You Turn If Everyone Else Wants To

Today, a couple of nice little pieces about the problems and potential of individualism, which has has cropped up a few times here lately albeit more implicitly.

Background : The Problem Of Racist Sheep

The essential difficulty is that individualist people tending to be selfish but less discriminatory, whereas those more inclined towards collectivism tending to be selfless but racist. If you're in a group, you're more supportive of members of that group, but also more inclined towards conformism and distrustful of non-members. We seem to want everybody to "think for yourselves and agree with me !" as NewsThump put it. It seems very difficult to get the best of both worlds : a conformist who isn't a sheep is almost an oxymoron; a group member who isn't in some way opposed to people who don't share their beliefs has similar (though perhaps lesser) difficulties.

Ideally, I suppose, we want a group to have individuals who are largely free-thinking but put the good of the group ahead of their own needs whenever any conflict arises : we want people working independently towards the common good. A consensus is strongest when there is diversity of methods and ideologies; the probability that a decision is correct is strongest when opposing and/or independent forces all reach the same conclusion. And we want that "common good" to generally mean everybody, with sub-groups being only for collaborative expertise and shared interests, not parts of our identity causing us to define ourselves by being opposed to anyone who isn't in the group. This is not at all easy to manage in practise, especially in the political sphere.

1) Individualism hurts individual freedom

Anyway, the first piece approaches this from a generalised, philosophical perspective. Aping John Stuart Mill (I'll try and get back to finishing that post series when time permits), but very badly :

Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice, which is at the heart of this thinking, is deeply individualist because it is concerned only with individual interactions and not with the overall shape of the society that results from these interactions. It is consistent with gross inequality and is not even meritocratic since Nozick has no problem with unlimited inherited or gifted wealth. Provided what you hold has been acquired justly, then any consequences of the acquisition are of no account. Any kind of distributive justice beyond this is completely rejected.

The ‘Utopia’ Nozick outlines allows for sub-communities under the umbrella of a minimal state, which can be based on any principles consenting participants choose. Ironically perhaps, it would be possible to construct a communist community within the minimal state, or indeed any variation on this.

JSM's solution was that membership of communities must be voluntary : individuals must be genuinely free to leave, and more generally, the strongest aspect of liberalism must be that it cannot tolerate illiberalism. No-one can voluntarily deprive themselves of their own liberty. Yes, you can surrender aspects of your decision-making to others, but you must always be able to reassert control should you choose. More on JSM another time though.

One major criticism is that he has confused atomism with individualism, and this atomistic vision is built on negative liberty which is simply about removing restrictions and barriers. In the Rousseauian tradition, Nozick assumes that society places restrictions and barriers in the way of individuals, so concludes the less of it the better.

It's worth remembering the H.G. Wells notion that freedom is not a linear sum : more laws do not necessarily mean less freedom, nor do less laws guarantee more freedom. Truly maximising freedom - to gain the greatest possible liberty for the greatest possible number while simultaneously restricting the fewest possible people by the smallest amount - is not at all an easy task, and Nozick's idea just seems like pure batshit tomfoolery and childish idiocy. 

Only in a society with a developed education system and structured opportunities, a culture of tolerance and debate and legal protections well beyond those envisaged by Nozick can individual autonomy be fully exercised. The social context empowers autonomy, and without empowerment autonomy is empty. We might call this positive freedom individualism as opposed to Nozickian individualism.

Which is another key aspect. As the author also mentions, real freedom depends on ability and authority. It's no good having freedom under law if you don't also have freedom under economics : if you're legally able to leave your job but practically this would result in starvation, your freedom is a sham.

It requires us to accept that there is a shared humanity that can be stronger than all the things that divide us. It is difficult to see how those who reject this idea could happily coexist with others who are very different from themselves. So, the price we pay for an individualistic yet unified society does in fact impose some limits on the individual – the paradox of individualism must lead to compromise; autonomy seems to lead to limitations on autonomy.

Again, it's not really a vector sum : take away the freedom of a murderer and everyone else gains a very great deal of freedom. This goes right back to Plato. It's not easy to balance, and, to give Nozick a little more credit, the simplistic idea that more law = less freedom does have a certain appeal of obviousness about it. But it just doesn't work like that.

2) Worked example : the maddening paradox of the Tory party

This leads nicely to a practical example from the second piece : Conservative party policy regarding the pandemic. The Tories seem betwitched by this crude idea not so much of small government but of individual choice. Whereas Wells and Mill both expressed strong individualistic tendencies, both understood all too clearly that no man is an island. Both articulated that when an individual makes a choice that affects only themselves, it's no-one else' business to tell them what to do. But when anyone makes a choice that has repercussions for others, then those others do get a say in that decision - precisely because their autonomy as individuals would be affected.

The Tory party just doesn't get this. They treat society as a collection of non-interacting individuals, as though any choice only affects those who make it. So they say mask-wearing should be optional, but this is dumb : it's much more about protecting others from you than protecting you from others. It isn't just your life and your liberty your choice affects, but a huge, cascading chain of other individuals as well. In that situation, I've no doubt JSM would certainly say that society has a clear and unarguable right to legislate on your actions, not just make half-hearted requests and suggestions.

