logicp_writings/new/In Defense of Individuals.md

They laugh at those fools who complain, instead of taking the obvious way forward which has been given to them. They expect that once they do this, everything ends and the world will open itself up to them and allow them to live the life they want to lead.

If they are wrong, however..

If the bureaucrats have gotten out of control, and if overlapping portions of control systems are reaching an inflection point over something that is even modestly benign, then the hyper-obedient are lying down before the boots of fascism - even, perhaps trying on a boot or two for a brief moment as they enjoy someone's ridicule and demise while they galvanize a new precedent for inhumanity in modern times.

Individuals exist as YOU Collective exists as an IDEAL Individuals can be empathized with as being you Collective can be empathized with when it represents values or interests that align with yours Individuals direct faith inward Collective faith is directed outward Individuals can listen Collective must be heard Individuals are eternal Collectives exist for the duration of their political dynamic Individuals can share with one another Collectives theoretically share amongst themselves, and view outsiders as the enemy Individuals need to improve - you need to improve Collectives demand that others improve

Why Defend the Individual

It's selfish, it means you are focusing on yourself.

You want to have rights for yourself.

You want more rights and privilege than you actually need, and accommodating you costs everyone.

Why are you so special?

Dialogue

Focusing on the individual is something espoused by those who are attempting to protect special benefits that only they enjoy. Why would that have to follow? Wouldn't it make sense It's usually when one is entitled that they claim to be in favour of individual rights. People who claim to stand for the individual really only stand for themselves. Why stand for something that could only benefit one person?

Only benefits you and not others. If universal, then it applies to all But those who are weaker need special protection Ultimately, those who decide on who is weak, or how we provision special handling, become the entitled class, the only robust handling is a universal one. That hasn't worked - we need better Your assumption that we need better is your attempt to qualify yourself as a member of an entitled class, demanding a form of inequality predicated on assumptions of your moral superiority and prescription wisom. No, that is false, I am at least trying to find solutions - you are the one comfortable maintaining your privilege while others suffer, if we have it your way, things will either not improve or they won't improve fast enough to avoid catastrophe Firstly, you assume my degree of comfort, but this is likely because you project your experience of comfort, which calls into question your acuity towards the issue at hand. Secondly, you make no effort to demonstrate an awareness of any improvement that may have occurred thus far => do you not acknowledge any improvement? Thirdly, what catastrophe do you believe you are attempting to avert? If it is the state of disparity, then you are ignoring dimensions along which it has improved. If it is a cataclysm, then you are making an extraordinary claim, and the evidence would suggest that it the best you can do is to point to an alleged consensus which falls outside the scope of your technical expertise.

1. Do not assume that I am not harmed by the status quo, or that I am not able to determine the reality of the problem with the specific skills I have worked hard to acquire.
2. Acknowledge progress?
   • Well, I would have to say that in some ways things are better and, in others, they are the worst they have ever been. We are killing the diversity of the planet, and that is because we have allowed for disproportionate influence over production and distribution at the global level.
   • The other factor is that of progress being made, it allows us to change our standard as to what we consider acceptable - we noave have the ability to raise our standards, and this is necessary to continue solving the problem
3. How can you pretend to not see any risk of catastrophe? There is an obvious threat of climate change, as it is the most universal concern. There is not a single person alive who is not affected by the weather and the environment. It threatens our food supply, our social climate, and the rate and intensity of natural disasters displacement of people, inequality, the viability of market systems, the focus of technological pursuit, resource allocation, biodiversity, and the list goes on and on indefinitely.

Now, we can talk about inequality. No matter where or when, if a system allows for individuals to profit without limit, it's only a matter of time before one of them owns such a disproportionate majority of the resources in taht system, that it becomes not only a threat to the other inhabitants of that system, but even to the health and sustainability of that system as a whole. There must be some reasonable limits placed on how much wealth someone can accumulate, and though we have tried to do that, we obviously haven't been strict enough, because gaps in wealth have continued to widen, and now, as has been made painfully obvious by COVID-19, the less fortunate are the more vulnerable than ever.

