“The individual is dominated by a moral reality that is greater than himself, namely, collective reality.” – Emile Durkheim (father of modern sociology)
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
Personalized Segregation
A primary goal for most of us is to survive in a comfortable, healthy, enjoyable, and productive manner. We are also concerned about the well-being of those in our immediate environment, such as family and friends. But what about the billions of people who don’t have access to the resources and information you do? Don’t they want and need the same things? Of course, but our ego provides only a limited perspective. In many people, it is an exaggerated desire for attainment and self-preservation, produced by manufactured need, ignorance of the needs of others, and fear of loss. The monetary system feeds our ego through greed so that we spend every waking hour consumed by our own consumption. This is the definition of addiction. Think about how much we all consider money and cost in order to survive on a daily basis, and realize that we do it without even thinking about it anymore. In order to cure ourselves of an addiction, first we need to recognize there is a problem before we apply a solution. Ego and money are two of the biggest problems in the world today because they are so widely misunderstood. And because they are both so pervasive in this world, misunderstanding them is dangerous.
“What we observe when we have feelings and introspect are actually a rather miscellaneous set of byproducts of the environmental circumstances to which our behavior is related.” – B.F. Skinner
The truth is that our egos, like our money, are irrelevant to the universe. This is because they have nothing to do with the physical reality of our environment. The value of both exists only in our heads, meaning they are so insignificant that every person and dollar on the planet could disappear this instant and the world would keep right on turning. They are more akin to fantasy and illusion, and represent a serious value disorder and lack of perspective. Yet most cultures require money for obtaining resources and tools in order to live. This forces many people to disregard others in order to provide for themselves and their families. But if we have enough resources and technological ability to provide for everyone, then the use of money becomes redundant. Instead of being a useful method for attainment like when it was first developed, the evolution of science has rendered money as an obsolete tool of controlled prevention. And who controls all the resources and information? Those with the most money and ego.
Nature and history have shown us that life only prospers when it has access to what it needs. When there is scarcity, that’s when fighting for survival occurs. This keeps us distracted with ourselves and the struggle of our meagerly rationed existence. That is when our ego impedes us from seeing the truth. When we understand how everything in the universe is connected, then the word “individuality” loses its importance. So many people are proud of their unique qualities, forgetting that many other people share them all over the world. But if everyone can be an individual, why brag about something that is obviously easy to achieve? Therefore, of what use are ego and individuality? To those in power, they are means of control, because humans are also a valuable resource. It is the old effective tactic of “divide and conquer”. Keeping us separate prevents us from understanding how similar we all are in our needs and composition, disabling us from uniting and changing things. When separate, we are less capable. Hence the phrase, “There is no “I” in Team”.
Of course a team is stronger than a single person. Obviously governments, religions, corporations, and armies know this too. Therefore individuality and ego actually make us weak and ineffective. They are encouraged through excessive ownership, pushed by constant advertising in all forms of media. They are fed by politicians, who frequently pander to different groups, telling each one what they want to hear. Religion and spirituality have a similar effect, whereby different gods encourage different behaviors among different groups, making them each think they are special and infallible regardless of any tangible evidence. Any attack on such blind personal faith conjures ego to its defense. Yet studying many other fields other than religion provides much more insight into how large, dangerous, beautiful, complex, and truly amazing the universe is. Everyone used to believe the Earth was the center of everything, because our perspective was very limited. Such egocentrism is detrimental once you realize how dependent we all are on each other and many other things.
“Thoughts just emerge in consciousness; we are not authoring them. That would require that we think them before we think them. If you can’t control your next thought and you don’t know what it’s going to be until it arises, where is your freedom of will?” – Sam Harris
Myopic individualism breeds ignorance, and keeps us from understanding that our choices are determined by many variables we did not choose. There is no self-initiation of behavior of anything in the universe, and we are no different; we are just more complex because our planet is. We are merely culminations of our environmental experiences, resulting in our reflexive action, based upon our bodily responses to stimuli. Therefore, “individuality” is manufactured by environment. We are made of mostly bacteria, stardust, water, energy, all commonly recycled ingredients of Earth. You are only “you” to the extent that new information and experiences have not yet changed your behavior. This may upset some people who have been trained to believe in "free will" because it alters their most personal possession: themselves. For some people, individuality is all they have. Choice is their god, meaning a singular word that fails to identify all the factors that shaped something. It would be harmful and cruel to take something from people without substituting a better alternative in its place. The truth may be difficult, but it is quite useful and liberating. When we understand that we are not responsible for who we become, we can stop blaming problems on ourselves and others, and actually focus on the root causes of them. Once we know how dependent we are on everything else around us, only then can we act in the best interest of our world and everyone in it. There is no “me”; there is only “we”.
