Can’t See the Trees for the Forest
Sometimes we can be so overwhelmed by sheer numbers that we lose our perspective. While large scale thinking and planning may be more economical and efficient, it can also do a great disservice to actual people. This is the problem, I think, with large governments and corporations: they deal with human beings as a mass and lose sight of the value of individual persons. Humanity is perceived as a collective organism rather than an assortment of many unique beings, each with a singular set of experiences and values. Though this may make managing society easier on the macro level, it has a harmful effect on the fundamental units of society, each and every one of us.
There are those who believe that an emphasis on the individual may deflect our attention away from maintaining a healthy community made of members who have a sound relationship with each other and the whole. When the call is made for individual rights, there are those who use that as a way of championing a selfish, indifferent attitude toward their fellow human beings. That form of radical individualism is both shortsighted and eventually damaging, even to those who espouse it. Where there is a lack of compassion and mutual support, life, as Hobbes observed, has a tendency to be nasty, brutish and short. Likewise, the phrase “personal responsibility” is often used as a way to avoid helping others in need. You often hear it said by those who feel that those who stumble deserve to suffer and ought to pay for their mistakes.
In actuality, personal responsibility is important — in fact, it is vital to the health of society. But it does not mean that we treat those who fail with scorn or neglect. Instead, we must come to realize that we share the fate of those around us, and when others suffer, we suffer as well. Being personally responsible, we act according to our conscience. We look after ourselves as best we can, but we also extend a hand to others out of compassion. The basis of altruism is, I think, a concern for others due to a certain quid pro quo arrangement we have with each other — a social contract, as it were — but it goes even beyond that. It is a sense of value we see in other individuals, a sense of empathy evoked by a recognition of ourselves in others — it ultimately transcends the self. We can feel the pain of others because some deep, almost mystical connection exists that binds us together.
The problem with the collectivist approach is that there’s a tendency to assign the care of those who need help to the collective — in most cases that means the state. Individuals pay taxes — often grudgingly — into a system which, at best, provides a safety net. The system is generally managed by a faceless, impersonal bureaucracy that frequently delays assistance and can end up not providing the amount or quality of attention required. While it may seem efficient and it does provide service to those who are in desperate straits, it is a poor substitute for a more personal approach that is better tailored to individual needs.
Interestingly the collective approach to providing care for the sick, the young and the elderly is a form of compensation for the absence of support that was traditionally found in extended families and communities. This more intimate culture was replaced over time by institutions as society transitioned from a more rural, agrarian orientation to industrialized urbanization. As people moved out of villages and towns into areas where work was available, they left behind the natural, traditional relationships and found themselves in the midst of strangers. Though new relationships could be and were formed, the resources of individual or nuclear families were not shared as easily. The fundamental trust that grows through long term relationships reaching back over generations could not be immediately duplicated in this new setting.
As a result, there had to be ways to deal with the various problems that come up in life. Institutions had to be put in place to make up for the loss of mutual support. Naturally, those who managed these institutions were charged with making them as efficient and cost effective as possible, which basically meant that the quality of care was generally sacrificed for economic reasons. Furthermore, as individuals and businesses are financially committed to paying the extra taxes needed to support this system, along with various kinds of insurance to deal with potential illness or loss, people are less inclined and less able to lend assistance when and where it’s needed on a more personal level. Charities have likewise sprung up to provide help, but they too can be bureaucratic and a great deal of the money going to them is absorbed in administrative functions.
When added to the estrangement of people from what could otherwise evolve into communities of mutual support, personal responsibility is no longer conceived by many as extending care beyond the self or at best one’s immediate family. When we hear of trouble on a mass scale as reported by the mass media, our eyes glaze over and we cannot appreciate that this mass we see is made up of many individuals, each with a set of feelings and experiences that make what is happening to each of them more poignant and meaningful than when seeing them collectively.
