An Obligation to Future Generations?

Wow. Quite a mouthful. I'm glad my mind is simpler than that.
You take a lot of points of view there. One point that I sometimes have wondered about though is something that seems to be conspicuously missing from science is any reason to live. I didn't see that reason in your sources. If you use the same source as your reason to live comes from (most people anyway), you will find a source for your obligation to the future.

Scattered, i've suggested elsewhere that the Church of Rome, by establishing the Inquisition in 1233, introduced a rational/spiritual schizm into European language, thought and culture that's just not warranted.

If you're looking for reasons to live, a scientific investigation will not provide you with one, though psychology can proceed scientifically and encompass the emotional/moral/spiritual aspects of the human psyche.

What i argue for - 'a scientific conception of reality' is non-scientific because science establishes discrete facts. World views, conceptions of reality and so forth are philosophical concepts.

That so, if one were to seek to frame a reason to live in line with a scientific conception of reality, i'd suggest: 'humankind is the achievement of awareness by life on earth.'

It fits with an evolutionary understanding of life, and identifies that which makes us unique among animals, and important - perhaps universally important - our ability to understand, in complex and valid terms the reality we inhabit, to communicate and preserve that knowledge, to apply it and thereby transcend our limits.

it's that potential, i believe we have a duty to honour. what do you think?

We have an obligation to future generations because they think they are so smart, and that is to make them prove it by living with less energy and less food, and less fun, less meaning, and more diseases, more wars, and more waste. Good luck getting fat on those fries guys.

Iconoclast
I like your answer. Very nice. I don't exactly know what to make of it completely. I agree with it, but I think that the same reason that makes it valid or appealing is the same reason I was fishing for.

Fido, As usual you've got it all backwards. It's not necessary that future generations live with 'less energy and less food, and less fun, less meaning, and more diseases, more wars, and more waste' - it's that they'll die from it. As oil runs out and the climate changes the global economy will collapse and it will be an all out war of each against all for what resources remain.
By acting now - that future can be avoided, and science can provide very well for humankind into the indefinite future. With different technologies, we can have more energy and food, more meaning, more fun, less diseases, wars and waste - but it requires us to adopt different social, political and economic ideas.

Scattered,

Glad you liked it, but it kind of sounds like polite condescension. Can you please explain this statement.

'If you use the same source as your reason to live comes from (most people anyway), you will find a source for your obligation to the future.'

I'm not sure i understood it.

iconoclast.

I am sure you will grasp the situation once I explain it to you so: Governments which should be organized to anticipate change, and needs, eventually make a need out of resisting change. They cannot face the problems they do have, let alone problems that have not showed up yet. They tell people it will be okay tomorrow because it was okay yesterday. It was not okay for me yesterday, and I have a different version of the truth. It is that the ship of state might be able to get away with navigating through the rear view mirror. All of the rest of us have to face the future, and a change of government eventually will be part of that future. That day will happen sooner when all people understand that government is no source of truth. And no solution is a solution that only half way accomplishes all that needs completion. We have to face the fact that some people today cannot be content with wealth and power alone, but really must have everyone else living like animals to be happy as kings. That is our future. Join the dogs.

Iconoclast
I really like your first point.
As for the second question, on another email list, whick I hopefully just got kicked off of, I pointed out that a problem is that survival in the sense of having children is not rationally or logically based. So if you want to examine obligations to the future, you should probably find and use the same basis for it as you would use as a reason to have children.... whatever that is. Actually, that reason is something I would love to work on on this list, but have been a bit busy to do just yet. My main hobby in terms of philosophy, is morality.

Fido, You're saying they're saying: 'It is not enough that i suceed - everyone else must fail' Do you really think it's intentional? I think it's the unintended consequence of upholding ideas it serves thier interests to uphold. Karl Marx called it hegemonic ideology. Before i knew that, i'd identified much the same thing and called it a metaphysical hobble - but i was wrong to project the exploitative dynamic of capitalistism, and call it the intent of the wealthy. They no more intend my poverty than i do thier wealth. Neither do i think that anyone is so rich and powerful they can control these things - it requires consensus, and is therefore attributable to the ideas we agree upon. Illegitimate power and injustice follow from bad ideas, and that's what we should be angry about.

Scattered, This is a very astute argument...

