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Individualism and Collectivism
The Relationship between the Individual and the Collective Mind
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Humanity has an interesting dual existence. On one hand we are all individuals while on the other hand we are a huge collective sharing the Tree of Knowledge. We are also all members of many overlapping groups sharing a common purpose with other people and trusting other people to come up with information that we rely upon. Much of the language in the Church of Reality has focused on group mind, cult mind, and group-think issues and some people might think that the Church of Reality values the collective mind over that of the individual. But that is not the case.
The Church of Reality is strongly in favor of individualism. We also don't see a conflict between individual and collective thinking as long as it is done right. And of course how to do that right is what the Church of Reality is all about as we tread the thin line between being cooperative and the cult mind.
Humanity by nature organizes into groups. It's an evolutionary trait that has served humanity well for the most part. But it all depends on the nature of the group. If the group is a group of free thinkers, then you will have a group that has a dynamic of healthy disagreement, where a cult group will all be mindlessly parroting the same script. The Church of Reality, of course, aspires to be an example of the first type of group. In fact, we look at disagreement as a sign of healthy individualism where too much agreement might indicate a move towards mindless following. So to disagree and have healthy debate is a good thing.
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Intellectual diversity is to the evolution of ideas as genetic diversity is to physical evolution. Even if ideas are wrong, they get people thinking and sometimes lead to a deeper understanding of what we know. Sometimes the new idea is an insight that leads to something else, new. Or sometimes the new idea exposes that we had collectively made a mistake and that we can then correct the collective error. When you look at all the new wonderful inventions we have and look into the people who come up with those inventions, you quickly see that most of these people are weird people. And that isn't a coincidence because free thinkers think "outside the box" which is where new ideas come from.
An observation I also make is that some cultures produce more original and inventive thinking that other cultures. The San Francisco Bay area is a place where more new ideas come from than any other place on the planet. What is it about this area that produces so many inventions and original ideas? What is it that can be learned from the San Francisco Bay area culture?
The Bay Area is home to some of the most individualist people on the planet. Part of the reason for that is that weird people are welcome there. People are highly tolerant of differences between people and allow people to be themselves and freely express their individual weirdness. In many of the large cities in America you see rows of homes and all the homes look alike. In the Bay Area you see rows of homes and they all look different, even though the same builder built all the homes on the same street.
The average person rarely invents anything. All the cool stuff is invented by weird people.
This is an area that embraces the differences between people. People appreciate the fact that they are surrounded by people who do not agree with them. Even if some people don't like what other people are into, they understand that because the weird people have the freedom to be weird, they will be weird. We also know that when we look up the person who invented something really cool, we find that that person has blue hair and a bolt through her nose. Certainly the founder of the Church of Reality, Marc Perkel is a person who loves his individuality and if not for that, this religion wouldn't exist. So it makes sense that the freedom and individuality that went into the origins of this church would be the kind of freedom and individuality we would want to preserve.
Intellectual diversity is central to the Church of Reality because it generates new ideas and new ideas contribute to the Tree of Knowledge leading to Positive Evolution and fulfilling the goal of expanding our understanding of reality the way it really is. That is why we embrace the Principle of Freedom and the Principle of Personal Privacy as Sacred Principles because they are the cornerstone of cultural diversity and lead to a tolerant society where it is OK to be different. A society where it is OK to disagree. A society where people are encouraged to be different, to be their own person, and to think independently. One could even say that if you aren't fighting, you aren't evolving. (There's a statement ripe to be taken out of context.) But when everyone agrees and they all think alike it creates stagnation. Sometimes it takes some turmoil to lead to progress. Our goal as a society is to take diversity and turmoil and disagreement and use it to our advantage as a means of making progress.
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Just because people might disagree doesn't mean they can't work together for a good common outcome. Again, taking San Francisco Bay area culture as an example, you have a culturally diverse population, but you also have the highest density of not for profit organizations than in any other area in the world. Why is it that there are so many organizations in this area? Is it a coincidence or is there a relationship? Are these groups just small clusters of like-minded people, or are there other factors at play here? What is there for us to learn?
Because the population is intellectually diverse, people learn to work with and appreciate people who are not like minded. When you learn how to work with people whom you don't agree with, there are a lot more people who are compatible with you than if you are intolerant. In contrast, a monoculture expects everyone to be the same and even small differences of opinion lead to people deciding that they can't work with other people who believe almost the same thing. That's one reason there are thousands of flavors of Christians, even though they all have the same book as their source. In fact that's one of the pitfalls of faith-based religion. Everyone has to agree on the fiction.
Diversity increases cooperation because it creates a culture of respect and acceptance for people who are different, allowing a greater number of people to function collectively. .
So because you have intellectual diversity and you have acceptance of intellectual diversity, people can come together collectively to accomplish a common goal. Jews and Palestinians march together to end the violence. Christians and Satanists work together to feed the homeless. And because there is diversity, there is a broader base of resources and ideas to call upon to bring together to get the job done. There's probably going to be more strong opinions, shouting, name calling, and other behavior before a consensus is reached as compared to the Moonies, but once a decision is made, it's more likely going to be a better decision because it has been put to the test of scrutiny and doubt and has survived on the strength of it's own merits.
We in the Church of Reality aspire to be intellectually diverse. We don't agree among ourselves on a lot of things. In fact a high percentage of Realists think it's a mistake to degrade reality itself by calling it a religion. And - quite frankly - they have a point. But it is part of our religious identity and our religious culture to not agree with each other. We debate things out in order to attempt to come to agreement on some things, but there's always plenty of new stuff that we realists will always be arguing about. But that isn't a liability, it's an asset. It's what gives us our strength. We like disagreement. Sometimes we get our way and sometimes we don't. Like everyone, we make mistakes. But unlike everyone, we have a process of fixing our mistakes and a commitment to do so.
Disagreement can be a good thing. Being disagreeable - not so much.
We Realists take pride in being innovative. When someone tells us that something can't be done, we find a way to make it work. The word "impossible" means the same as "challenge" to us. When they say, "There are no easy solutions.", we respond, "Then you're just not trying hard enough!" We are united as one but we celebrate our differences and draw strength from our diversity. We don't want to be all alike. We do not strive to become a monoculture. We like being weird people. And we like working with other people who are not like us.
The Philosophy of the Open Hand includes learning how to work with people who you have differences with.
The Philosophy of the Open Hand includes being accepting of people who don't agree with you, even people who sometimes drive you nuts to deal with. Some of the best ideas and inspirations for the Church of Reality came from discussions with Christians. Some times they get it right. Sometimes they just inspire me to think things through. The Objectivists inspired this topic in claiming that Altruism and individualism are mutually exclusive. They are dead wrong, but it got me thinking about how collectivism might be construed as anti-individualism. So we can't go out and gas all the Christians because without believers who will set an example of what not to do?
We are one planet, we are all here together, and we not only have to figure out how to get along, but to make our differences an advantage rather than a liability. Our Principle of Peace isn't based on the idea that we have a forced peace, that we all really hate each other, but agree not to do anything about it. Nor do we envision a peace that is achieved by a world wide uniculture. We see peace in terms of using our differences to our mutual advantage which preserves our individual freedom and privacy yet creates a culture where people of diverse backgrounds can come together collectively and accomplish great things and we all get what we want. Well - except for the Extinctionists. Sorry guys, we just can't let that happen.
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Newsflash |
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Individualism