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
Personalized Segregation
A primary goal for most of us is to survive in a comfortable, healthy, enjoyable, and productive manner. We are also concerned about the well-being of those in our immediate environment, such as family and friends. But what about the billions of people who don’t have access to the resources and information you do? Don’t they want and need the same things? Of course, but our ego provides only a limited perspective. In many people, it is an exaggerated desire for attainment and self-preservation, produced by manufactured need, ignorance of the needs of others, and fear of loss. The monetary system feeds our ego through greed so that we spend every waking hour consumed by our own consumption. This is the definition of addiction. Think about how much we all consider money and cost in order to survive on a daily basis, and realize that we do it without even thinking about it anymore. In order to cure ourselves of an addiction, first we need to recognize there is a problem before we apply a solution. Ego and money are two of the biggest problems in the world today because they are so widely misunderstood. And because they are both so pervasive in this world, misunderstanding them is dangerous.
“What we observe when we have feelings and introspect are actually a rather miscellaneous set of byproducts of the environmental circumstances to which our behavior is related.” – B.F. Skinner
The truth is that our egos, like our money, are irrelevant to the universe. This is because they have nothing to do with the physical reality of our environment. The value of both exists only in our heads, meaning they are so insignificant that every person and dollar on the planet could disappear this instant and the world would keep right on turning. They are more akin to fantasy and illusion, and represent a serious value disorder and lack of perspective. Yet most cultures require money for obtaining resources and tools in order to live. This forces many people to disregard others in order to provide for themselves and their families. But if we have enough resources and technological ability to provide for everyone, then the use of money becomes redundant. Instead of being a useful method for attainment like when it was first developed, the evolution of science has rendered money as an obsolete tool of controlled prevention. And who controls all the resources and information? Those with the most money and ego.
Nature and history have shown us that life only prospers when it has access to what it needs. When there is scarcity, that’s when fighting for survival occurs. This keeps us distracted with ourselves and the struggle of our meagerly rationed existence. That is when our ego impedes us from seeing the truth. When we understand how everything in the universe is connected, then the word “individuality” loses its importance. So many people are proud of their unique qualities, forgetting that many other people share them all over the world. But if everyone can be an individual, why brag about something that is obviously easy to achieve? Therefore, of what use are ego and individuality? To those in power, they are means of control, because humans are also a valuable resource. It is the old effective tactic of “divide and conquer”. Keeping us separate prevents us from understanding how similar we all are in our needs and composition, disabling us from uniting and changing things. When separate, we are less capable. Hence the phrase, “There is no “I” in Team”.
Of course a team is stronger than a single person. Obviously governments, religions, corporations, and armies know this too. Therefore individuality and ego actually make us weak and ineffective. They are encouraged through excessive ownership, pushed by constant advertising in all forms of media. They are fed by politicians, who frequently pander to different groups, telling each one what they want to hear. Religion and spirituality have a similar effect, whereby different gods encourage different behaviors among different groups, making them each think they are special and infallible regardless of any tangible evidence. Any attack on such blind personal faith conjures ego to its defense. Yet studying many other fields other than religion provides much more insight into how large, dangerous, beautiful, complex, and truly amazing the universe is. Everyone used to believe the Earth was the center of everything, because our perspective was very limited. Such egocentrism is detrimental once you realize how dependent we all are on each other and many other things.
“Thoughts just emerge in consciousness; we are not authoring them. That would require that we think them before we think them. If you can’t control your next thought and you don’t know what it’s going to be until it arises, where is your freedom of will?” – Sam Harris
Myopic individualism breeds ignorance, and keeps us from understanding that our choices are determined by many variables we did not choose. There is no self-initiation of behavior of anything in the universe, and we are no different; we are just more complex because our planet is. We are merely culminations of our environmental experiences, resulting in our reflexive action, based upon our bodily responses to stimuli. Therefore, “individuality” is manufactured by environment. We are made of mostly bacteria, stardust, water, energy, all commonly recycled ingredients of Earth. You are only “you” to the extent that new information and experiences have not yet changed your behavior. This may upset some people who have been trained to believe in "free will" because it alters their most personal possession: themselves. For some people, individuality is all they have. Choice is their god, meaning a singular word that fails to identify all the factors that shaped something. It would be harmful and cruel to take something from people without substituting a better alternative in its place. The truth may be difficult, but it is quite useful and liberating. When we understand that we are not responsible for who we become, we can stop blaming problems on ourselves and others, and actually focus on the root causes of them. Once we know how dependent we are on everything else around us, only then can we act in the best interest of our world and everyone in it. There is no “me”; there is only “we”.
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