'survival in the sense of having children is not rationally or logically based. So if you want to examine obligations to the future, you should probably find and use the same basis for it as you would use as a reason to have children.... whatever that is.'


but arguably, i argue that - scientifically concieved, we (individuals) are members of the human species, a developmental phenomenon with a past, present and future all integral to a valid understanding of ourselves.

Thus, it doesn't matter that having children is/or is not a rationally based decision. Science can encompass the instinctual/emotional aspects and motivations of human beings and thier behaviours with a scientific approach to biology, ethnology and psychology.

Does that make sense?

It makes sense enough, but I would not look there and it is not required. It comes from somewhere else that is well enough known. Humans, like other animals do have a survival instinct. In humans though, we call it faith. What we think of future generations and what responsibility we feel we owe them ultimately comes from that behavior as well.

Look, there is too much justification for exploitation for the ruling class to not grasp their behavior. What is missing in their model of reality is this: We exist in closed systems, and even when our economy is expanded to a world economy it is still a closed system. There is a zero net gain. Poverty is the price of wealth. Insecurity is the price of security. Tyranny is the price of freedom, and slavery is the price of labor. They act as a class, but they act out of ignorence, because in spite of all their expensive time pieces, they have no sense of time. If they abandon their watch, their profit, or their positions of power, others will take them, and they know this, so they have only a constant now in which they exist dealing with todays issue without regard to tomorrow.

From the point of view of history there are many examples of societies that have bit the dust with the same inequalities we accept. Why? Eventually these societies cash in the futures of their members for another great party today. Eventually they die so exhausted they can barely raise their hands against the swords that kill them. They feed upon division and die divided because societies no less than eggs are easier broke than mended. The problem is that no one, and no society has any more choices than it can see that it has. So they are all the more ready to abandon themselves to fate and the will of God like so many kittens caught in a poke. Why should this be so in the face of evidence to the contrary? Are not societies formed, as well as dismantled? This society, the U.S. is a formed society, and there is no doubt that Jefferson knew what he was talking about in the way of forms. So, why can't we learn it? The danger is not in the inevitable reaction to change that all rich and powerful people demonstrate, or their use of violence in defense of their status. It is, as Jefferson made note of, the terrible fear of people to changing their forms.

How many like myself are at retirement age, and suffer month to month waiting on an inevitable collapse of a system that is all too shaky? How many have mortgaged their homes to buy an education that is nothing less than slavery, but as slavery offers some hope? The problem is one that faced Castro in Cuba. In that state, everyone, including the mob and the communists had a seat at the table of government. No one wanted to rock the boat; except for the great majority who had absolutly nothing to lose, and everything to gain. If you look at his revolution it was just a peasont revolt. In our case revolution rests on organization. It is like the jacobin clubs or the free masons, which gave people a chance to organize before the opportunity came to revolt. Now, we do not have these things except in the internet. Here we have the opportunity to fashion a philosophy of govenment, and an understanding of peacful social change. Yet, at the same time every person who demands change must submit their identity to the government. And our government shows a taste for a rather blunt method of meeting change, which is, decapitation. They think that so long as they can cut the head off any snake the tail will die. To have social change we need no organization, Which is a waste, a dead end, and a liability; but a pit of vipers millions strong, each with his own head and tail, with the courage to act independently..

Scattered, Faith is a bad idea, and not merely because it confounds reason to believe something without an evidential basis. Faith is a concept leftover from the politics of religious absolutism, a requirement imposed upon adherents - turning them into believers. It has about as much relevance to sprituality in a secular-democratic context as does heresy.
Further, accounting for faith, in such a social context, science is reduced to the level of mere opinion - and science is not opinion, but a method of achieving valid knowledge. But science is hard - difficult to do and to learn, complex and far less emotionally satisfying that the unsubstantiated truth claims of faith based religion. Therefore it's inevitable that the sum of opinion will lean toward religion, and it's this sum of opinion that holds to account the political decisions bearing upon human and environmental welfare. were the sum of opinion better informed, we could expect better decisions, but the concept of faith confounds reason and undermines the significance of valid knowledge.
don't get me wrong - i hope there's a god, and i hope we outlive our physical selves, but i have no reason to believe so. I believe science because it appeals to reason, surrounds us with technological miracles and is demonstrably valid - or invalid. whereas, for the concept of faith, the truth of religion isn't open to question. Faith is a betrayal of all that is good, even that which is good about religion - a bad, bad, bad idea that should be abandoned, outlawed and excised from our vocabularly.

sorry to disagree so strongly,
no offence intended,
iconoclast.