There's also another interesting paradox here :

By emphasising the inability of people to govern themselves, it justifies the need for a government to look after them... If you reduce people to just psychology, it makes their actions entirely a consequence of individual choice. If we get infected, it is because we chose to act in ways that led to infection: we decided to go out and socialise, we ignored advice on physical distancing.

This mantra of individual responsibility and blame has certainly been at the core of the UK government’s response throughout the pandemic. When cases started rising in the autumn, the government blamed it on students having parties. Hancock even warned young people “don’t kill your gran”. And as the government envisages the total removal of restrictions, the focus on what people must do has become even stronger. As the prime minister recently put it: “I want us to trust people to be responsible and to do the right thing.”

[I don't entirely disagree with all of the government's messages, but the sentiment is clear enough] 

Instead of addressing these issues and helping people to avoid exposing themselves and others, the individualistic narrative of personal responsibility blames the victim and, indeed, further victimises vulnerable groups.

This is a complex, maddeningly incoherent paradox. The government - especially Boris Johnson - has a professed devout belief in the common sense of the Great British Public, that individual choices will see us through. This absolves them of responsibility when people make the wrong choices, yet this also lets them justify deregulation ! They justify the need for government on the grounds that people can't make the right decision for themselves (because they are individuals and sometimes make mistakes), yet are happy enough to say that individual choice is paramount (because they are individuals and apparently infallible even when it comes to making decisions for other people). Their whole approach seems to be to just blame everyone else for their own incompetence* and call it the price of freedom.

* There are a raft of possibilities for unobtrusive virus-mitigating measures that could have significant impacts in a fully vaccinated country : better financial support for self-isolation (much easier as case numbers should now be much lower), mandatory mask-wearing in crowded public places, support for airflow monitoring and control systems, etc.. I actually agree with their new approach on increased testing in schools and for the double-jabbed (as opposed to blanket quarantine), but they don't seem the slightest bit interested in any of the others. They just want to open up.

It's nonsensically inconsistent. To put it another way, it's Schrodinger's Government : which simultaneously believes the public are both able to understand the complex problems of epidemiology just on the basis of general life experience, but are also a bunch of idiots who need the benevolent hand of a bunch of a upper-class toffs to tell them what to do. Legal powers exist not for governance, not to encourage right action, but solely to punish transgressors. 

The UK government assumed that people’s cognitive fragility would lead to – and explain – low adherence with the measures necessary to combat COVID-19. But the evidence showed that adherence was high due to a sense of community among the public – except in areas where it is hard to adhere without adequate means. Instead of emphasising individual responsibility and blame, then, a successful response to the pandemic depends on fostering community and providing support.

What they refuse to understand is that people obey rules not (only) due to the threat of punishment for violations, but the far more basic reason that rules are assumed to actually be necessary. Advice, on the other hand, by definition isn't necessary. Yes, it might be a good idea to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, but you couldn't possible legislate that people must do this. Hence it's advice : optional but not necessary.

When it comes to a pandemic, this way of thinking is bonkers. We do not have the "common sense" needed to make these kinds of judgements because we're not by nature equipped to deal with exponential growth or understand virology. We look to the government to set rules because they've consulted experts to tell them what the best policy ought to be, hence, things we must all do to support the common good. Advice, on the other hand, is almost by definition seen as something that would benefit individuals, or at most would have a benefit to society if everyone followed it but no negative consequences if they didn't.

If a government constantly tells you that the problem lies in those around you, it corrodes trust in and solidarity with your fellow community members – which explains why most people (92%) state that they are complying with the rules while others are not doing so.

This, I think, is a very powerful weapon in the Conservative arsenal : the lowest common denominator. Everyone wants to believe they're better than everyone else, so this narrative that the problems are down to rule-breakers is a very powerful one. Of course, nothing can come of nothing, and rule breakers do exist and do cause problems. But are they the main problem ? I doubt it - nor is individual stupidity/choice the main reason behind their actions. Give people the financial resources needed for self-isolation and to support them during furlough and you won't need so much threat to keep them in line.

It behoves a Tory government to blame individuals because in doing so they shirk their responsibility. Nothing can ever really be their fault because it's all about people simply choosing to ignore them out of bone-headed idiocy or sheer belligerence. It not only misses how people interpret the nature of rules and advice, but it's also an incredibly crude interpretation of the purpose of law and liberty.

Of course, the opposite sort of extreme conformism would just be another variety of awful. But it seems to be that a responsible representative government needn't have these issues at all. It would listen to the various concerns (I'm worried about getting sick, I can't afford time off, I'm going crazy stuck at home, I'm in a high-risk category, etc.) and weigh them accordingly. What's more important : letting people go to the pub or protecting the vulnerable ? "Learning to live with the virus" ought to mean, "learning to keep the virus under control and minimising fatalities". Instead it's become perverted into, "accepting the fact that thousands more people will needlessly die because a bunch of bozos want a pint". It doesn't say much for individual freedom in my book if the cost of this is yet more wholly preventable deaths. Screw you, Boris.