Civilization Week 33 Modern Individualism Vs Collectivism

Prompt: What is one issue that reflects the individualist versus collectivist outlook in your own times? How does it do this?

An issue that I have noticed has been growing rapidly in today’s world is the problem of political trending. Voters often choose to spend their time doing something other than researching politics. They’ve got better things to do, things that will have an immediate effect on their lives. This phenomenon is referred to as rational ignorance. More often than not people depend on social interactions to sway their political beliefs. Conversations with their peers, interactions on social media, trending articles and news stories to name some examples. The problem with this is sometimes the more popular belief outshines the political truth, whats going on behind the scenes is never as flashy as whats going on onstage. This can lead to false information, wrongfully assumed ideas, and manipulation of our voters and thus our countries political ring.

Whats more is that social media can be very wrong, and that incorrect ideal can be pushed on the masses very easily. For example, a company like Google is an extremely left wing company. Thus when someone researches politics on Google its very likely the first several articles they’ll see will be left wing oriented. This makes it difficult for the unbiased neutral to stay neutral, with article after article of dramatic leftist controversy being shoved down their throat. I hate to call it propaganda, as i’m sure many news reporters are genuinely trying to share the truth. But others are simply riding off the political trend and putting on a show to sway anyone who is politically neutral. At this point you can’t even share any right wing related beliefs without being publicly shamed by your friends and peers. Its as if some higher up leftists have wised up to the power of the internet and now are manipulating what people see for their own political gain.

The debate has become a war, and those on the left seem ruthless in their pursuit of harassing republicans. Politics have become so overtaken by whats trending that you can’t even have a mature conversation about anything swaying away from the leftist political norm. Anyone who questions the lefts narrative has been silenced by threats and humiliation, and its obvious to me that this will lead to intense political bias and manipulation of the ways our politics can be discussed. It shouldn’t be the norm for everyone to blindly follow the more popular political narrative, and it shouldn’t be the norm to blindly attack anyone with the slightest difference in political belief.

We shouldn’t be turning against one another, we should be discussing and debating our points of view like mature adults. But the trend nowadays is not to be mature, the trend is to use high-strung emotional manipulation as the fuel meant to burn away the political foundation our country was built upon. This trend has also been pushing for socialism, which is a major step away from liberty. Socialism takes the spotlight off the individual and their personal goals and redirects it towards the power of the federal government. Its one step away from communism, which by definition takes away almost all of the power of the individual. Anything pushing for private property to be collectively stolen away by an enormously powerful centralized government is opposed to everything our country was founded to protect. Our country is a democratic republic, and we need to stand together to protect our individual rights and liberty.

I view this as a major battle between the individual vs the collectivist. People in mass amounts blindly follow the first thing they hear, and the left are pushing harder and harder to be the first thing anyone hears. It’s not even a battle of specific politicians at this point, its a battle of the right to debate and discuss. Debate and discussion have always been our way to suss out a situation, they’ve always been our weapon against mass manipulation. Socially throwing this right away is the equivalent to shooting the messenger before he can even enter the stronghold. It leaves little chance to attain accurate justice and gives way for a tsunami of emotion fueled ignorance to break through our carefully built political dam. Once this dam breaks we have little chance at rebuilding it, and the balance of our political spectrum will be overtaken by those unwilling to hear the other side of the story.