Fido,

you say: 'Look, there is too much justification for exploitation for the ruling class to not grasp their behavior.'

i don't disagree, but it's important to understand the timbre of the human motivations that they might be changed. I'm afriad it's inherent to the nature of human understanding that we bend the truth/select our truths to satisfy ourselves emotionally - and the rich are no different, except that they occupy a different social niche. Only recently i read Rousseau's 'Discourse on Inequality' - the question, posed by the academy of Dijon being is inequality between men justified by natural law? (as opposed to the religious law that had previously justified such inequality.) It was written in 1754 - just as science was emerging from the shadow of religious absolutism and won the competition because it reasonably reconciled religiously founded inequality with natural law.
We might recall, at this time the industrial revolution was beginning in Britian, the land was enclosed, peasants were pushed off the land and in through the facory gates to employ science in the industrial scale approapriation of wealth in private hands - while at the same time, manufactured goods were being exchanged in west african ports for slaves to labour on the plantations in the new world.
If Rouseeau had found such inequality unjust, inhuman and monstrous - man's inhumanity to man, his work would have been binned because there is no recourse in such diametric opposition but bloody revolution.
no-one wants that. But science has a claim - it's valid knowledge, it's objective and now constitutes a coherent (enough) picture of reality that it can substitute for the religious, political, capitalist conceptions of reality upon which the inequitable social order draws for justification of unsustainable wealth. i really think that this is the way to go - that social, political and economic action relation to valid knowledge will provide well for human welfare, promote peace and equality, and draw the poison from the wounds religion has inflicted.

difficult ideas - but have a good retirement,
iconoclast.

Iconoclast.. No offense taken. Thanks for a thoughtful response. The problem is that I believe that faith is far more than an irrational belief in some religion. Since my definition is rather complex and based on biology, it is up to me to explain and support my position. Though in this case, it is
a simpler situation than most.
I study biology and genetics primarily, so I define faith from that perspective. It is known that there is a genetic foundation to faith. I believe from my studies that what we call faith in humans
would be called basic survival instinct in other animals. It is the irrational basic source of our will to live. It is what makes an animal fight a trap and chew off its leg to escape rather than give in. Now since humans are dependant on learned survival strategies (moralities) to survive as opposed
to primarily instincts (the mark of a human), the question arises, do we have an instinct to use moralities? It seems so as people are willing to fight to the death over them. Again, I think that instinct is what we would call faith. That suggests another dimension to faith then. It suggests that it can use the human intellectual component to make survival judgements rather than just having to rely on instinct. This is why I always say that truth must satisfy the head and the heart. You use both to judge everything.
Now morality is how we judge right from wrong. Faith is what makes us care enough to make that judgement.
I admit that this is a more complicated description of faith than is common, but I think it is correct and also it necessary to be able to understand the importance of faith to human survival. It is far more than the blind loyalty that prompts one to accept the irrational aspects of the teachings of a regligion.
By the way, I have tested this. If you get in a discussion with a person about values, when you get into it, you will find that a person's values supersedes everything else, including religion... Talk about values to a person in a way that illuminates their values and they will tolerate anything. I used to be intentionally rude and a couple times I was eating onions (scallions) while talking. They still listened.
So back to the original question. I would say that we have the same primary obligation to future generations as we have to our children, make sure that they have a chance to survive. But again, based on what? The question to consider is why have children at all? It's a lot of work, resources and stress. We must largely give our lives over to them. Why do it at all. There is no RATIONAL reason (aside from entertainment value). It is our deepest survival instinct, which I have reason to call faith.
By the way, since this is an important part of my studies, I'd appreciate a critique. Does it sound reasonable?

Scattered,

We should define terms to prevent us talking at cross-purposes.

You say: 'It is known that there is a genetic foundation to faith. I believe from my studies that what we call faith in humans would be called basic survival instinct in other animals.'

What you're saying there, essentially, is that there's a genetic foundation to the survival instinct. That's defensible, but I don't see the point of equating this survival instinct with faith.
Arguably, you say: 'It is the irrational basic source of our will to live.'
But what's irrational about the will to live? In non-intellectual animals the pain/pleasure motivation inherent to animal biology seems to underlie the 'will to live,' such as it is. If we are to intellectualize it, one might argue that given the choice, choosing to live is not irrational, but we are not generally given the choice. We are alive - and would have to go out of our way to choose to die. Under most circumstances to choose to die would be irrational - but the reverse isn't logically correct.

