INDIVIDUALISM Vs.

INDIVIDUALITY
By Peter Coffin
INDIVIDUALISMO VS. INDIVIDUALIDAD

Look at history. Everything we

have, every great achievement
has come from the independent
work of some independent mind.
The individual against the
collective. Our country, the
noblest country in the history of
man was based on the principle of
individualism.
THE FOUNTAINHEAD, 1949

What is individualism?

Well, through the years, it’s been conflated with individuality,

which is the acknowledgment that we are individuals with our own
wants, needs, and taste. Individualism sounds very much like it
could be that, but here’s the thing. They are not the same thing.

Individualism is an ideology. You could take it as philosophy, as a

moral stance, or just an outlook on life. At the center of
individualism is the individual. Individualism holds the individual as
the highest moral or intellectual authority in society. The interest
of the individual should always take precedence, and actions
taken by society, or its institutions are regarded as interference.

Individualism is often defined as the opposite of totalitarianism,

which is also oftentimes conflated with collectivism. Collectivism
itself is often mis-defined as well, used in reference to collective
characterizations of certain groups. For instance, Black Lives
Matter is often collectively described as some kind of terrorist
organization, and they reject that, and rightfully so. They’re
protesting police brutality and violence, which is, the right thing to
do. This collective ascription of means and motive happens
externally, and not by the choice of the group in question. Again,
that’s not collectivism. That being said, BLM is actually a kind of
collectivism, because it is attempting to look out for the rights of
black people. Collectivism focuses on societal interests. It
prioritizes the greater good, and that doesn’t mean that there’s no
such thing as an individual in collectivism.

We’re all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is

quite like anyone else, however much the
socialists may pretend otherwise. And we
believe that everyone has the right to be
unequal.
-Margaret Thatcher-

That right there is an example of how individualism and

individuality have been conflated over the years. It’s actually fairly
brilliant what it does. (I mean, total trash, but brilliant trash). It
takes the idea of inequality and redefines it as referring
specifically to what makes you unique as an individual. This
actually stigmatizes the idea of equality. It makes it sound like
something that’s going to end with you in a jumpsuit eating beans
in a four by four room right next to the other seven billion four by
four rooms containing a person in a jumpsuit eating beans. And
we’re meant to believe that collectivism causes that.

After all, China is super communist, and communism is

collectivism, right? You know, with their stock market and their
private industry. Their different classes, their businessmen with
their private jets and their factories that exploit the labor of its
citizens who literally don’t make enough money to have a place to
live so they live in the factories in dormitories which are small four
by four rooms, where they EAT BEANS IN JUMPSUITS, that’s
communism, right? RIGHT?

Well actually what I described to you was capitalism with a little

bit of feudalism mixed in. But, hey, they call it communism, so it’s
collectivism, and that means it’s bad.

Now, if the individual is the ultimate moral authority, then the

individual is where the buck stops. This is about individual
responsibility. And I’m not talking about keeping your house clean
and paying your rent. I’m not talking about your culpability in a
crime. I’m talking about your situation. Individual responsibility is
the idea that your situation is 100% entirely of your own doing. If
you’ve done well in the world, it’s because you’ve worked hard and
did a good job, and no systemic considerations should be made,
such as your privileges, any inherited wealth, or lack thereof, et
cetera, et cetera. You did it.

Now, the tradeoff of there being no systemic factors in your

success is that your failures are also entirely your fault. If you
don’t succeed, you didn’t try hard enough. You didn’t work hard
enough. You didn’t bother to become educated. In fact, it’s your
fault that you haven’t seen all of the information, despite the fact
there’s no reliable guarantee you’ll ever get exposed to that
information. And there’s also no guarantee that when given a
choice, you will be given a good choice. You may never be
exposed to a good option. And you’ll be blamed for it because
you’re ignorant. And being ignorant is a great misdeed in the world
of individual responsibility.

