Ah….individualism. Freedom. Our own special snowflake world. Yep. We live in a world where we can celebrate personal freedom (albeit not beyond the boundaries of others’). We are all unique. That’s a good thing.
Of course it is.
However, just like any other ‘ism’, religion and ideology, extremes can be rather unhealthy.
North America, and especially the United States, is a very Libertarian region. Personal freedom is seen as the pinnacle of importance. Anything that smacks of socialism and communalism is viewed as a threat to the ideals of that personal freedom. I mean, why the heck should I pay for my neighbour to slack off all day? Really. 
On the flipside, the extremes of socialism and communalism are also incredibly unrealistic. There ARE people who produce more and work harder to get ahead. There are people who take advantage of any system and who are enabled to do more of this by a totally cushy social system.
But there has to be a happy medium. Somewhere between the two where individuality and personal freedom is important, but so is community and watching out for one another.
This is what is at the core of the battles on various social networks — the struggle between personal freedom and community health. A community too intent on consensus will please nobody, but a network bent on personal rewards won’t survive very long either. The balance is delicate, but necessary and every community has a different sweet spot. Certainly the personal rewards type of communities like DIGG have been very popular with a particular set of people, mostly those that enjoy notoriety, gaming and power (my observation – many alpha geeks hanging around there. I’ve never found a place to fit in there). But these networks are also highly spammable, game-able and manipulate-able. DIGG has been a personal favourite of black hat SEO’s and swarms for some time now.
And personal freedom maximized is awesome as long as everyone is pretty much equally healthy, wealthy and wise. It assumes we all start from the same starting line and that we have equal opportunities along the way. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Even in the fabled utopic online world.
Although I don’t have any personal experience with online communities that are purely communal driven, I think of the recent film Hot Fuzz, where the townspeople’s eerie mantra was, “It’s for the greater good” as they snuffed out any sign of non-compliant behavior and made a grotesquely monolithic culture. Even the tightest of onine communities have a good share of dissent on decisions that account for the 80/20 ‘greater good’.
Up until this point, the pendulum is stuck in a position way too far to the personal freedom end of the swing these days. Maximizing personal freedom creates value for things like: rockstars, rapid growth for the sake of growth, numbers, competition, gaming, and the 20/80 phenomenon. It devalues things like: compromise, cooperation, sharing of ideas, trust, empathy and mentoring.
A couple examples of this have arisen for me over the last couple of days. Number one is around the response to Michael Moore’s recent documentary Sicko. Love him or hate him (and it seems there is nobody in between, really), the number of stories he had submitted to him is quite compelling. I have a story of my own as someone who had some tests done that weren’t covered by my $700/month healthcare (and they were pretty routine, really) that I’m still paying for. danah has her own story over here. It’s not about ‘those people’.
But I saw several messages from people I know like this one:
Liberal guilt or not, if there ever comes a day that Phil or a family member gets sick and he finds out his great health plan ain’t so great, it will be too late. And Phil is in every right to focus on what he’s got and ignore the guilt of how others have been affected. It doesn’t make him a bad person and he shouldn’t feel guilty. But in a country where one would be taught to be concerned about the plight of one’s neighbors, Phil would probably think differently. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was raised in a small town where we all knew one another’s business and had potlucks and such, but I feel sad to be part of a system where so many fall through the cracks.
And this isn’t about healthcare at all, really, it’s about community and how we view it. It’s about where we let down our own personal boundaries and desire for maximized personal freedom to contribute to the health of one’s community – physically, mentally, etc. It’s about trust. And if one wants to still frame it in the personal, it’s about empathy – imagining that anything can happen and you could be that person denied coverage or discriminated against or litigated into bankruptcy. Instead of celebrating the lone rockstars – those who make millions and put more $$ in their bank accounts – I’d like to see more of celebrating people who are contributing more to the community. Not money, but time and ideas. What I heart about Open Source is that personal freedom and expression has played a backseat for a long time to the freedom of ideas and the pursuit of common goals. I’m entirely elated that Open Source is quickly becoming a more publicly celebrated phenomenon (unfortunately, the media still likes to treat it as personal stories, but they will learn).
By no means do I think it is healthy to start a dichotomous war between individual and community freedoms – I really believe that there are delicate balances to be forged. However, it is about time for everyone to think about what type of community you’d want to live in. One that you can achieve personal greatness in or you can count on when the going gets tough?
