Community

Collectivist Goals

One of the goals of collectivists is to 'unify' people. While that sounds nice, it is kind of impossibility. This is why you often have collectivists turn to violence and genocide. They find out they cannot unify the people, so its best to just kill or expel the Jews, or Kurds, or [insert group here]. History is filled with these failed attempts.

The other method used in more 'moderate' collectivist societies is to mold poeple into the same ideology. This is typically done at via the educational system. Again, history is filled with their failed policies. Residential schools resultign in a generation of lost Native people in Canada. Ethnic struggles of one group claiming their culture/language is under attack in the education system…

Natural human tendency to form community

It is a natural human tendency to form a community. It is not possible to have a single community. So it is thus government's role to make sure these different groups can all co exist peacefully and come together on things that matter.

Natural formation of communities

In a free society, communities spring up naturally. Most societies form these informal communities in the churches, temples, mosques, sports clubs, pubs… People naturally form communities where leaders/mentors develop and the society advances. This is the informal layer of society. It is essential this informal society not have any government power (use of the police/military…) For example, if you live in a community centered around a Church, you should be able to leave it freely and count on the state's protection.

It is however these informal communities that create the leaders and bonds that a society needs. For example, if a totally individualistic society, you might not have any expectations placed on you. So a young man might not feel any duty to be responsible and earn a living… a young woman might not feel any responsibility to be married before having children. It is the pressure of these informal institutions that provide the guidance people need in life. The diversity of the number of these informal communities ensures the government doesn't have to choose just one way of life. People are free to belong or not belong a particular informal community. However, it is often socially challenging to just pick up and leave your community. In this way there is a balance. Should you ever really really feel strongly about something, you can leave the informal community and know they cannot harm you.

So the informal arrangement of communities does satisfy the human need, so why do collectivists say individualism is a problem.

Government prevent natural formation of communities

A lot of politicians today in the west bemoan the apathy and loss of community that seems to have resulted in our modern world. They bemoan the 'segregation' of different groups of people. So they come up with all kinds of schemes to try and create community. Forced programs in public schools, compulsory service in the military…

Yet, they always forget the things the State does to prevent people from forming comm unties. The things the state does to create divisions in society. Here are a few examples:

1. property taxes - these force class based people to live together. A poor person cannot stay in a rich neighborhood because the property taxes are too high, even if they've lived there for generations. Property taxes create class-based neighborhoods. This has a far greater impact on social cohesion than the racial composition of schools.

2. different treatment of citizens - different benefits are granted to different groups of citizens. Government workers are granted guaranteed pensions, private sector workers are not. This creates an unneeded tension as private sector workers feel ripped off.

3. breakup of the family - policies that encourage government child care or reduce the time the family spends together breaks down family and extended family bonds.

4. Multiculturalism - one of the biggest frauds is this notion of multiculturalism. It is actually an oxymoron as it has the opposite effects. It is an attempt to delete culture from the people. In doing so, it destroys the informal community. Culture is much more than just how you eat and dress and what holidays you celebrate. Yet it is only these items that are given attention to in any 'multicultural institution'. You can go to a school and if they have a day for eid or devlai, then the school is 'multicultural'. But does the school actually teach the young Indian kid how to be an Indian? Absolutely not. So the child who spends most of his day at school is not being taught ANY culture whatsoever. Heck, in most western countries, they even stopped teaching anglo-saxon culture. So kids are literally growing up with any culture.

I could go on, but these have a far greater impact that most government policies designed to promote 'unity'. More often government fosters division and kills community instead of promoting it. Then of course, seeing the lack of community that it has caused, government must step in with more policies to promote community :P

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