You continue: 'Now since humans are dependant on learned survival strategies (moralities) to survive as opposed to primarily instincts (the mark of a human), the question arises, do we have an instinct to use moralities? It seems so as people are willing to fight to the death over them. Again, I think that instinct is what we would call faith.'

Again, I don't see the point of equating strategies for survival with morality. You are conflating two different things to confuse the issue. Certainly humans use strategies for survival, but the morality or immorality of these strategies is quite another matter.
One might argue that morality is a strategy for survival - but there are other possible strategies, and therefore there's no logical necessity to this relation. If we follow your logic here, risking my own life to save a child from drowning is immoral.

I simply don't understand your attempt to demonstrate an instinct to use moralities (strategies for survival) with the assertion that we 'fight to the death over them.' That argument is illogical.
Arguably, you say: 'Again, I think that instinct is what we would call faith.' possibly downplaying the need for a logical relation, but the sense of the argument is subtly altered. This would depend on my own definition of faith as unsubstantiated belief, not your definition of faith as the survival instinct, and my own definition of morality as relating to good or bad conduct, not your definition of morality as a survival strategy. While it might make sense to argue that unsubstantiated belief compels people to fight to the death for what they believe to be good or bad conduct, it just doesn't make sense to argue that a survival instinct compels people to fight to the death for a survival strategy.

You continue: 'That suggests another dimension to faith then. It suggests that it can use the human intellectual component to make survival judgements rather than just having to rely on instinct.'


'It suggests that it can use the human intellectual component to make survival judgments rather than just having to rely on instinct.'

It seems that here you attempt to bridge a perceived gap between pre-intellectual instinct and conscious intellectual practice, but again this is simply misconceived. Faith is a mode of thought - and not a difficult one to do. Last night I watched Jurassic Park and engaged faithfully with the fantasy in order to feel the excitement, suspense and horror - rather than keeping it in the front of my mind that these are actors and puppets. It's called 'suspension of disbelief' - and involves disengaging the critical analysis of perception.

'This is why I always say that truth must satisfy the head and the heart. You use both to judge everything.'

Stop saying that. Please. Truth isn't a matter of emotional satisfaction - insofar as truth is possible, it's objective. It's true that my dog is dead. It doesn't make me happy, but it's true. The truth is objective with respect to how I feel about it.
(Personally, I prefer the term 'valid knowledge' - for the concept of truth is quite ill-defined when you get into it, but this would be difficult to explain and isn't really important to what we're discussing.) For now it's sufficient to say that disengaging critical analysis is okay when watching a film, but not when one is doing science or philosophy. Here truth matters before emotion, and emotions have no bearing upon the truth or falsity of a formulation of knowledge.

'Now morality is how we judge right from wrong. Faith is what makes us care enough to make that judgment.'

We've dealt with this above - morality cannot simultaneously be a survival instinct and the way we judge right from wrong because it's sometimes morally right to put our lives at risk. Therefore, even if it's faith that makes us care enough to judge right from wrong - and I'd argue very strongly with that assertion, faith cannot be a survival instinct.
I'd argue with the assertion because it's deeply offensive for you to argue that faith is the source of moral behavior. I don't do faith - and don't agree with it. Am I incapable of being a moral person? No. I care for people, and about humankind in general. I behave morally toward them, and in general.
I am not what Aristotle would have called virtuous: a person who behaves morally, and desires to behave morally, but like most people I'm what Aristotle called morally continent. I sometimes have to argue against my inclinations to act in a morally correct manner - but I know what's right and wrong, and don't need faith to make me care that I act rightly.

It makes me sick the way you religious people make claim upon the moral high ground. Aristotle was talking about these ideas in a non-religious way long before the Christians came to pass. Have you not noticed that religion is central to some of the most awful, morally despicable events in human history? Your pilgrim fathers committed genocide - describing the native Americans as savages and heathens, and slaughtered them by the thousand because they didn't believe in a Christian God - and yet you howl, and beat your chests over 9/11. Get a grip.