July 8th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Hi Tara,
I seem to come back time and again to this from 2000 years ago, from another Jewish sage, Rabbi Hillel
If I am not for myself, who shall be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am l?
If not now, when?
john
July 8th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Sort of like a think global, act local thing? Think community, take care of your shit?
Balance is so hard.
I’m trying desperately to find a way to reward participation in the community as high if not higher than personal benefits gained from community participation. It’s a tough one, but necessary.
July 8th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Libertarianism gets a bit of a bad rap on this point.
Libertarians are against forced community membership, in favor of communities of choice. Libertarians would be against nationalized healthcare but be perfectly fine with joining healthcare associations (e.g., HMOs) if they so chose.
So, for example, with respect to “why the heck should I pay for my neighbour to slack off all day?”, I’m assuming you’re referring to unemployment insurance or something along those lines. Libertarians would prefer that such situations be handled by charity, based on voluntary donations by individuals, versus being mandated upon all in the form of taxes.
Right now, there’s inadequate peer pressure that would ensure that charities got the donations and could do everything libertarians would want them to do, so “forced transfer payments” and government services are the result.
I think many libertarians want what you want — people genuinely interested in belonging to communities and helping those needing help. You see the status quo as siding too much towards personal “power”; libertarians view the status quo as siding too much towards “big government”.
I’m one of those “glass half full” kinds of guys when it comes to how our favorite series of tubes could help here. A well-designed and widely-adopted system for public reputation accounts could well improve the efficacy of peer pressure, with a corresponding increase in the odds of success for volunteer services.
Also, you can see the possibilities for more “in-kind” donations in the form of actual assistance online — imagine the open source model applied to continuing education and mentoring, to help ensure anyone wanting work could get adequate training in any number of areas to improve their employability. The efforts of a few people to, say, put together Wikibooks, or a set of YouTube videos on the basics of bookkeeping, or _why’s Hackety Hack (http://hacketyhack.net/) for teaching programming, can be leveraged way more than equivalent levels of effort could even a decade ago.
Businesses and governments got economies of scale out of growth in population and wealth — soup kitchens didn’t. The Internet can help make some community services much more efficient (e.g., worker retraining), leaving more resources (people and money) available for the soup kitchens.
At least, that’s my hope.
July 8th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
You are right. Libertarianism, in itself, isn’t self-centered. But libertarianism combined with lack of trust and lack of compassion for one’s neighbor is.
I don’t know. Maybe I speak out of turn because I’m a Canadian and from a small town. There are a few people who are really giving. And alot of people who go through life protecting what they can gather. And, the fact is, we need external forces to even community contributions out. Not to the extent that we lose all free will, but to enough of an extent that we start taking care of the invisible ones.
Donations work in a crisis, not as an ongoing campaign. Non-profits spend so much money trying to get people’s attention to their issues only to come up against a tapped out (whether they are or not). I’ve worked with enough charitable organizations to see the biggest money suck doesn’t go to the people who need it, but towards ad agencies and other campaign needs.
And maybe that is fine for the more ‘fringe’ charities, but for basic human needs? Nope.
Soup kitchens ain’t it. And HMO’s?!!! Have you ever been sick? HMOs are for-profit entities that could care less about our health. Yikes.
I don’t think ‘big government’ is the answer, either, but ‘medium government’ (and a truly accountable one) would be much better. BTW…the US has big government without accountability. That’s the worst of both worlds.
July 8th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
wtf is liberal guilt?
July 8th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Yup!
Yup! Some feel the external force is government. Some feel it is charities. Some feel it is churches or other “faith-based initiatives”. And a lot of people just watch American Idol…
That’s probably true. That just means it’s incumbent upon libertarians to somehow prove that non-government community initiatives will be financially sustainable. If they can’t prove that, they can’t exactly kvetch about “forced transfer payments”. Unfortunately, many libertarians are putting the cart (cutting taxes) before the horse (coming up with solid non-government alternatives to government services).
Sorry — lousy example trying to find something that fit in the health care sector. Frankly, for those who consider themselves big-L Libertarians, the choice between HMO-style health care and so-called “socialized medicine” must be a devil/deep blue sea situation.
Absolutely agreed.
July 9th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Danielle,
in my case, it’s feeling bad for being liberal when other poor suckers folks aren’t so fortunate
j
July 9th, 2007 at 7:57 am
“Libertarianism, in itself, isn’t self-centered. But libertarianism combined with lack of trust and lack of compassion for one’s neighbor is.”
