R.C. Van Ausdall

🇺🇸 🇳🇿 If there's an elephant in the room, invite me, and bring the popcorn. Tweets are mine.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@dpfdpf That’s absurd. Will the government guarantee fast processing of consents?

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@mrs_twp I don’t think this is accurate.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@actparty This is great news!

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

In all this discussion about individualism and collectivism, there's something important lurking. Consent and coercion.

Individualist programs don't atomize people who don't want to be atomized. They allow people to voluntarily assent or dissent from a given program.

Collectivism does not allow this voluntary assent or dissent except in a false way. You can voluntarily dissent and be punished, or you can assent in a way, no matter how much you believe in the program, that knows these are the stakes. Thus, coercion is always part of the program, and it will be visible eventually.

The only way you can have group unity that admits no coercion over time is for it to be based on the truth that each individual can assess for himself and decide to assent to. That is, to maintain a coercion-free unity requires both individual liberty and a belief in the truth, literally that true things are true for all people in all times in all places.

Since actual truth isn't actually attainable, the unity in an individualist system (like classical liberalism) is around the shared pursuit of truth and a faith in both the truth and the value of the truth. It isn't without conflict and disagreement, which are a kind of disunity, but the unification is in a shared faith in the pursuit, a certain love of wisdom, not believing, like fools, that we possess it.

This discourse is not new. Damn the ancients, for having stolen all our best ideas. Socrates himself gives this discourse when asked if he is wise. He responds that it is for the gods, and beyond man, to possess wisdom (sophia); all we mortals can do is love it (philos), which would mean believing in it and its value and pursuing it. This is where we get the most Socratic word: philosophia, philosophy: the love of wisdom, not its possession.

Individualist systems recognize this limitation, whether because of the Greek discourses on wisdom or the Judaic discourses on the limitedness and fallenness of man, which Christianity has also adopted. Thus, men pursue the truth, debate the truth, and find true, lasting unity in recognizing those parcels of the truth that we can be confident of.

Collectivist systems, like all human systems, offer some approximation of the truth, which is the best human beings can ever hope to achieve. They do not have the truth. They do not possess wisdom. They present themselves as though they do. Analysts of the collectivist condition like Robert Jay Lifton identify a trait of collectivist systems: believing they alone possess the "Sacred Science," that is, "the truth," around which the collective is organized.

Reality being what it is, eventually people notice that the collectivist system does not actually possess the truth but a mere approximation. They notice in exactly the spots where it isn't working.

This is where the difference between individualist and collectivist shows itself. The difference between having real (and humble) unity in the pursuit of truth versus having false (and prideful) unity in the declaration of truth maintained by collectivist consensus and coercion.

Inside the so-called "warmth of collectivism," to point out the real truth is to threaten the sanctity of the so-called "Sacred Science" that defines the collective and its false, worldly authority. The collective, behind higher than the individual in all ways, will therefore protect its organizing principle at the expense of the individual. The dissenting individual will be dispatched. Thus, coercion always underwrites the collectivist program.

When we notice things aren't working in the individualist program, we debate. When someone notices things aren't working in the collectivist program, the collectivists punish or kill him. Believing themselves wise, they become fools.

Within the collectivist program, there is belonging. That's the "warmth of collectivism." The problem is that it's highly conditional, and eventually everyone realizes it, at which point it isn't so "warm" anymore. The intrinsic trouble is that the truth, whatever it is, really is out there, including in the places where it will undermine the collectivists. Woe unto ye who dare to recognize it, especially when it matters. All of history repeats this lesson.

In the individualist program, on the other hand, belonging is a voluntary matter. You are free to pursue experiments testing the truth, and you are also free to dissociate and dissent when you think something is going wrong. The "frigidity of rugged individualism" is that sometimes you have to go out on your own because truth, including moral truth, demands it. Because reality really is out there, and if we want to live successful lives, we have to be able to recognize it.

Collectives do not recognize truth or reality. Individuals do, even inside collectives. Individuals may fail to recognize it, suppress it, or ignore reality, all to their peril, but collectives must at times fail to recognize it, suppress it, and ignore it, also all to their peril. The collective itself is a social belonging mechanism that biases toward the cohesion of the collective at the cost of being able to recognize reality when it doesn't support the beliefs of the collective. This is intrinsic.

What has made America different is that it is framed around self-government, that individualist perspective that dares the seas of the pursuit of truth and wisdom and invites conflict about ideas within those unified in the pursuit.

This is why America has been the best, freest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. This is why even the people who hate America don't leave it. This is why people under the boot of collectivist coercion have for centuries risked everything to come to America and to be part of the great rugged individualist experiment of self-government with the liberty to pursue truth, wisdom, and profit (as one of their proxies) for themselves. And this will continue so long as America continues as America.

What a foolish shame to toss it away for the "warmth of collectivism," whether from Leftist DSA trash or Rightist post-liberal garbage. What a foolish shame.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@rejserin Mott and Bailey

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@Joe_Trinder That’s a strange dichotomy

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate the holiday and a wonderful day to everyone else.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@karlykingsley The problem is the overlap.

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

When a dog gets rabies, it isn't your dog anymore. It looks like your dog, but it's a different dog, and it's dangerous. Woke is ideological rabies. Every form of it. Woke Left. Woke Right. Every variation. When an institution gets Woke, it's not your institution anymore.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@SomaKazima2 So they want to read to under 4s? Kids can learn to read quite early. Thats the Mott part of the Mott and Bailey.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@KirstiMiller30 @elonmusk It appears you have a limited understanding of the role of gametes.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@HelenWebberley Your discomfort is not a good reason to compel others.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@Ash_Lee_IRL False dichotomy and not offered in good faith.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@zombinz The inability or unwillingness to distinguish between people with whom you disagree on policy and Nazis is dangerous and foolish. There are actual Nazis and you give them cover by misusing the term.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@aniobrien That is the epitome of luxury belief. Sick.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@angel_0f_deathx You may be very disappointed with the experience of being an old woman

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@zombinz Another “expert”?

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@natalie445838 People who are scientifically ignorant.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@purutrap Trans women are sometimes trans women.

[R.C. Van Ausdall @rcvanoz]

@JebraFaushay If you think you have the right to tell other people what to think when they see an image, you are struggling with delusions of grandeur and have some troubling authoritarian tendencies.