Home Individualism and Subjectivity

One of the many weapons of the crowd is individualism. Through this, members of the crowd assert that they are making their decisions of their own will, and that the world around them is what they make of it. The self is the important thing--not only in fulfilling needs and desires, but in defining oneself. The individual is the lord and master.

For the vapid masses, this identity and desire fulfillment are often found through easily accessible things within their grasp that they can associate with: products defining character and image, satisfying a temporary craving (while possibly also inducing it) and filling the consumer with a sense of security, as they've found something that's theirs, a product that belongs to who they are, much like they presume the world is as they see it. It is imagined that obtaining this product, enjoying that type of film or book, defines in total who one is, and while the imagination of the crowd doesn't really run wild, it certainly does run their lives.

Attaining identity through product and culturally available means allows most braindead people to remain perfectly comfortable with going to work every day as it provides them with capital necessary for personal satisfaction--at the end of the day they get to crack open a few beers, ignore their kids (they're playing video games anyway), buy their convenient plastic, and get a good night sleep for the coming yesterday--repeat this cycle for a number of years and you've got lazy teenagers into all sorts of self-destructive nonsense, a beer gut, and a divorce in the process. While these can add to one's disillusionment, it's not nearly enough, and those that do for a while become disillusioned (mid-life crises victims, for starters) relapse back into lazy consumption, finding themselves in a new lifestyle where they're still buying. Regardless, the zombie will still work, drink, and eat fast food--it's cheap, and "I like it because I said so" is a valid enough argument for them. The total lack of real decision comforts these weaker people, and because they've been told so many times about how free they are, they believe that they are in total control of the world around them. Just look at how many options you have, you can get it in your choice of colours. You can buy the chocolate bar, or choose not to, and there are so many movies of so many different types! You could watch a horror, watch a romance, a comedy, whatever! There's something for "everyone". That's freedom! Presenting even these mediocre differences, passed off as suiting individual tastes, allows companies to get away with selling inferior items while stroking their consumers' egos. It also enables social failures to feel themselves to be a part of something, sharing in the same product and style as others, while still, of course, being themselves. It doesn't fool everyone, but mediocrity is so pervasive that these sensible ones can rarely opt out of getting garbage, anyway.

The individualist world is a purely subjective one; it suggests that what every person experiences or thinks is entirely unique to them. This is not to say that unique experiences don't exist, but to say that a variety of experiences will have a common link within different people and minds, and since individualists claim to deny external order operating over them, they must reject the idea of a common basis, as it would oppose that "specialness" of being themselves. All this gives the individual a feeling of power, definitely one much needed, as it is usually hard for these people to actually attain power in the reality. This is what allows the feeble crowd of selves--who are, as it should be realized, not as uncommon as they think--to control the opinions of others. These minds, albeit believing in their total subjectivity, seem to also possess the absolute rule that nobody may question one's individuality. Since few are keen enough to notice this obvious contradiction, concessions are made--agree to disagree. This is the another powerful control tool of the crowd--demonize antagonism and convince everyone that they're alright having their own opinions and living their lives their own way. Degenerates take advantage of this to criticize sane people, and the overwhelming crowd places them in the right. Since the desires of the crowd have begun corroding governments (as they essentially have been since the inception of democracy), not only are the degenerates rising to power, but the sane--those who realize something is going awry--are being pushed into the fringes and into the prisons. The masses utilize argumentum ad motivatem to subdue many people, and this growing mass relies on its fallacy as justification for crushing anything anti-democratic, or anti-individual. If more people think there's no difference between a South African and an Okinawan, then it has to be true--since so many people agree, anyone who disagrees is delusional, or a racist; thus, they need help (or ostracism). Should someone suggest that we can benefit from fascism or nationalism, they would be chastized outright, because everyone's free, and has a right to be free, and the mob seems to agree to this.

Because the trend has been to believe nature to be purely subjective, none of these blobs are sharing any sort of thought about reality (where their thoughts exist at all) and they become dissociative--while everybody knows who's watching what, nobody really knows what's going on inside of anyone's head, and indeed, because of the almost constant distraction and pleasure-seeking that modernity provides, nobody really knows what's going on inside of their own, which leads back to mid-life crises and other instabilities. One is removed of the capacity for introspection, and when a member of the crowd does manage to look into themself, they often find startling truths about the animal dwelling inside them, which they supress as being unreal, and finally force others to suppress through moralizing.

The ultimate problem with this pleasure-seeking mode of thought is an inability to grasp the world around them. Governments manipulate this with ease, and coupled with an entertainment-news media they can show a receptive populace what they want. Thus, violence in Iraq and some dog saving a little kid from drowning are juxtaposed to form the nightly news. The crowd is driven to fear by the terrorist (or now, extremist) threat, and gets to laugh five minutes later at some goofy entertainment story that has little relevence to their lives. An emotional shift this rapid should be a sign of schizophrenia, but it is also typical crowd distraction at work. This is repeated with a daily frequency (per media source, mind you--the more mainstream sources checked, the more frequently useless information is shoved into your mind), and being that there's so much (useless) information to process, very little is retained in the memory for easy access. Over time, what is left is deteriorated as age kills the memory. A population of self-congratulating TV-watchers will not mind as its rights are being stripped away--indeed, said population doesn't even know that it's slowly losing its rights. The PATRIOT Act in America was the beginning of this, and many "democratic" nations now have their own similar laws or acts which have gone virtually unchallenged, and are for the most part forgotten.

As everyone is going their own way to personal fulfillment (without, of course, impeeding on anyone else's freedom to do so), the problems inherent in modernity only multiply. More people will buy plastic, and travel. More people, more shiny plastic, increased global capital, less of anything else on this planet. The stunned, distracted mob cannot be helped, they don't know how to think any other way, most of them because this way of life has been implanted into their minds since childhood (basically, mostly anyone under the age of 30, who started going to school when liberalized environmentalism and racial equality became standard in education, furthering the push to avoid any sort of offensiveness).

Where we can, we must wake these people to their madness. Because the individualistic crowd believes so strong in its subjective realities, it is hard to bring them into question. Those who cannot be awakened must simply be eradicated. The people who think nothing of the world they're destroying--those who feel no remorse over being forced to live in our sick civilization, those who have no qualms with owning two cars, a motor boat, and consuming junk food and pseudoculture--should have nothing thought of them.

August 15, 2006


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