611 on individualism

Here in America, we value a thing called individualism. An individual is a free citizen—a beacon of liberty. For us, personal freedoms must come before all else. We shall not be enslaved. We are the land of the free, the home of the brave.

However, individualism comes at a cost:  Inefficiency. Serving one person requires more resources per person than serving a group of people. 

Think about an everyday consumer object like a toaster oven -- sorry, an air fryer. If you set out to build one of these small ovens custom, just for yourself, even using parts off the shelf, it would take a long time and cost quite a bit. So, we buy toaster ovens made in factories, probably made by robots at this point—though humans are likely involved somewhere in the process. That air fryer is made on an assembly line, which is the opposite of individualism. And it's cheap to buy.

Now, play that out on a societal scale.

Individualism calls for us all to have big trucks and drive them to our big houses on big pieces of land -- because out there on my 40 acres, I can be free.

This leads us to be the highest polluters per capita on Earth. We have the distinguished honor of trashing the planet harder than anybody else. It's a nice lifestyle—if only it were sustainable.

Just like America has long favored V8 engines over more efficient smaller motors, our drive for individualism and liberty has led us down a path of inefficiency. 

On the other hand, places that focus more on the common good, public infrastructure, mass transit, and denser communities—even in rural areas—like the Netherlands and Singapore (and China) are thriving. Thoughtful investment in shared public expenses has allowed people to leverage lower incomes -- or higher incomes, in the case of Singapore -- into nicer lifestyles.

The funny thing is this: Despite all of the individualism, Americans don't really have any more freedom than other people do. We have to show ID to travel.  We have to ask for a visa to go to Europe. We get a number at birth. We have speed limits and no trespassing signs, and so many other signs. We have more people in jail, per capita and straight up in shear numbers, than any other country. We stand to salute the flag, we buy gifts at Christmas, we work to earn money to pay our bills. We get two weeks off a year, and we keep it between the lines. This is our freedom. 

Crap, it almost sounds like we don't really have individualism, either.

An addendum to that thought: on communism. 

Communism is, throwing aside Karl Marx and the Soviet Union, the Red Menace and all of the other scary trappings of the word, the opposite of individualism. 

Or perhaps not the opposite, because communism can also encompass individualism. The two are not mutually exclusive, in a healthy society. 

Communism has been painted like the Boogeyman for all kinds of reasons, good and bad, for the past hundred years. Yet...

We live a small town. A rural, small town. This is a "red" area. We love our guns, freedom, and private property. Yet...

We are a charming small town. Everyone knows each other. Everyone pitches in to help when someone else has an emergency. Or even if they just see trouble.

Here are two examples, first hand knowledge of the individualis around me giving and caring about each other. 

Last summer, someone built a dam across the town creek. Kids are always piling up stones to create little dams, and while the fish might not like that, this was not that kind of dam. This was cinder blocks, a truck full of them. Clear across the creek, two feet tall, creating a pond on one side and already eroding one of the stream banks.

It took me a little while to move the concrete blocks out of the water. They made a pretty big pile on the grass beside the creek. Without my phone to take pictures, I left them there, thinking I would come back to make a post on the town gossip page. Would they be back in the water when I returned? 

When I went back a day or two later, the cinder blocks were gone. Someone in our community had already spotted the issue, and come with a truck to remove the concrete.

Maybe it was a city employee, maybe it was a citizen like me, maybe it was an adjacent property owner. Who did it is unknown to me. But someone did. We worked together to remove the dam, a hazard to nature and property.

That's community. So maybe the opposite of individualism isn't really communism, it's community. 

Here's another example of red blooded red voting community. Just this morning, we lost a dog. I lost a dog. He's new to us, and we're working on recall. We were in a big field. He bolted, and wound up on the road nearby. We chased after, we being me and our two other dogs, and called for him as we watched cars slowing. 

And then he was gone.

Nowhere to be found, nowhere to be seen. One of our dogs followed his scent into a swampy area on the other side of the road, and into a barb wire fence. 

I called my wife to break the news. She was at the airport, and had a bunch of stuff going on, but called me back a couple frantic-calling-his-name-minutes later and let me know he was already home. Someone had picked him up on the road, and dropped him off at our house. 

Thank you, the opposite of individualism.