by Mark Waybill

Created on: February 09, 2010

Individuals have a greater obligation to society than themselves. This is because society is a group of individuals working for the common benefit, and thus one must put oneself below others in order for this system to work correctly. Society is based upon individuals helping one another in order to have a collected benefit. If everybody worked for only themselves (or say city states or nations rather than individuals as it would be difficult to survive without any form of society whatsoever considering we are not eaten by tigers and other carnivores because of our strength in numbers, not our puny bodies) there would be inequality.

Some people or cities would be higher than others and this would create unfairness to those that were lower on the scale. Society, thus, creates a more level standard of living throughout. Those that favor individualism should join the hippies and the anarchists, who are their brethren, for without society you would have all the undesirable elements of both cultures. Society helps protect its members by the police force and the ambulance and fire departments amongst others, by banning unsafe practices and barbaric ways (think torture and witch burning etc) and by creating more fairness to eliminate violence and unrest caused by unfairness. Individualists are either very idealistic and believe in an anarchy we would all get along and ride rainbow colored ponies through fields of chocolate grass, or are believers in unfairness. And thus they are either deluded or worthy of punishment.

Either way individualists are wrong, in that our main loyalty must be to each other, not to ourselves. Now society is not perfect. Despite higher living standards in some places there is still much unfairness that needs to be dealt with, but this does not show the weakness of society over the individual but rather the weakness in operating that system, and the cracks in it that have not been fixed. Indeed what we are seeing in these imperfections in society are areas that the system of society over the individual has failed to be used, not the systems failings. It would be idealistic to suppose we will ever eliminate unfairness, but to celebrate it like the individualists do is a most savage and uncivilized thing to do and only leads to greater unfairness.

To listen to these individualists who campaign for greater 'personal freedom' would be the same as listening to a conspiracy theorist, as both have a similar level of logic in their beliefs. Indeed, while it may seem an unpopular truth, freedom can not be seen as something that is universally a good thing, and containment can not be viewed in only a harsh light. To do so would be most idealistic indeed. What is so good about a free country with high unemployment and crime rates, bad infrastructure and unclean sanitation systems? What is so bad with a totalitarian dictatorship with clean drinking water, good education and health services and two story houses for every individual?

The simple, although often hated, fact is that freedom and containment are neither good nor bad things in themselves, but must be associated with something good or bad (think Pavlov's experiments) in order to be treated as such. The desire for personal freedom often arises from frustration and other social or emotional issues that require 'expression' in order fr the individual to feel 'happy'. But if the issues did not exist in the first place, like in a cohesive and efficient society, individualists would have a much harder time defending their views.

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