Does the concept of "the individual" just not exist anymore?

[skykiii]

Cuz a lot of times lately (and admittedly, not just here) I see a lot of topics and discussions that assume a sort of groupthink.

Not to pick specifically on Kiwis but to use a few examples: "The India Menace," the three topics about "why are all women X?" Any time Japan comes up, etc.

I mean I get that NPCs exist but ultimately there will always be an individualized component.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

That's how you know the people you are dealing with are bad at logic
That said, I also catch a ton of flak whenever I argue that there exists no such thing as a "group" that is somehow independent from its members

 

[LifeAlert]

Not to pick specifically on Kiwis but to use a few examples: "The India Menace," the three topics about "why are all women X?" Any time Japan comes up, etc.

Take your blinders off and visit other parts of the site

 

[I Shidded I Farded I Came]

Cuz a lot of times lately (and admittedly, not just here) I see a lot of topics and discussions that assume a sort of groupthink.

Not to pick specifically on Kiwis but to use a few examples: "The India Menace," the three topics about "why are all women X?" Any time Japan comes up, etc.

I mean I get that NPCs exist but ultimately there will always be an individualized component.

There is nothing wrong with generalization. Everyone (barring retards whose opinion is worthless anyway) knows there are individuals who fall outside of them.
If I said "humans have two arms and two legs" how much time would you waste on autistic uhm akschullay-ing about the fraction of people born with any combination of both or neither? It is pedantry.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Indians are not individuals. If you'd ever met one, you'd know that they are all exactly the same, possibly made on a literal assembly line.

 

[TATE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODE!!]

Take your blinders off and visit other parts of the site

Even better is interact with the real world and realize the internet is mostly fake and gay hyperbole.

 

[Gremperor]

Cuz a lot of times lately (and admittedly, not just here) I see a lot of topics and discussions that assume a sort of groupthink.

Not to pick specifically on Kiwis but to use a few examples: "The India Menace," the three topics about "why are all women X?" Any time Japan comes up, etc.

I mean I get that NPCs exist but ultimately there will always be an individualized component.

That's how you know the people you are dealing with are bad at logic
That said, I also catch a ton of flak whenever I argue that there exists no such thing as a "group" that is somehow independent from its members

 

[Butterschmalz]

Culture wars ended individualism. And stuff like "diversity is our strength", BLM, etc. Now its vaxxed vs. unvaxxed, boomers vs millennials, black vs white, etc etc. If you turn society into the San Quentin prison, you eventually end up with prison gangs. And the whole point of prison gangs is the survival of the group and NOT the individual.

 

[batterybee]

To be treated as an individual is a luxury and an in-group privilege. Outsiders get generalised treatment.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Yes.
And if you ever said something like "all women/blacks/homos/trannies are like this", you owe an apology to every woman/negro/homo/tranny that is not like that.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

That said, I also catch a ton of flak whenever I argue that there exists no such thing as a "group" that is somehow independent from its members

I don't see what's so controversial about that, it makes perfect sense to me.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

Right. And what's with half-lifes in chemistry? Every time I see that I'm like "alpha decay is, according to human understanding, an entirely unpredictable quantum phenomenon, so why are these guys making generalized statements about material decay like that just because you can formulate relatively accurate projections based upon averages in a group? Can atoms not be individuals anymore?"

Back in my grandfather's day the United States was about the american dream and freedom to be your own man, and now progressive scientists have infiltrated our institutions and pushed their collectivist sensibilities onto the very energy structure of our youth. Sad.

 

[Joe Swanson]

The individual doesn't exist beyond the individual level, so if you want to change the perception of the group you're a part of, you or your sub group has to be louder then the people who give your group a bad name

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

That's how you know the people you are dealing with are bad at logic
That said, I also catch a ton of flak whenever I argue that there exists no such thing as a "group" that is somehow independent from its members

A "group" is an emergent phenomenon. Sure, there would be no group without the individuals within it, but it often makes no sense to talk about a group in terms of its members.
When you look at a colony of ants, are you thinking about every individual bug and what it does to sustain itself? That would be dumb in most contexts. It is the colony which acts to preserve and grow the colony.

Trends emerge when you look at things at a large scale which you don't see at smaller, more fundamental, scales. Sociology is not psychology any more than psychology is biology or biology is chemistry. They're different fields of study for good reason.

 

[Lapsus of the bepsus]

these days most "individuals" are patchwork golems built from an "Identity-Based Individual Starter Kit (TM)" (suitable for ages 3-99) (made in China) which allows you to select 1 hardline political stance, 1 personal identity quirk, 1 external appearance quirk and up to 2 hobbies oriented around consumption to craft your very own personalized Individual(TM) before sending it tumbling down the rapid streams of life with nothing to hold on to.
you could DIY your own custom individual without buying the cheap prefab kit, but no one bothers anymore.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Individualism is fake and gay. Individuals only exist as a part of a group. When society becomes atomised and the lines between groups get attacked and thinned you don't get more individual individuals. You simply reduce people to more base, primal and less self aware groups. Also the more you attack people's group awarenesses the more hateful they will become internally. Saying "not all" is not helping anything.

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

The statement "asian men are shorter on average" is a shit statement in and of itself. It never bothers to identify the reference for height. "shorter" is relative to a given standard. Shorter without a reference cannot exist. Shorter than what on average? White people from northern Europe? As a general rule, yes. Shorter than pigmies? Probably not. So, you have to start with a less shit sentence, then you can gauge how retarded the person you are talking to is.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

A "group" is an emergent phenomenon. Sure, there would be no group without the individuals within it, but it often makes no sense to talk about a group in terms of its members.
When you look at a colony of ants, are you thinking about every individual bug and what it does to sustain itself? That would be dumb in most contexts. It is the colony which acts to preserve and grow the colony.

Trends emerge when you look at things at a large scale which you don't see at smaller, more fundamental, scales. Sociology is not psychology any more than psychology is biology or biology is chemistry. They're different fields of study for good reason.

My core point is that the idea that groups act as independent agents is misleading.
A colony of ants appears to function as a single organism, but that is nothing but a convenient description. In reality, every action, every decision, is made by individual ants. All social or "group" phenomena must be traced back to the choices of individuals. Without individual actions, no group exists at all.
When you reduce sociology to the actions of individuals, you avoid the pitfalls of interpreting intentions or properties to an abstract "group" that never really exists. And this perspective is really the only logical way to analyze human behavior. It is individuals, not collectives, who ultimately drive all outcomes.

 

[Otterly]

In reality, every action, every decision, is made by individual ants. All social or "group" phenomena must be traced back to the choices of individuals.

Those actions are heavily influenced by the colony though. Such colonies use chemical messaging to force certain outcomes.
It’s actually interesting to think about the dynamics between the group and the individual. The choices an isolated individual human makes aren’t often the same as the ones in their immediate or larger groups. ‘Groups’ structure as well at various scales - family, tribe, wider society all exert their own pressures and checks on the individual.
I don’t think it’s so easy to make statements about THE individual versus the group. Maybe AN individual yes, which is why people get mad about it. We see ourselves as a specific individual rather than an archetype of an individual. So yeah you know you’re ’not all….’ But you can’t say the same about any other individual at random.
I think ultimately it boils down to only ever being able to experience being yourself. Everyone else is an unknown, individual or group.
And I’m not so sure about groups not being able to drive outcomes. A man is rational and a mob is not.

 

[lIllllIiiiiLLLLiiiiIIIIll]

Ayn Rand already did a novella about this called Anthem in the fucking late 30s. And it's not even very good in the first place.