Do you remember the kid that fell into the gorilla cage some years ago? The keepers went in and rescued the boy, risking their own lives to save him. Were they morally wrong to do so? It doesn't make sense. Similarly, this weekend, a kid killed at the zoo was trying to help his friend. He cared about his friend enough to risk his life and got eaten by a tiger! Are you saying it was some kind of failure of faith, or moral lapse on his part? Why don't you give his parents a call and explain it to them?

If you can imagine how offended they'd be you get some idea of how ludicrous it is to relate faith, morality and survival in this way - how offensive it is to people who struggle to understand what's right in terms of what's real, when you piously and unthinkingly spout a false and morally redundant litany that's really no more than xenophobia in disguise - in effect a way of patting yourself on the back while tying a nigger to a burning cross.

'I admit that this is a more complicated description of faith than is common, but I think it is correct and also it necessary to be able to understand the importance of faith to human survival. It is far more than the blind loyalty that prompts one to accept the irrational aspects of the teachings of a religion.'

No - you're right there, but it's not a definition that makes sense. Some facts might help. Human beings are complex creatures. Unlike a horse, for instance, up and running only hours after birth, we take a long time to mature. We are therefore pre-disposed by evolution to accept in infancy the ideas of our parents and guardians. This is an evolutionary survival strategy, but it's not faith - it's simply that we would not survive if we had to figure everything out for ourselves, so we learn by copying. However, there's a drawback to this strategy because we copy good and bad ideas without discrimination - so it's not morality either. It's why the children of abusive parents often grow up to become abusers themselves, and why children born of Muslim, Jewish or Christian parents pass on the same religious ideas to their kids.

The ability to consciously discriminate only comes much later. Piaget - a developmental psychologist, ran an experiment with children called 'the conservation of quantity test' in which he showed that children below a certain age, when presented with two glasses: one tall glass, the other short and fat, even though the juice is poured from one glass into the other, think there's more in the tall glass because it looks bigger. Older children know that it's the same amount of juice.

This demonstrates that conscious discrimination is an ability that develops as the child matures. With complex philosophical ideas, the ability to consciously discriminate comes much later than conservation of quantity, and much later still than 'all things bright and beautiful,' nativity plays and bible study classes.

In short, religion - of which faith is an element, is an idea received from parents and teachers before the ability to consciously discriminate develops. We accept it because we are programmed by evolution to do so. The requirement of faith however, is part of what prevents the adult from making reasoned judgments about these ideas once the ability to process complex philosophical ideas develops. Rather, indoctrinated from infancy, the adult will be selective about what 'truths' they accept into argument, and like you, accept only those ideas that 'satisfy the heart.'

They do so because they seek pleasure and avoid pain. It's pleasurable to be confirmed in what one believes - which is why people go to church and pray together. It confirms their beliefs to see other people express them. Conversely, it is difficult to challenge ones ideas. The pain of doing so is called 'cognitive dissonance' - an experience similar to stress. Under conditions of cognitive dissonance the brain works much more slowly - that it's only with great difficulty we can overturn the ideas we pick up in childhood, and particularly so if the child is taught that it's wrong, wicked and evil to do so.

This is the root cause of the extinction threats now bearing down upon us. The net result is that we use science as a tool in pursuit of emotionally satisfying ideas: religion, nation and capitalism, while ignoring scientific knowledge as a rule for the conduct of human affairs. We do not truly accept scientific knowledge because it's often emotionally difficult on the meaningful level, i.e. it's true my dog is dead, and furthermore, painful when it contradicts the fond illusions we pick up in childhood, i.e. doggy heaven!

'So back to the original question. I would say that we have the same primary obligation to future generations as we have to our children, make sure that they have a chance to survive. But again, based on what? The question to consider is why have children at all? It's a lot of work, resources and stress. We must largely give our lives over to them. Why do it at all. There is no RATIONAL reason (aside from entertainment value). It is our deepest survival instinct, which I have reason to call faith.
By the way, since this is an important part of my studies, I'd appreciate a critique. Does it sound reasonable?'

If the question is 'why have children at all?' - and I'm not sure it is, then it's what we are - procreation is a function of our biological selves. Rationality doesn't come into it - and neither does faith, however defined. I don't know how old you are but let me assure you, from the point of view of human motivations, sex and procreation are different activities. A 'conscious' decision to procreate has only been possible since the invention of effective contraception. Before then procreation was more often than not the unintended consequence of sex, and more of a curse than a blessing. This is why the birth rate is much lower in rich countries than poor countries - because contraception is available in rich countries, and a rational decision TO PREVENT procreation is possible.