In 2017, two psychologists by the name of Nicole Stephens and

Sarah Townsend published a research paper on how people feel
about individualism as influenced by their social class 1. Their
research indicates that people from working-class backgrounds
tend to understand themselves as interdependent with and highly
connected to others. In situations where there’s no economic
safety net to fall back on, values such as solidarity, humility and
loyalty end up taking precedence within their lives. This is
different than with people of middle and upper class who tend to
understand themselves as independent and separate from others.
Parents teach kids the importance of cultivating their personal
preferences, needs, and interests. Common sayings include “the
world is your oyster”, and “your voice matters”. Values such as
uniqueness, self-expression, and influence take precedence.

In the United States, individualism is looked at as an ideal. Self-

reliance is next to godliness. Individualism is one of the ideas that
feeds into American exceptionalism. An idea that holds the United
States in the unique place among nations, to Americans in a

1
Research: How You Feel About Individualism Is Influenced by Your Social Class, Harvard Business Review,
[Link]
positive way, to other people throughout the world, not necessarily
so. Although the actual technical definition of American
exceptionalism is just that it’s different. In the United States of
America, exceptional is more often used as a means to say: Very
good! Different but above. Different with a positive connotation.
Superior because different. This national ideal both feeds and is
fed by individualism. And if you’re an individualist, by gosh, by
golly, you’re one of the good ones.

According to Ayn Rand, and individualist is a man who lives for his
own sake and by his own mind. He neither sacrifices himself to
others nor sacrificing others to himself. He deals with men as a
producer. Ayn rand tended to hold production as an incredibly
individualist trait. And if you aren’t producing something, to Ayn
Rand, you are a parasite of some kind.

These amazing producers take their product to market. But a

market isn’t just merchants. Costumers have to exist, and the
costumer is always right. Individualism makes that phrase pretty
fucked up. People like to negatively associate participation
trophies with collectivism or equality. But tell me something, are
all those people sharing one trophy? Did the collective achieve a
goal and collectively receive a reward? Is that one trophy for
many? No, it’s one trophy per individual. A participation trophy is
“the costumer is always right”. The event stops being about
competition and starts being about the individual and their
validation. Not that competition is the healthiest thing in the
world, but it’s the thing that sports are usually stated to be about.
A participation trophy is the individual – and their parents –
consuming the event. The event is a product, it is an experience.
And it is the means to monetize all the individuals – and their
parents’ – validation. If you want to criticize participation
trophies, talk about the commodification of experience and realize
that it is capitalism and individualism. The event organizer buys
the trophies and money is made. It’s bullshit, and it’s not left-wing
bullshit.

In neoliberal capitalism, the system that the United States of

America runs on, everything is a market. Everything is meant to be
seen as a transaction, meaning you’re always the costumer.
Meaning, you’re always right. And therefore, always acting in
quote unquote, rational self-interest. Which the gist of is that
actions can only be rational or logical if they act in the interest of
the individual performing them. Which sounds pretty good actually,
until you consider that it was contextually used to criticize the
idea of altruism.

It was all part of a book Ayn Rand authored called The Virtue of
Selfishness. In the book, she holds rationality as society’s highest
virtue. But it also diluted the idea of rationality by defining it as
only working in the interest of yourself. If you agree with this
standpoint, it is irrational to help people. I mean, unless you can
get something out of it.

Selfishness does not benefit the many, it doesn’t even benefit the
few. It benefits the individual. It is not good as a societal virtue, in
fact, it is quite the opposite. And yet, we have a system that
rewards it. If you’re not acting in your own rational self-interest, if
you’re not putting yourself before other people, you often can’t go
anywhere. So, from the perspective of getting anywhere in
capitalism, greed is good. However, perspective is a very
individual thing. And when I say individual, I don’t mean
individualist. I mean, by nature, every single person’s perspective
is slightly different. Our perception of the world is the result of our
ocular nerves transmitting data to our brain, which is interpreted
and formed into an image. That system in of itself is imperfect.
Lots of people see a blurrier version of reality, whereas many
others see it without certain colors. And that’s biological
difference in perspective. There’s also sociological difference in
perspective. Whereas someone from a poor background may not
see the benefit in pure unchecked greed, Scrooge McDuck has
already receive it. 14:02