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Why Does Rejecting Collectivism Make Me an ‘-ist’ or a ‘-phobe?’
I don’t believe:
- All women simply because they’re women nor will I vote for a woman merely because she’s a woman. Why does that make me sexist?
- Skin pigmentation makes all white people oppressors or all people of color oppressed. Why does that make me racist?
- All Muslims want peaceful coexistence. Why does that make me an Islamophobe?
- All corporations are evil. Why does that make me a corporatist?
- All rich people stole or inherited their wealth, nor do I believe that all poor people were exploited. Why does that make me an elitist?
Why does treating people as individuals rather than as if they are nothing more than cookie-cutter representatives of some socio-economic group make me an “-ist” or a “-phobe?”
Published in General
For no other reason than “they” say so.
The idea of individualism has been systematically destroyed by our educational institutions in favor of a collective view. If you wondered why “group projects” became so common, why “collaborative” is an overused buzzword, why people take value primarily from their group identities, it’s because we have neglected to uphold the idea of the individual.
It’s time to do that again.
Woke world is upside down. The words “racism,” “sexism,” “Islamophobia,” and so on, once meant judging people by some arbitrary trait – skin color or ethnicity, sex, religion, <fill-in-the-blank>, rather than treating them as individuals. Now the Left has hijacked the words to mean not treating people as stand-ins for an arbitrary trait.
Didn’t the Smithsonian “whiteness” chart answer your questions for you?
Short answer: Because it works.
Longer answer: Fear and hate are primal motivators. Generating fear in hate is easier than winning arguments (especially when the empirical evidence is not on your side). But in the vote-getting business, generating fear and hate on the individual level is not all that useful. Convincing Sue that Bob hates her doesn’t deliver near as well as convincing Sue and all of her friends that Bob and all of his friends hate them.
The precepts of ‘wokeness’ are learned, not natural, so perhaps they can be unlearned. It’s really too bad we don’t have a way to credential this difference and then divide our states in a way that would recognize states where individual and property rights are the norm and other states where the collective is the norm. Here’s the irony. Individuals could choose their credential and then be required to live in a state where that is the norm. I suspect true believers would not even want to visit the other. A competent sci-fi writer could make a story of this but how do we choose that competent writer?
There is a lot to this and it is a shame that we have “inverted” things. Teaching people to see themselves as victims or victimizers, privileged or under privileged because of their skin color is wrong and it also is unhealthy for our country going forward.
It’s twofold. First, it allows for the “othering” of people into convenient groups. This makes pitting groups against each other much easier, and dehumanizing one’s neighbor to reduce him to a political view, not a person who holds nuanced views based on all sorts of factors. Second, it’s a very lazy way to vilify anyone with opposing (conservative) values to avoid confronting why the liberal view point isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems. Any dissent must be out of moral failings. The example I often return to is Van Jones proclaiming the 2016 Trump victory was a “Whitelash”. In his mind, as in most of the left still today, is the only way Trump has support is because of all the racist, bigot, sexists in America. It couldn’t possibly be because Americans rejected Hillary Clinton & her liberal agenda!
You are an Istphobe. A good thing, in my estimation.
It is wild to me when “openminded” people rant that there aren’t enough people like themselves in a given space, organisation, institution, platform etc. It seems so fragile and insecure.
Firstly, I genuinely enjoy being different. I wouldn’t want to walk into a room full of 40 yr old American mothers living in France. I was told by a woman with a terrific career that she turns down speaking invitations if there aren’t other women billed.
If I was great enough at some male dominated field (I am in humanities so this would be an exotic experience for me) to be the only woman to speak at an event, I’d be like “MAN! I ROCK!! LOOK at Me!” If I am the only American in a room, which is frequently the case, I am like “wow! adventure!”
Second, and more to the point of the OP, what would make me assume that if we managed to collect enough people “like me” so that I would feel comfortable (pathetic!), how do I know from their superficial characteristics that they are “like me”? Because they are white? Female? Straight? Mothers? The idea of a black female having automatic affinities to other black females because they are black females is condescending, shallow, shortsighted, parochial, intellectually stunted…
Conversely I also like approaching new people.
They are trying to make us a nation of cliques, clans and tribes, socially awkward at best, murderous at worst.
It makes you an ‘ist’ or a ‘phobe ’ because we’re all trying to avoid falling into personal responsibility thinking and you’re making that difficult.