Greetings Economists, On Sep 13, 2007, at 8:51 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
That's right, but individualisms assume we are all different.
Doyle; I would presume individualism really is about how connection works. The legal apparatus in capitalism of course protects capitalists as individuals. And there are metaphysical arguments about the individual. But over all, and the best example is language is that what we use to communicate unites people more or less. That's not a psychological stance in my view. Certainly if I'm depressed and won't talk that affects my connection, but the language is connector. National media connect people by speed of word, and number who hear. That sort of unity does not force a specific sort of belief upon people but does unite a community in what they 'know'. You have to choose to go for the alternative if you want to know something besides what the media show. Whereas if you grow up in Iceland on a remote island with no tv or other media your connection is of a different type. I'm thinking of a photographer on Flickr whose story is that she lived on the island growing up basically just knowing her family. The family connection would feel stronger to her because that is all there is to know. Language is the same words used by different people in a more or less open method to 'know' and to talk to each other. Individualism is related to how the sameness of words is made. Dictionaries tighten spelling and definitions by being static references about such. That can become a sort of conservative battleground of true culture. And true unity. Marxism defines workers as work as a commonality, a class feature. To unify that concept across a whole system is rather like saying one language fits all. To treat workers as if they all are equal. To counter individualism of language differences or disconnection by language much effort is made to support cross language unity in Marxist states. Does language matter as the unifier over anything else? If an animal who cannot speak is just bacon on the hoof, interchangeable in it's being, language is a superstructure external to any one human being that equally connects. So the human without language is an animal with no language and the same sort of knowing problems even though the human will have a big brain to work out personal meaning. A human with language is only that because of who shares the language with the person. They are all alike to speak the same language in an 'intelligible' means of human connection. Individualism for a human is 'no language' by which I mean the superstructure of a level of society is not present. Doyle
