– Rev. Dragon’s Eye

To do so is to deny that which creation has given us. Imagine the turtle renouncing it’s shell or the bird it’s feathers. That is precisely what the social engineers and government propagandists demand of us – to renounce our connection with the creator. After all, one cannot worship 2 Gods. No, the state and society have assumed the role of God and demand complete obeisance.

It is madness of the first order, demanding that we take our place as faithful cogs in the machine directed by an elite few. Does money somehow qualify their singularity as worthy of retaining? How can an inanimate object endow a person with anything? Money cannot confer anything to a person, it only changes the perception of others about the person who has the money. Considering today’s version of money is nothing more than printed paper created on demand it has become a tool of extortion that for whatever reason we all go along with. Imagine me writing on a piece of paper that this paper gives me the right to take whatever of value I want and create rules that others must abide by.

They made the rules of the game and it is our ignorance that makes us continue to play along to their benefit and our detriment. They ask of us to surrender that which makes us true individuals in return for playing pieces in the game of society. Choose that which you will claim: to be a part of group, a neutered being devoid of possibility and a connection to God or to be the person you were born to be, in harmony with the universe and our creator and with our wings unclipped and free to fly.

There is a popular model now embraced, called Positive Deviance, which does focus on the ‘individual’. The model posits a very systematic approach to social and behavior change at a group level. The description, process, and ‘engineered steps’ to promote behavioral change are outlined at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance

This approach is quite popular in the public health arena for introducing new ‘health related’ behavior change interventions based on the pre-defined public health objective (such as encouraging ‘healthy behaviors’ which has been defined of course by the public health scientists).

– From Wikipedia:

Positive deviance (PD) is an approach to behavioral and social change based on the observation that in any community, there are people whose uncommon but successful behaviors or strategies enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers, despite facing similar challenges and having no extra resources or knowledge than their peers. These individuals are referred to as positive deviants.[1][2][3] The concept first appeared in nutrition research in the 1970s.

…. read more at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance

🙂

I do agree that we need to beware of false dichotomies. There is a place for community, as well as individualism. Finding and walking that fine line will help to bring the individual’s dreams into some kind of tangible reality. Although we have infinite creative potential, most of us do not live in a complete vacuum. Even great sorcerers and shamans sometimes work together in groups in order to strengthen whatever reality they’re dreaming into being. For how expansive Jon’s thinking so often is, I always find it interesting when the old dichotomies win out. In a world of all possibilities, surely many exist besides two. 🙂

I am in a similar place. I research healthicine, the science of health – as opposed to the science of illness. I am very afraid that all of my work will become an ‘individual’ work. a novelty that is never adopted, never studied, never taken any farther by my communities. I am worried that after I die, someone else will need to re-create my work, before it can be part of the human ‘social’, the human community.

You should worry too. If your work on The Matrix is of value, who will carry it forward? Who will make it bigger than just the work of a single individual? Many people can buy your books, your audio and other materials, but unless someone works to create a matrix community, a matrix ‘social’, your work will fade and die with you.

It’s a bit of a paradox. By claiming that everything comes from the individual, you paint yourself into a small corner, surrounded by not just individuals, but also individuals in communities, who simply ignore you out of existence.

Orwell got it wrong too, when he said “It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquitositors never dreamt of.” He should have said “gives to a tyrannical INDIVIDUAL such powers as”, then we might see the error in his thought process. It is not collectivism, nor individualism that is at fault, it is an imbalance of power in one direction or another. There will always be people who believe that communities aspect has too much power, and others who fear the individual. The way to fight communities is by giving power to individuals, and the way to fight individuals is by giving power to communities. This is not a trivial, one-sided affair, it requires balance, not dogmatism.

But it also requires fight!! You need to keep up the fight, and others need to maintain the fight for individual rights and powers, because communities have a natural tendency to take away powers. Most laws are created to take away powers. “THOU SHALT NOT …” is the natural phrasing of laws created by communities. We need to develop communities and governments that adopt a different stance. We need to ensure that the main purpose of governments is to create laws that enable the power of individuals, not to disable it..This can only be done through community (social) action, not by individuals acting on their own.
to your health, and the health of your communities,
tracy

When an author so misunderstands and misrepresents the first major thinker to pose the question of the loss of identity in modern society, one begins to think they are ….well, full of shit.

His thesis, that social science (a term he does not define) has destroyed the individual, is backed up by distorted views of 3 early social scientists, ranging from Durkheim’s groundbreaking work in 1893 to Beard in 1931 to Bronowski in 1956. The only social scientists he discusses who is newer than 60 years back is Peter Callero, who is attacked for calling ‘individualism’ a myth.

In fact, it is. No one grows into an individual without first being raised by a family, the basic collective of all societies. Those who do not have intact communities to grow up within do not become independent individuals but most often dependent mental cases, sometimes psychopaths who have not learned the value of empathy. It takes strong families and communities to raise strong individuals. The collective and the individual are not enemies, for individualism, as in people who are independent and able to form meaningful relationships, but rather they are complementary.

Rappaport uses mostly ancient social scientists because he is unfamiliar with current social science (and cites only one contemporary, whom he mangles in translation.).

Social science is too broad, complex, and evolving to blanket as “destroying individualism.”

The myth of individualism (not the reality of real individuals who are brought up in collectives which teach self-reliance and autonomy) is a shallow theory which does not withstand any empirical critique. Societies create individuals; human groups have features that are more than the sum of the individuals. Anyone who has ever been in a band or sports team knows that the collective(the team) has a purpose greater than any individual (ie victory for the collective) and provides, by the same token, opportunities for individual excellence.

The fake choice of individual or programmed slave is based on a basic misunderstanding of the intimate and inevitable relationship between the collective (family, school, team, corporation, community, nation, species and the individuals who compose it.

This article is based on a fake choice, a false dichotomy. What we require today is a deeper understanding of how strong and healthy communities (which are collectives) can produce sttong and healthy individuals. Sick and corrupt societies produce sick and crippled people.

The most evolved individuals (such as Buddha and Jesus) teach us to bond with all other people through compassion, love, and empathy. Those who do not become evil narcissists, the ultimate destination of an ideology of individualism which dismisses the roots of human autonomy in a strong commitment to serving others.

Those whose goal is to make money alone represent the epitome of this false individualism.
On the other hand, teachers, firemen, and those who serve show us the true flowering of an individualism rooted in a strong communal bond.

Durkheim observed that those cut off from social ties (not through deliberate rebellion but most often through having no family, no community ties, no lasting relationships—the creation of a system of labor exploitation and the deterioration of traditional ties, such as extended families and religious communities, which were being left behind by the dynamics of industrial exploitation of labor. The result, of such unrealized launches into independence and self-reliance, was widespread suicide. Life, without community, life isolated and fragmented, is not worth living.

Durkheim’s analysis actually is not a defense of the matrix; it is merely an informative source as to some causes due to the problems of a highly developed matrix that isolates people. Social science can be harnessed to great evil or good ends; it gives credence to those who view modernity as a source of the engineered problems. Humanists lie Charles Dickens wrote of the vulgarities of the industrial revolution; Marx traced the sources of this vulgarity, and Durkheim tried to explain it its growth, and Weber predicted it would get worse; all critiques in support of why the matrix is harmful. Perhaps we should look to human foibles in their behaviors as an explanation rather than attacking philosophers that had “issues’ with failed leaders and systems as well.