Against Individualism

This is a short discussion of the problems of individualism and how they relate to the visual bias of modern Western cultures. It explores sound and voice, the relations between self and others, and the meaning of dreamless sleep, all in an attempt recover a sense of the extra-mundane facts of our existence,

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Individualism
• Religion
• Science
• Atheism
• Afterlife
• Dreamless Sleep
• Vision
• Sound
• Language
• Voice

[MarmaladeINFP]

I suspect modern individualism is a cultural artifact rather than being inherent to human nature. It was taken to an extreme with Western Civilization & in particular capitalism, but it seems to have it's origins with the Axial Age. Julian Jaynes proposed the theory that earliest literature such as from the Greeks doesn't show signs of individualism as we know it. Modern individualism is based on the idea of an objective world of objects, but early humans experienced the world animistically.

[Professoranton]

@MarmaladeINFP Thanks. Great link to Jaynes! Good call

[MrCropper]

2:02 what?

[Professoranton]

I recommend you read Walter Ong.

Are words merely things in an environment or are people within the environments that the words make possible? For example: What is a calendar? Are the days of the week in an environment or are we in the environment of the week?

[busheybushdawg]

at 5:10 : "experience myself as having been undifferentiated" - who exactly is experiencing

them self in this instance and what experience are you having in dreamless sleep?

[Professoranton]

One never has the direct experience of dreamless sleep; at best one wakes to find one "as having been" undifferentiated. What does it meant to wake up and know this?

[livenowdoing]

Individualism results from the thinking that "thinks" it is the person. This thinking begins in childhood. It constructs a "personality", a false self, that slowly takes over the life of the child. By adulthood the person has become a separate "identity" and learns to take his/her place in a world full of separate identities. It is possible to return to the true self, but it can not be done through thinking. Since thinking created the problem, it must be done through non-thinking.

[DaSkinnyApe]

you were wrong about the "visual" understanding. Our senses actually turn information into THOUGHTS; and that includes the eye itself!

[twistedbydsign99]

I'm not sure I agree, do you think that 'self' and 'other' are not valid? Because it seems like individualism is inherent in that.

[brokennarcissist]

@CammieSpectrum Hippies pretend they don't have a dark side then get messed up by their glaring blindspot.

[CammieSpectrum]

@brokennarcissist I'm mostlly just ranting about hippie girls. they tend to date the dumbest guys that contribute nothing to anything, except they say 'I love everyon' occassionally...and then hippie girls like them...eventhough the solution to the world's problems is not going to come from everyone loving each other, I don't think....and I think the fact that girls have a preference for guys that are lame in general seems to hold back progress in the world

[brokennarcissist]

@CammieSpectrum Actually some of us adore difference and hate consensus, it's sort of the point of post 1940 art and philosophy.

[brokennarcissist]

This reminds me of the 'global transformation of consciousness' you've claimed is your hope in an earlier shoot which tastes like one of those indigestible grand narratives....

Yes there are lower levels of pre linguist consciousness present in individuals (the. plemora/atomic level, uroboric and animilia...) but to suggest that a collective identity is the goal is to invite a horror, language allows for fragmentation, that fragmentation is our freedom by which we escape the unity of the cosmos

[CammieSpectrum]

Though Feeling like we are all one seems to equally be a hoax. no one loves everyone. we hate are differences. we maximize our minimal differences. and saying everything is interconnected is still separation. nor do peopel(usually hippie girls) really actually help anyone by saying things like this. they don't care about my well being. this infinite love is only a symbolic gesture(fake), as likely are psychdelic experiences that promote this feeling an separation as illusion

[ProudBourgeoisie]

It's endlessly fascinating that those who peddle this sort of death doctrine invariably do it in such syrupy, flat tones. It can almost be shown mathematically: an idea's viciousness is directly proportional to the flatness with which it is pitched. Particuarly ironic since in another video the Professor praised Eric Hoffer, who would surely advise us to run like hell from this siren song.

Surrender my individualism to WHOM, Professor? On what basis?

I'll hang up and wait for my answer.