional thinking, we find it plausible to believe that our interests are fundamentally incompatible with one another. The twentieth century, alone, should have disabused us of the destructive and demeaning illusion that social order requires the subordination of the individual to some fanciful collective good. A holographic model of society does not imply collectivism dressed up in new costumes: quite the contrary. The holographic premise ends the divisive thinking that sees individual and social interests as being inherently in conflict.

Our acceptance of collectivist thinking has been the major contributor to the debasement of our lives. Being premised upon the subservience of individuals to institutional purposes, collectivism is unavoidably a system, in varying degrees, of human sacrifice. The degradation of the individual implicit in such thinking finds clear expression in the motion picture, Casablanca, when Rick declares: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”¹⁸ In a society whose members respected the inviolate, self-serving purpose of each person, such a statement would be met with contempt. It would be generally recognized that there is nothing “noble” in the sacrifice of even one person in furtherance of political adventures.

Through playing out the conflicts and contradictions inherent in the collectivist doctrine, we have turned human society into the dystopia that Hobbes ¹⁹ envisioned arising from the absence of systems brought about through such thinking. Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, and other fascistic and socialistic nightmare societies with their slave labor, death camps, wars, genocides, and other calculated cruelties, uniformly attest to the monstrous consequences of forcibly herding human beings. The fate of the Soviet Union, alone, a system in which so many well-intended persons had invested their intellectual energies, ought to be a warning as to how the exaltation of collectives ends up destroying the opportunities for individuals to realize their mutual interests through genuine cooperation and, in so doing, diminishes civilization, itself, as a viable, creative system.

From the works of a number of historians, we may induce an inverse relationship between a condition of liberty and the collapse of civilizations. If liberty is thought of as life pursuing what it chooses to pursue in order to produce the values upon which its viability depends; and if the structuring of life processes frustrates those ends, we may wish to consider that life has a dynamic of such a compelling nature that it will eventually bring about the collapse of structures that impede its expression.

We need to put aside the political and ideological myths that we continue to recycle as received wisdom and become aware of the dynamics that either produce or destroy a healthy society. The creative richness of a civilization derives from the behavior of individuals, not from some imagined collective genius. The creative process depends upon men and women being free to experiment; to generate and pursue any of a variety of options; to be mistaken; and to offend the habits, tastes, sensibilities, prejudices, or established interests of others. As we experience in “brainstorming” sessions, it is the interplay of individual insights and responses that gives birth to the new; a process that presumes the liberty of people to act upon the world.

The vibrancy of any system depends upon its capacity and willingness to both generate and respond to change. Neither individuals nor civilizations can remain creative unless people are free to direct their own energies and to convert some portion of the material world to their self-interested purposes. The death of civilizations, on the other hand, is facilitated by a movement from individualized to collective patterns of thinking and conduct. Fear mobilizes mass-mindedness which, in turn, produces the state’s deadliest expressions: wars and genocides. Nuclear and neutron bombs, with their capacities for killing hundreds of thousands of people in one strike, are the logical technological consequence of herding individuals into collectives. The indiscriminate slaughter of people and the massive destruction of cities, factories, transportation systems, and other forms of material wealth, are inconsistent with the creative processes of civilization. History reminds us that civilizations are created and sustained by individuals; they are destroyed by collectives.

Whether this civilization collapses from its accumulated entropy, or is able to transform itself into a more resilient system, will depend upon whether we are able to reform our organizational thinking and systems so as to enhance life-sustaining practices. Such fundamental alterations, however, must occur within each of us rejecting the collectivist premise that the interests of organizational entities have priority over those of individuals. If we are to transform our civilization, there must be a profound shift in both the thinking and practices that now threaten it, including our insistence upon identifying ourselves through collective “ego-boundary” attachments. We must begin by acknowledging that “life” belongs to the living, not to venerated abstractions or institutions; that human society exists for the mutual benefit of individuals pursuing their own purposes and meanings in life, rather than for the aggrandizement of institutional collectives. We need to discover new principles and systems within which we can freely cooperate with one another to achieve personal and mutual ends. We need to learn from the experience of the tens of millions who have suffered under various forms of collectivism that becoming attached to a collective is both a material and a spiritual dead end, for one has no capacity to direct its course to their purposes. Systems premised upon a decentralized, holographic model of organization may provide the best means of generating social behavior capable of protecting both individual liberty and cooperative undertakings; thus ending the divisiveness that inheres in institutionalism. We must liberate ourselves from the albatross of collectivism.