So, something that shows up often (for instance, in the voyager episode I just watched, and the evolutionary viability of societies, blah, blah, blah), is the question of the good of the individual v the good of the society. In many ways, serving one serves the other. But at times, they do come in to conflict. But where they do, societies favoring the good of the whole tend to out survive those favoring the good of the individual. This is not good news.
Luckily, it’s a fantasy tv show! Collectivisms have a far worse track record on Earth 🙂
Well….
Yes, collectives do have a worse record in reality than on star trek, but for all that, there are several criteria of collectivism that the Borg fail. The two most stunningly obvious ones being, first that they have a queen (I was so disappointed by that when it showed up on the movie), and second, that membership isn’t voluntary, a common requirement of essentially all [modern American*] collectives. =)
*=can’t vouch so much for other ones, I’m not an expert on this topic.
So what do you see as real-examples of these?
Hunter-Gatherer -> farmer transition. Boring, talked about it too much lately, but the absolute best example I have of the ideals in conflict. The individual was worse off, but could reproduce better, so outnumbered, and took over.
I also wonder how my intentional living goals fare when evaluated in this light. I mean, it’s pretty clear that any community one intends to spend one’s life in comes with both individually good and bad elements, but how does it fare in the big picture?
One might claim that fascism fails because it fails to throw enough of a bone to the individual for the individual to cooperate in the long run. As compared to anarchy, which is always stillborn, both because of how humans tend to organize themselves, automatically (and for mutual benefit, at that) and because anarchists have little group power due to incoherence.
The rules of a free market restrict in personally damaging ways (ask anyone who couldn’t afford important health care.), but they do maximize the utility gained from the available resources. (assuming that all the rules of a free market apply, which is a bit like assuming that people sneeze perfectly formed computer chips)