Anything combined with a lack of trust and compassion is self-centered. Libertarianism is no different than anything else in this regard, so why single out Libertarianism? You could just as easily say “Liberalism combined with lack of trust and compassion is self-centered” or “technology” or “relationships” etc…
___
When individual rights and freedoms and compromised, it is almost always the weakest, poorest and least powerful that suffer. Only by protecting the rights and freedoms of individuals can we protect those most in need of protection.
Should the only minority in an all white town suffer less rights and freedoms than the white ‘community’ merely because the community desires it? Of course not. How than, do we protect this individual? By making the rights of the individual of highest importance. If all individual rights are protected, than no individual can be exploited or harmed unfairly. The ‘community’ should never be allowed to exploit or harm the weakest and neediest among us.
July 9th, 2007 at 8:25 am
No, the community should never be allowed to exploit or harm the weakest and neediest.
I guess I associate Libertarianism with Individualism more than anything and Democracy with Collectivism – whereas the Individualist is concerned solely with their and their family’s well-being, and the Collectivist is concerned with making sure everyone’s well-being is taken care of.
For the record, I don’t believe in communism, but coming from Canada, I understand the necessity of a strong social system. A ’soft place to land’ if one is less fortunate.
I think we can agree that those less fortunate or in the minority should be taken care of, what we seem to not agree on is how that is done. I look at the US and I don’t see the individualistic ideology taking care of the less fortunate (or those who all of a sudden become less fortunate). I see the split between rich and poor and the number of people who fall through the cracks here as enormous. I also see awful racial politics. Each smaller community, taking care of themselves, caring about themselves and their prosperity.
When I think of a collective people (and I’m not talking government here, I believe very strongly that too much government is a bad thing, so I agree with that Libertarian principle very much), working together towards something, the care and empathy is outside of one’s own self and individual family (although, yes, it’s especially strong there).
So, no, it may not be inherent to Libertarianism and I’ve unfairly conflated the two because of my experience of it (and it’s not happening the way it should be because of other factors), but I hadn’t even heard of the term before I moved here. Instantly, it didn’t feel very neighborly.
But that could just be rampant individualism and the fact that there is big government that squeezes us without providing much of a social system, so we feel the need to be self-protective? I don’t know…
July 9th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Tara,
Let’s look at your dinner example further. Lets suppose everyone ordered expensive meals. But one person was very poor and so only had a soda. Under the philosophy of Individualism, this person would be free to recontribute an equal share, even though he had not consumed equally, or he could pay for what he alone purchased. But under the philosophy of Communalism, this person would be forced to pay as much as the rest. If he only has $10 in the whole world- too bad for him- he MUST pay equal to the rest. His money would be taken from him against his will, by force if necessary. (If he isn’t forced to pay up, than we would be putting his rights as primary, ahead of the group).
Communities are comprised of individuals. We’re all individuals, every one of us. If we don’t protect individuals, than nobody is protected and the community is destroyed. Imagine a building made of bricks. If all the bricks are allowed to be destroyed in the name of “the greater good of the buildingâ€, than the building will be destroyed despite the well-intentioned efforts to protect it.
This is why the US does not have a Democracy, but a Constitutional Democracy- the majority is free to enjoy all the freedoms it wishes…except exploit the minority.
Sure, Individualism/Libertarianism does not mandate compassion, but it allows the freedom for people to show compassion to others in any way they choose and it protects communities by protecting the all individuals that comprise them.
July 9th, 2007 at 10:09 am
That’s why I state above that:
…just like any other ‘ism’, religion and ideology, extremes can be rather unhealthy.
and in my other post I talked about striking a balance.
I don’t believe in swinging the pendulum only one way.
At my dinner table, the person ordering a soda pop wouldn’t even pay for that soda pop. Like the other night, when a friend joined us at dinner who had already eaten and had one glass of wine. She wasn’t counted in the round.
That’s the balance I’m talking about. Next time she may pay more, but this time she didn’t pay at all.
July 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Thanks for clarifying. I hope you don’t take my comments as being too confrontational. I love your blog and I have tremendous respect for you professionally. I’ve seen you speak at conferences and you’re very very good!
-Bill
July 9th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Nah…I’m used to confrontation! But I see it as individual points of view. We are all striving to help others see it from ours.
July 9th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Not necessarily. I think you have another hidden assumption that forces you to make this one: you assume everyone should succeed equally. I disagree with that assumption, and thus I don’t need to incorrectly assume that everyone will start from the same starting line and have equal opportunities.