`

1. I would still have to say that these are first world concerns, and that only those who are doing well, relativeley speaking, within that first worl, are able to have those types of discussions. Given that there is a prevailing high regard for lived experience as a way of knowing, there is much hypocrisy, making me less likely to be convinced that the prospect is to be taken very seriously.
2. So that is quite loaded, as your declaration of the chief concern assumes it is prioritized over the other competing concerns, and then you also go on to assert the pathology for the state of your concern. I would say that, at least, you might wish to qualify the legitimacy of the claim by expanding on the ramifications of the concern, and why your description of its formulation and history is to be taken at its word. Furthermore, I would contend that the means by which disproportionate distribution has occurred is not rectified by centrally planned, Malthusian thinking, and that the real pathology for these inequities bears great semblance to your proposed prescriptions. b) and what of establishing better standards? There is a world of difference between acting to solve a problem and acting at the behest of a problem. Our means of organizing public action necessarily, when planning, begins at the latter, and it can always be contended as to whether or not it can ever transform, even just in part, into the former.
3. My good friend, the very fact that this dialogue is instantiated serves as evidence for my belief that there is potential for catastrophe. I agree that Climate Change could be a chief concern that always concerns the universal, at least from an Earthian standpoint, but you already should suspect that I am not convinced that the characterization of the threat is accurate, veritable, or, perhaps most importantly, computable. Let's assume, however, that alll those details are addressed and that we can posit agreed upon predictions which are within the ranges taht you believe to be true. We still, then, need to evaluate the means by which solutions are sought and applied. If we are to address an immediate emergency, then it must be clear that we are seeking to impose dramatic systemic changes, and that these changes produce deaths themselves. That is, significant, broad-scale changes always affect life and death, because they affect resource allocation. We can argue about the effect of increased and decreased deaths from a given act, but the act itself does lead to deaths that would not occur otherwise, thus it becomes incomplete to speak of the solution without also consolidating the fact that some deaths will result from it. We could contend over which method leads to more deaths, or whether there is a discrepancy in our ability to observe deaths caused from the respose vs death from climate change, but I would wager that there is massive bias in our analysis which cannot be alleviated. The emergency respone is being seen chiefly as an economic problem, and one wherein the qualification of impacted lives requires much abstraction. Simply put, we assume that living conditions or shifts in weather are caused by changes predicated on CO2 concentration, and that means of addressing these might lead to changes in the price of commodities, whose deliterious effects are acceptable as they are a step towards addressing a problem which could itself instantiate any type of outcome, big or small, lenign or cataclysmic, with everything in between. You can see that, for someone who is not on board with the solution, this position needs quite a bit of faith. The regulation for such a notion is one which relies on scientific concensus, but that is not convincing for skeptics. Skeptics hold that the methodology for evaluating such a consensus is mired by politics, that the climate for debate has been toxic for decades, and that those who support the idea of imposing legislature, global strategies for addressing the concern, are not informing their position in any substantial way by the new consensuses - they have always held this position, and will continue to, regardless of what discoveries are made, possibly even regardless of who makes them. `

You say that the individual is selfish and represents selfishness, and that you serve more individuals by serving the collective. But if the idea it so serve the collective, and not an individual, then why would it matter that the collective is composed of individuals? Why even make the case? Wouldn't it be better to assume that selfish individuals are not served by serving a collective, and that the collective transcends individualism, making the idea of any individual inapplicable? If one's abstracted conception of a collective is assumed to contain a multitude of individuals, then the degree of acuity for any one individual within an observation of a collective is necessarily reduced compared to an observation of an individual proper. Thus, if the focus is on a collective, then the values being transacted and transformed for the ideal of the collective will have the highest probability of serving that focus, rather than the plausible set of components which are assumed to lay beneath it.