This is not the same as a rational decision to procreate. 'Conscious' decisions to procreate are made but they are not RATIONAL decisions. It's an interpersonal decision between a man and a woman, bound up in all sorts of questions around love, mutual fulfillment, security, social expectation and numerous other emotionally difficult ideas. To argue that it's irrational from a resource perspective is to reduce the whole of that complex human experience to mere economics. Are you saying your mother is a prostitute - and a stupid prostitute at that? She might be, but mine isn't - and most people's mothers aren't either.

It's because procreation is a function of our biological selves however, that we have an obligation to future generations. It's what we are. The individual is not an individual as such, but part of an intergenerational species that survives and evolves through procreation. Thus, the obligation to future generations is in essence an obligation to ourselves - conceived of in these terms, for we are those future generations as surely as we are, in some way our parents and grandparents.

If you might feel able admit that you are, in part your parents and grandparents, but balk at the assertion that you are of future generations in the same way, consider the value of your life if you belong to a species doomed to extinction. You have no legacy - genetic, intellectual or economic. If you were an individual this wouldn't matter - so long as you can live and die before the **** hits the fan. But it does matter, doesn't it? Even if you can live out your three score and ten in relative comfort - if the species is doomed there's no point or purpose in anything you do. That's why I'm working on these issues, and why I'm trying to convince people that religion, nation and capitalism are the cause of the problem, and appreciation of the truth-value of scientific knowledge is the answer.

In conclusion then, you're trying to square your scientific studies with the religious prejudices you were indoctrinated with as a child, and this is not reasonable. It's the very essence of the problem. It's perfectly human to seek the pleasure of confirmation and avoid the pain of cognitive dissonance - but it's not sound reasoning, and will not result in valid understanding.

It's not going to be easy for you to achieve valid understanding - for I suspect your religious upbringing was quite strict, and these ideas are deeply ingrained. If you want to achieve a valid understanding you will have to question everything - from the very beginning, dig deep into your own mind and challenge every idea you have - beginning with your idea of truth. Take nothing on faith - ask for evidence, logical necessity and sufficient reason for every assertion, and be never satisfied. It'll hurt - I know, I suffered tremendously - but it was worth it, for as Nietzsche commented: 'In the white hot crucible of our pain we are purified.'

I think what you mean is: that future can be avoided. I think history provides humanity with quite another example. It does not matter if your life is the ten steps from the table to the vomitorium, It does not matter if you live off the blood of the poor or open you own veins to keep off the fat. Most people cannot seem to imagine their lives any other way and few would trade their troubles for anything but more money. The way I see it is, so some will not have to share what they own, they will kill all coming with a hand out until everyone left has everything in plenty. Once any people get the taste for luxury,their lives have no meaning without it. It would be nice if they could understand that luxury costs a lot of lives. It would be nice if they were content to share less with more, but most would rather keep more and share less. It may be unnatural, but it is not uncommon.

May I join the fray?

Iconoclast, you would abolish a faith based obscurant reality (faith/religion) that impedes the necessary empirical science that is ready and able to resolve a multitude of current problems like resource use, over population, economic equality, and ideological unification of the species, and likewise ensure a quality future for our species.

Scattered, you somewhat agree but through your studies have begun to realize that faith itself may be an inherent quality of humans and an essential part of our functional survival. Yes I think that is likely, and reasonable.

Fidoscientific understanding of humans and once we know why we are the way we are and identify our tendencies, wecan take steps to reduce their damaging affect and to produce a methodical, scientific, sociopolitical approach to establish a stable, sustainable, high quality existence for ourselves and our antecedents.

Society, and I mean society, and not under the influence of particular individuals, ought to, in a thought out reflective manor, control the excesses of the individual. If all our progress can be laid on the back of the individual so can all our crimes against future generations and generations past. No democracy is possible, no community in fact, and certainly, no human community addressing all our common needs will ever be possible as long as our individuals are allowed their own heads to act criminally, create havock and continually run amoke. Individualism is the most failed ideology on the planet and we should accept all individuality and use the dog **** right out of it as a motive force for progress without letting it get the better of us. If we do not control criminal individualism it will control us. Period. .