Quote:
Originally Posted by Indentured Servant
Any society that is all about "individualism" or any society that is all about "collectivism" will eventually become its own worst enemy. Part of the problem with America in general today is we have tilted too much towards individualism. Individualism is the fuel that capitalism needs. However, keep in mind that the "Family" is a "Collective" construct and hence the family gets eroded in societies where individualism has run amok. No society will stand long without a strong foundation of families and the family structure of America is in descent.
That said, what does "black unity" look like? Black unity looks like black mothers and fathers in the home. Certainly if one is an advocate of individualism, then they should be a fan of fatherless home and the man just doing what is best for him and only thinking of himself and not bound by any family "group think". It also means not shooting down your brother in the street in a quest for "respect". It also means buying from black owned businesses instead of spending 95% of our money outside our community. It also means learning YOUR history as a person with African roots. Why teach the mountain lion the history of the Polar bear? Black people need a history that shows them as something other than slaves. It also means visiting black countries to help boost the economies.
Certainly there are many issues with adopting black unity as a solution, but the attractive aspect of it is that its a solution that is totally in the control of black people. Certainly the goal is for all of gods creature to live TOGETHER in harmony and mutual respect. However, after 300 years its clear that America is not that place in regards to race and consequently groups must do what they must do to preserve their dignity and respect among themselves, if not from others, whether its a perfect solution or not. Waiting for the "perfect" solution means there will be no attempts at a solution.
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I'm not saying either of us are right...and we're talking about vague enough of concepts that we could actually have the same opinions and just be describing them differently and have no idea, but I have the opposite view of things.
I think America's primary problem is that American's aren't individualistic and hedonistic enough.
The way I see it, nobody has any duty to anyone except their species or people they know, and any other way of looking at things is just a distraction. We should be getting rid of as many of those distractions as possible. That means, ideally nationalism would die and be replaced by a mixture of emphasis of personal joy-achievement and desire to help the whole species survive. That probably means racial and cultural-rooted loyalty should die too and be replaced by those things too...although, there are exceptions. In some ways, we do understand more about people we're closer to, so putting our country first will often be beneficial because we just don't know how to assist other countries, and some other countries have cultures that are so destructive that we want to be very careful when helping them. Also, there are a lot of broke blacks in St. Louis City, and if I ever get some extra cash I'm feeling empathetic with, I'm going to completely ignore them and focus on, say, donating to companies trying to research better desalinization techniques or something like that...but if anyone wants to open up a business in a poor black area of St. Louis, I certainly wouldn't mind that. It would probably give some people some more hope, which would help reduce our ridiculous murder rate.
I see cultures as frequently having predatory relationships with their followers. Oftentimes, nobody gains anything from their cultures, and their cultures just kind of spread like diseases that evolve towards nothing but better and better ability to procreate. I want that fought through encouraging a more hedonistic culture. That would encourage people to put their cultures through more of a filter...so, if my culture isn't helping me in some clear way, I can discard it, which helps put a check on my culture that keeps it from just spreading however it wants.
The biggest destructive aspect of culture I can think of is religion. Culture usually encourages religion, which is probably usually destructive. Hedonism, I think, kind of fights that. Hedonism tells people, "ignore society, and just do what YOU want, which gets people into ignoring the peer pressure often associated with religion.
There are other destructive aspects of culture too, usually involving pushing people to just follow along blindly with culture in ways that are fine for most people, but destructive to people with unusual emotional needs, such as the asexuals, gay people, extreme introverts or extroverts and those sorts of things. But still, I think hedonism would usually push the majority to get what they want anyway, while being more adaptive in terms of achieving what's best for people with unusual minds. If society would have been more hedonistic, just focusing mostly on pleasure-seeking and avoiding suffering and not really trying to control anyone else, nobody would even have had a reason to put forth segregation laws, or anti-gay laws, or any of that silly nonsense.
So, until we get a better culture, I want our culture focused more on encouraging hedonism.
A hedonism-encouraging culture encourages people to do well in school, so they can make money, so they can be happier. A hedonism-encouraging culture lets people abandon cultures that are parasitic, which forces the cultures to improve to better assist their followers, or die. A hedonism-encouraging cultures lets people abandon family members who are abusive, and encourages divorce in instances where couples can't get along well. A hedonism-encouraging and individuality-encouraging culture encourages people to be more skeptical of religion, and less concerned about the peer pressure that spreads religion. A hedonism-encouraging culture tells people to wonder, "WHY IS GOD ANY BETTER THAN ME? I AM GLORIOUS!" which, though that mentality has it's flaws, even the narcissism that is a risk of encouraging is about a thousand times as superior, in my view, as someone believing they're worthless scum who god is better than in every way. A hedonism-encouraging culture gives people clear, inspiring goals.
Most of all, a hedonism-encouraging culture gets rid of trivial distractions like patriotism or nationalism and gives people more room to focus on the more important things like personal growth, and the survival of the species.
Black unity will mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. It ill inevitably mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. Some of them will be good. Some of them will be bad.
If one is an advocate for indivdualism, that doesn't mean advocating fatherless homes. I'm actually going to assume culture probably encourages unprotected sex more than discourages it. Kids constantly talk about how sex is the greatest thing in the world, and everybody treats it as if getting it earns you some kind of trophy. I'm sure much of unprotected sex is driven by the fact that it's just sex...but it being treated by society as if it's the equivalent of earning an Olympic medal probably isn't helping anything. Also, while I know there are some carefully planned pregnancies by single moms, and at other times single mothers end up very happy, there will be times when culture will have peer pressured a single mother into not getting an abortion. You really don't see much of culture encouraging abortion. It usually goes the opposite way. So, in that way, a more healthily self-centered, hedonistc woman could have just gotten an abortion and avoided being a single mother in the first place.
Also, there's a difference between being hedonistic/individualistic and having poor impulse control. The guy who gets a woman pregnant and ends up paying eighteen years of child support has poor impulse control, definitely. He just made a very short-sighted choice. A hedonistic person with better impulse control would just look at things like, "Well...let's do the math. How much will this cost me, over the long run? Yeah, that sounds like a terrible idea."
People need good parenting, sure, and if part of that good parenting comes from one's community, that's good too, but a lot of "culture" is just parasitic and/or distracting traditions continued by people who've never met the followers of that culture, that I don't see any reason to continue living.
The drive to shoot people in a quest for respect, I think stems more from culture than individualism. If people cared less about respect, which in some ways I don't think I'd mind people caring less about, there'd be no drive to care about it enough to shoot people over it. You'd just think, "Screw it. I want to go read a book instead. That sounds more entertaining than shooting people and them shooting back at me."