Amerika

An individual becomes conservative not because they were mugged by reality but because they recognize the inherent risk of being human: people seek power for themselves, and take it from society, unless they are motivated by a shared goal.

Many of us argue against totalitarianism and Christianity for this reason. You cannot force people to be good, or to behave in a way that they are good, and get unity out of that. What you get is conformity and lots of backstabbing and grift behind the scenes.

Individualism, or the promotion of the individual above all else, is the ultimate form of “freedom.” You have anarchy in that no social order constrains you, but in theory you still enjoy the benefits of civilization if not the subsidies.

However, the more freedom, anarchy, and individualism in a civilization the closer it gets to thirdworldism or the idea that people have no obligations except to themselves:

In fact, in Venezuela, we have a name for this disorder-justifying mindset: Third Worldism. It’s not about race, nationality, or even poverty. Third Worldism is the belief that you’re entitled to use public spaces without any responsibility to care for them. It’s the idea that you can do whatever you want, no matter how it affects others—littering without shame, blasting music at fellow citizens, shoplifting, jumping turnstiles, refusing to pay the bus fare, defacing property, and ignoring rules meant to keep the commons usable for everyone.

The attitude behind these behaviors marks the true dividing line between the First and Third World mindset. It isn’t wealth alone that keeps cities livable. It’s culture: the rule of law, cleanliness, safety, and a shared civic compact. When residents uphold these norms, urban cores thrive as centers of prosperity and genuine diversity. When the compact breaks down, the result is social collapse and segregation.

The more you get individualism, the more the group depends on “equality,” which is group-enforced collectivized individualism that leads to thirdworlding or thirdworldism. The common areas, functions, institutions, and goals of civilization are discarded in favor of the individual.

In other words, societies die to the degree that they move to individualism instead of a sense of order, which holds that there are certain rules, standards, and goals that must be shared between all people. The goals and standards are most important; rules just make it easier to cheat.

Thirdworldism comes about because individual benefit consists of consumption of the whole; this is not by corporations so much as through the actions of individuals:

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another…. But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit–in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

With individualism, you get freedom, and then using that freedom, individuals consume everything in the name of their own interests.

When you have shared goals like culture and genetics, you can maintain or further those together and that takes precedence over individualism, including profit.

That seems to be the “sweet spot” for civilizational survival.

With individualism, you get a lack of goals and culture at a bigger level than that of the individual alone. Consequently, people form into mobs dedicated to individualism and steal everything they can under color of law.

Individualism leads to a convenience mentality: you argue for what you want, using whatever justifications or rationalizations you can, because your ultimate goal is simply what you want not what would be right, productive, or provide a better future.

Individualists are deontological. They only care about the morality of an action, not its results. Realists are consequentialists, and care about results in reality, which is why to them having goals beyond the individual is very important.

With individualism, you choose what is convenient that justifies whatever you need at the moment. This leads to means-over-ends thinking, where you replace goals with methods, and your “goals” become a thesis in search of data; you look only for whatever justifies or rationalizes what you want.

If you wonder why modern civilization has become so dark and third world in nature, look no further than to us imitating the third world method. The third world is the most individualistic place on Earth.

Thirdworlding results from switching from goals to individualism as our only goal, at which point no one maintains civilization, and soon we end up with a giant favela ruled over by politicians who have already given up on it ever getting better.

Tags: civilization decay, collapse, thirdworlding, thirdworldism