Collectivism

This can be defined as people being entitled to stuff according to collective rather than individual right.

This might look harmless at first sight. People may like the idea, finding comfort in the thought that we are all in it together. But it conceals a collection of fundamentally unsustainable thinking.

Collective rights get rid of the traditional ideas about right and wrong, obligation and ownership.

Traditionally judgements about people, whether they've done something good and bad, whether something is theirs to do what they like with it, focus on what they did, what their intentions were, and what the results were. Did I help or harm anyone? Did I mean good or bad? Was I responsible for what happened? Most of us are pretty familiar with this from our dealings with friends and family.

Collectivism replaces this way of thinking with group rights.

Where traditional right and wrong highlights your actions, collectivism highlights your identity -- what group do you belong to?

Where traditional right and wrong stresses your responsibility, collectivism stresses your status -- can you claim some kind of victim status?

Where traditional right and wrong seeks to examine your motives, collectivism examines your entitlement -- what assistance/compensation is on offer for people in your group?

Where traditional right and wrong looks at you in relation to other people, collectivism looks at you in relation to society or "the community" -- are you a victim of society? Are you an enemy of the community?

These alternative beliefs run deep and spawn their own vocabulary, intended to cloud meaning. For instance, people are assessed according to whether they, and others like them, help or hinder "social justice". This, if it means anything, is mere shorthand for the opinion that it is unjust for people not to receive more or less (depending on how hardline you are) the same income.

People are not described according to who they are, but against the backdrop of membership of a "community". This brings up a load of pre-set judgements about that community, particularly its entitlements, as the foundation for assessing a person's actions.

Prisoners, racial minorities, religious minorities, rich people, poor people, single parents, married parents, property developers, the homeless, sick people, old people, children, immigrants and natives. People are increasingly classed according to what group they belong to, and which grouping is relevant at the time.

As a result, we have democratic nations which are barely capable of controlling their borders or a decision about who should be a citizen. This inability to make fundamental decisions about existence makes perfect sense in the collectivist mindset.

As a result, we get public disturbance and national concern over something so trivial and irrelevant as cartoons published in another country -- see the Danish Mohammed cartoon Jihad. This absurd situation is entirely natural within collectivist thinking about group sensitivity.

As a result, people in France Germany and Italy are forced by the state to spend 50 to 55% of their incomes on state projects, where public deficits are run up to unrepayable levels, and where future generations are mortgaged to the hilt before they are born. Rushing toward economic collapse in this way makes sense if you have adopted the foggy unreality of collectivist language.

As a result, the majority of European people assume that the state can, should and will provide for every major decision which adults normally make: educating your children, caring for your elderly, your social insurance, your retirement income, your healthcare, what sort of house you can live in, your working hours, how much holiday you can take, and TV entertainment. And, as a result, European people aggressively resist any mention that this dependent luxury should not continue to increase forever. If one accepts the basic collectivist assumptions, such self-destructive obstinacy is brave and sensible, and becomes the brave defence of justice and principal.

This is the poisonous root of collectivism. I’ll try to look at how it arises, and some of its offshoots, next time.