I do have an interest in politics. The government has a direct impact on our daily lives, so it is important to keep tabs on things.
Politics, along with religion, are two of the things that will almost always cause some heated discussion. It has long been surmised that it is best to just leave those topics alone, lest somebody’s feelings get hurt. Fair enough. This particular blog is supposed to be about fun stuff, so I’m going to try to avoid these subjects as much as possible.
My political thoughts will, for the most part, be limited to social media such as Facebook or MeWe, and such. Here, I want to look at things from a larger standpoint and avoid the abusive left/right political fighting. I find most of that fighting to be pointless (but still occasionally fun to wade into).
At a higher level, today’s political climate can be split into individualism and collectivism. My personal worldview is of individualism, so that will flavor my thinking and writing. It has taken many years of study for me to understand collectivism and I’d say that these days I’ve got a decent grasp of it. With knowledge comes understanding and an opportunity to find common ground.
Individualism is pretty easy to define. The individual is the smallest minority. The individual is responsible for the individual. The individual is free to do anything, provided that person doesn’t infringe upon the basic human rights of another. What are those rights? That’s a discussion for another time.
Collectivism places everything into groups. Society is a group. A nation is a group. Name something and put people into it and you have a collective. In most cases, the collective good is more important that the individual good. The collective is responsible for the good of the collective. If an individual fails in the collective, it is the fault and responsibility of the collective to address. An individual’s rights are less important than the collective’s rights. An easy way to understand collectivism is to look to nature, as an easy example is a bee hive or an ant’s nest. The individual insects matter less than the collective hive. Note, there is always a powerful leader at the center of the collective.
Yes, this is a simplistic approach to the topic. An in-depth discussion can be had at another time, provided there is an interest by my readers.