'Individualism in an Age of Tribalism' by Onkar Ghate

Perhaps the two areas of life which generate the most conflict and in which it is most important to think for oneself—and most rare are religion and morality. We’ll discuss why it’s so easy to follow the crowd here and why it’s vital to not do so.

This video was recorded at AynRandCon in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 3, 2018.

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[grambo]

By far one the best talks about individualism!

[MatWlson]

Be wary of the trolls that wrote such vile and hateful comments. They did NOT even watch or listen to the lecture as their comments were written soon after the video was published.

[mrjnk]

Interesting the conceptual relationship between 'inherited knowledge' and 'automatic knowledge'....

[drstrangelove]

hmmm... not sure that I agree for once

[robbase]

It is economic because if you gave a million dollars to a Dalit in India, he would quickly forget the caste system.

[gurugeorge]

"My tribe right or wrong" is a strawman, tribalism isn't like that. The core fact of the matter is that most things are done by co-ordinated groups of human beings, and in order to get that co-ordination (whether in competition or co-operation) off the ground with a group of relative strangers, in the context of time and energy scarcity, _shared genetic interests_ are the natural Schelling Point (that is, a point of agreement-in-action that can be discovered independently by all the actors concerned, without prior agreement or co-ordination). The traits of group loyalty, patriotism, ethnic solidarity, _thumos, _ etc., have evolved out of necessity and are perfectly natural and actually extremely functional. The ethnic group that lacks ethnic cohesion is toast. Lone individuals, unless they are exceptionally strong, intelligent, etc., are also toast. The survival and health of the group is the _precondition_ of the survival and health of the individual (that doesn't mean it's morally more important, but it is a practical precondition, and that has to be reckoned with intelligently).

That apriori tribalism is also the foundation of government, as well as the possibility of civil society: government can have no _objective_ justification or legitimacy other than as the collective guardianship of an ethnic group's breeding grounds. A nation is a group of families more or less closely genetically related and (with non-diaspora peoples) having shared the same soil, the same geographic region, for at least several generations; it is _as_ that group, that the group can institute collective provisions for self-defense, self-government, etc..

You can certainly build a liberal, individual-rights-respecting polity on that foundation, but a liberal polity cannot exist in the air without that foundation. Abstractions alone cannot justify the State's very real and very concrete power, which would be deeply resented were it not for the _prima facie_ legitimacy the State has as the institution representing the collective defense and maintenance (in good condition, etc.) of the group's "safe space, " quite literally, its status as _breeding grounds for a particular racial or ethnic group._

[asstone]

The individualists demand “freedom from” religion, clan, culture, moral norms, and politics—they preach that man is like a Robinson Crusoe, and he must live in a metaphorical deserted island where he is free from all collectives. But such views are a sign of their ideological over-maturity and psychological backwardness.

Man is not just the maker of civilizations (which are the largest collective of humanity)—he is the product of civilizations. Robison Crusoe, the protagonist in Daniel Defoe’s book, is a brave man who gets trapped in a deserted island. He does all that he can to preserve his sanity, meet the needs of his body, and survive as a human. But man is not designed to be like Crusoe. His mind might identify as an individual, but the heart of most men identifies with the collectives: relatives, friends, customers, associates, employees, employers, and the religious, political, social, and intellectual groups of which he is a part.

Man qua man is a political creature and politics can never transcend collectivism. We join the collectives in order to find a sense of security and belonging, to develop spiritual, cultural, and political bonds for defending our way of life, and to avoid the one thing which we truly dread: loneliness. The man who sees himself as an individualist is no Crusoe; he is naive, politically ineffective, and culturally alienated, and he lacks the sense to realize that he is overestimating his virtues and capacities. The nations where individualism becomes a popular movement generally see a steep decline in the quality of their politics and culture.

If these individualists end up on a deserted island, they will not last for a week—they will undergo mental disintegration from the feeling of being lonely and they will eventually starve to death. Individualism is not a virtue; it is a vice.