The negative impact of collectivism can be seen in many parts of society. Beginning with daycare and the school system, children are put into groups that are tended to by a limited number of adults. These adults are usually paid for their work and in most cases assigned more charges than they can properly care for. Children are herded about, left to their own devices to develop their own almost feral social structure, lacking the appropriate level of supervision and forced to conform to a system that, because it is understaffed, must use forms of coercion that emotionally scar many children who are processed through the system. It is through the schools that people are initially conditioned to be treated collectively and to lose themselves in the mass, often being punished for infractions which they themselves have not committed and generally treated with suspicion.
From the classroom we graduate to other categories of collectivism. We are assigned to various demographic slots, classed by age, income, race and educational background, to name a few. We are often judged — or pre-judged — based on how we are assigned. We lose in this way a sense of being personally distinct and our actions can then be spurred or justified by those qualities that are associated with the group to which we belong. While being a part of a particular group may lend us a certain feeling of identity with others, removing a degree of the alienation created by institutionalization, it is ultimately a divisive experience that can estrange us from our very selves. Instead of following our individual consciences, we are more apt to fall back on the values of our class, taking little or no personal responsibility for our decisions as a result.
The worst examples of the collective process are seen in the military and in warfare. The old line “ just following orders” absolves, at least in the mind of those uttering it, any responsibility for actions that are taken. The images of mass destruction in which hundreds, thousands or more are killed with the use of wide scale artillery and bombing numb the mind and suspend the conscience. It is too horrific to face the reality and too easy to turn away, not taking the blame and simply shrugging of the loss of innocent life as collateral damage. But the “just following orders” mentality extends to governmental and corporate bureaucracies as well, allowing those who use it an excuse to carry out impersonal, inhumane decisions. The entire political process involves the manipulation of mass opinion, steering it in one way or another, encouraging groupthink and forcing individuals to ally themselves with one side or another, depriving us of the opportunity to make individual choices.
Overcoming the habit of thinking collectively is difficult since it is so ingrained in the minds of so many. As we fall back on the convenient excuse that “everybody does it” we see little hope for change and little incentive to act individually. We fall into the trap of thinking that only a mass effort can make a difference. This can further remove the imperative of personal action. For one thing, a mass effort is very difficult to initiate, coordinate and sustain. In a society that uses money to motivate and to pay for mass advertising, large-scale, top down movements require a significant infusion of cash in order for them to be taken seriously or to even be noticed at all. Usually the only people who can afford to fund such campaigns — or even provide the resources to prime the pump to solicit additional donations — are the wealthy or those connected with organizations that control vast sums. Typically, those who do have that kind of money are more inclined to encourage and exploit mass thinking since there is great profit in controlling the minds of large numbers of people — of getting them to think and behave the same.
The real down side of mass movements, however, is again the sense of insignificance they reinforce in the way people see themselves. While change on a large scale depends on large numbers of people changing the way they think and act, this really must be done on a more personal level. Instead of orchestrating change from on high, it is better for it to evolve as a result of individuals seeing the sense of it and using their own judgment to come to that conclusion. This requires a greater leap of faith, perhaps — a belief that people can rely upon and allow their individual consciences to make the right choices. In reality it is probably when people don’t see the value of their own ability to decide on what is right that they end up following the crowd — and the crowd, more often than not, proceeds blindly, either allowing themselves to be led by false prophets or ill-founded and distorted rumors.
It’s important to be aware that cooperation and mutual support does not and should not depend on de-personalizing the human experience. To the contrary, thinking more in terms of forests and largely ignoring the trees undermines basic compassion and empathy. It generally serves the interests of those seeking power and control over others, manipulating attitudes and emotions to promote agendas that rarely are in the best interest of those so used. Dealing with people as individuals is the only way for us to show one another the respect and consideration that each of us deserves. We would be well served to keep this in mind and avoid mass thinking and acting whenever we are mindful enough to do so. While we need to work together and help each other, we should do so not to serve the group or the state but the individuals with whom we share this world.