Saturday 4 January 2014

Individualism versus collaborativism

04/01/14 06:23 [Saturday]
I have been thinking about politics again, that is about the degree to which I still have a preference for individual freedom and responsibility as against merging in with the body of humankind (or the body politic in the country one calls home). Yesterday and the day before I went on walks from the house where we are staying (my step-daughter's in Harworth near Doncaster) and quite long walks from my point of view (half a mile to a mile: bearing in mind that I am overweight and very unfit). Yesterday I walked with Dawn up to the main shopping street in Harworth and the day before I walked on my own to a more local shop as we had run out of bread. What I mainly have to say, in comparing the two walks, is that the walk of two days ago was more enjoyable for me and less of an effort. On that walk I could please myself where I stopped for rest - although there were a limited number of sensible stopping places - and this benefited me not so much by allowing extra rest as more efficiently spaced rest, plus a certain pleasure accruing from planning ahead where to stop and then fulfilling the plan.
If someone else is directing what I do - and, of course, walking with my wife it is not like being under the thumb in a place of employment but nonetheless there is a degree of restriction of freedom - I do not get the pleasure of deciding on plans and then fulfilling them nor (in the specific case of walking) do I get rests just where they would do most good. As an aside I will say that if people similar to the way I am are to contribute to some enterprise where they are in a hierarchy of management (and are not top-dog) - for example in employment - the way to get the best from them is to set realistic goals then leave them to achieve the goals (or try to achieve them) through procedures decided by themselves. That way their morale is boosted by deciding for themselves a structure of subtasks and subgoals leading to the required ultimate goal and pleasuring themselves in the fulfilling of the subgoals.
Part and parcel of what I am saying is that for me to communicate - eg in negotiating the resting places, or more generally the structure of subgoals - is a cost in effort for me, and this cost in effort is the basic reason I prefer to do things - if it is a case of having definite aims in mind and not just passing time and avoiding loneliness - independently rather than in concert. There are some types of people, I know, who communicate effortlessly and blend in easily with a generally agreed plan (or rather, something less rigid than a plan: say a direction of thrust or of attack) and they are people who like to do things as part of a corporation and who (I suspect, for the most part) feel that way is absolutely the right way. They are people who are naturally Socialistic.
The type of person I am is more naturally Capitalist, that is for us achievement of goals is of major significance (and they are goals often measured in money terms or - more so when the world was at a different stage in history - in military terms) and to achieve an overall goal the preferred way is for there to be a hierarchy more or less strict of subgoals with individually responsible managers receiving mostly top-down directives.
Of course it is a truth, even for people like me, that not everyone is capable of achieving goals or certainly sometimes not goals which bring in income. I know from personal experience that having an other way the mind works than what fits in with the society where we are - and plainly it is equally true if the body is infirm - leads to unemployment. I might not find it easily possible to communicate with many people but I do naturally empathise in a sort of theoretical, stand-offish way (especially with people who have the same sort of mental build as myself), so that I cannot think it right to let the feeble fall by the wayside and (ultimately) starve.
Luckily one observes that as people on average do better for themselves - the basic reason for improving living standards being economies of scale with increasing population - they are more willing to share part of what they have with others. This I think is somewhat independent of being the type of person who naturally communicates with others, or mixes in, because even if you are not that type of person you may well be one who empathises in a theoretical, stand-offish way, so that I think the range of people of the one type or the other who are willing to share money with others is very large (so long as they have enough for themselves which with improving living standards, as I say, they do).
The fact that - with present-day living standards in the West - by far the majority of people do not want the elderly or the sick who are unable to support themselves to literally starve (or indeed people who are able to work but who because of the cyclicity of the economy are between jobs): this fact is what leads to the present-day centralism of the major political parties.
Jedenfalls, I go along with this centralism: I don't think individuals can any longer (the population density being what it is) live completely independently. However I do (for reasons of personality explained above) have a natural preference for individualism and for permitting the maximum freedom which can be to individuals.

No comments: