Is Everything Your Fault or Someone Else's?:

The largest divide between 'collectivists' and 'individualists' is the answer to this question:

"Do you feel that you have control over your own life?"

Republicans tend to be successful people who achieved all of their goals in life.  They have high incomes, a happily married home, two children, their own house, and a dog in the yard with a white picket fence.  By definition, these people never found a problem they couldn't personally overcome, and as a result, they assume the same is true of everyone else.  They believe that their life is a result of their own personal decisions, generally summed up as their 'hard work,' and that anyone who achieved less than they did didn't work hard enough, ie, they were just too lazy.  There is no doubt that this group of people worked hard.  It is now usual for successful people to work 50 or 60 hour weeks regularly.  But their logic breaks down after this point.

Many people, indeed I would say most people, can't achieve their goals in life.  To these people, the hollow assurances of the successful that "I did it so why can't you?" are just kicking a dog while he's down.  The people who failed to achieve their goals despite trying to achieve them naturally come to the conclusion that they do not have control over their own lives.  They then start thinking of ways other people could have helped them achieve their goals, or at least not hindered them, and then try to come up with collective solutions that would make them happy.  The individuals who succeed on their own never think twice about these issues because they never needed to.  They did just fine without any help, and therefore dismiss changing society to help people as a useless gesture.  But those who can't achieve their dreams only have one dream left -- to change society until they can achieve their own individual goals once more.  Everything is subsumed by this need, and that is why they vote democrat.

What's interesting about this bifurcation isn't the extremes of 'self-made men' and 'disabled at birth children.'  I think even Republicans are willing to admit that people with extreme handicaps can't be expected to succeed without outside help.  Even Democrats are willing to admit that some plucky individual is likely to get lucky and achieve all his dreams without any outside interference.  The question is in the margins.  Democrats believe that 90% of people need collective help, and Republicans believe that 90% of people can help themselves, so bringing up examples from the "10%" on each side is a waste of time.

I think the missing element to this debate is a third group, however.  I think this is the most interesting percentage faction of them all.  Suppose 30% of Americans need outside intervention to succeed, 30% of Americans will succeed effortlessly in life because their personalities and abilities all align naturally with what is rewarded in America culturally, and 40% of Americans could succeed in life if they put an extreme amount of effort into it, or could fail if they don't, but would all succeed if society were structured in a way favorable to them.  In this case you could see plaintiffs for both sides 'proving' their point that either it is up to the individual or it is up to the collective for life to work out.

Suppose 40% of the American population can get a dream job, a dream home and a dream wife.  Suppose 3/4 of these slots are taken up by the naturally successful -- the beautiful, the rich, the well-connected, the geniuses, the charismatic extroverts, people who find satisfaction in working hard and making lots of money and gaining high status.  These people are not only better equipped to succeed in life but are more driven to do so with personalities that perfectly match what 'success' requires.  This leaves just 1/4 of the slots open to a group of people whose abilities or personalities do not perfectly fit with the requirements for success.

Now assume there are two guys, one is named Ralph and the other is named Joe.  They are both 110 IQ -- somewhat smart, but not smart enough to learn things easily.  They have to study extremely hard to graduate from college or get yet higher degrees like engineer or doctor.  Both Ralph and Joe are introverts, they don't like talking to other people and don't take social rejection well.  Both Ralph and Joe hate kissing up to authority figures and they hate competing with others for anything.  They get no satisfaction in being first in a race or a piano contest, and don't mind being last.  Both Ralph and Joe have no incentives to be successful and neither are equipped to do so easily.  However, Ralph decides that despite all this, he is going to be a 'self-made man.'  He will change himself and do what is necessary to take control of his life.  Mind you, if a guy with 70 IQ decided to do this, he would just fail anyway and nothing would come of it.  But we are talking about a guy in the margin, someone who can do it if he works extremely hard, but is not likely to do it because he has no burning desire to sacrifice that much.  So Ralph hits the books.  Every day when he gets home from school he starts studying the portions of the lecture he didn't understand.  Even though he doesn't like social rejection, he makes sure to stay well connected by joining prestigious clubs and doing social activities every week.  He displays a confidence he doesn't really have and approaches dozens of girls with small talk until he finds one who enjoys his company.  Ralph continues to better himself by battering himself, sleeping only three hours a day usually, so he can fit everything into his 'self-made man' project.  In class he says what he is supposed to say to be popular, and doesn't say anything else.  At work he does everything he is supposed to do on time, and then stays two hours after doing more than he was assigned to leave a good impression behind, all of it without receiving any pay.

Ralph snags one of the remaining 1/4 spots open to success.  He is rewarded with a great wife, a high paying job, etc.  He then reflects back on his life and says, "See?  Anyone can do it!  If you just work hard and put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything!  What a just society!  Nothing about the world has to change, if people don't like it, it's simply because they weren't willing to put in the necessary effort, and why should freeloaders be rewarded when I had to work so hard to achieve my happiness?  To hell with them.  Sink or swim!"

But Ralph doesn't realize that he is participating in a zero sum game.  Somehow or other, the remaining 1/4 slots have to be assigned to someone.  Therefore, it's only natural that the hardest working members of this percentage of the population will get them.  But this doesn't mean that if everyone acted like Ralph, everyone would succeed like Ralph.  In fact, if everyone acted like Ralph, Ralph would have been no better off than if he hadn't tried at all.  Three fourths of the time, he would still fail to succeed, even after everything he worked so hard to do.  His effort was meaningless, only his relative effort mattered.  If Joe had just enough confidence to approach tens of girls instead of dozens, his destined lover could be snatched away by Ralph.  Then all those tens of rejections are just added pain with no reward.  If he works one hour after work, he could still be passed up for hiring because there was an even better intern who put in two extra hours of work named Ralph.  If Joe restrains himself to just five hours of sleep a day, he could end up sleep deprived and no better off because Ralph was willing to go with just three hours of sleep a day.  No matter how much Joe changes himself, no matter how much he studies and goes against his own personal inclinations, unless he does more than Ralph his only rewards will be dust and ashes.  If you follow the advice of Ralph and the Republicans, you could find yourself working extremely hard, but to absolutely no effect.  Even worse, if everyone followed Ralph's advice, even Ralph would be out of a job.

This is why the Bible once commented that 'the wise of this world are fools.'  Just because you can find a path to individual success, this does not mean it is the correct path to maximize happiness for society.  If Ralph advised a good friend to act like he did, that friend could indeed succeed -- so long as no one else heeds Ralph's advice.  But long ago Kant established that any moral system needs to be universal to be valid, and no advice should be given that not everyone can take simultaneously, with said advice leading to a better world.

Instead, wouldn't it be better to find a way for people to not have to work so hard and sacrifice so much to be successful?  Shouldn't people be able to follow the inclinations of their own personality and intelligence level, and still end up happy as a result?  If we broaden the base of possible ways people can be successful, then not only Ralph, but even Joe and Fred could be happy, not as 'self-made men,' but as beneficiaries of a benevolently structured society.  Look how many ways we could smooth the road for these 'people in the middle:'

A citizen's dividend could assure everyone of a guaranteed subsistence level, whether they can find work or not, so they wouldn't have to pursue job opportunities so desperately.  This would relax the zero-sum rat race and make employers compromise in order to find workers, rather than making unreasonable demands of their employees.

Restructuring education away from learning abstract, meaningless, and often times utterly false data.  Instead have every class be part of a job training apprenticeship.  Companies are required to pay for the course work instead of the individual, and then the individual is required to work for that company at the going rate of that job, and the company is required to hire people who successfully complete the education system.  After, say, five years, or however long it is estimated it takes for the employee to have made his company a profit above and beyond the cost of schooling, only then can the worker quit.  However, unless a worker flagrantly breaks the rules of his company, the company is never allowed to fire him.  I would allow, however, for a worker to be 'bought out' by the company by guaranteeing him, for instance, 50% of his wages for life as a pension if he had remained working there.

We could also mandate some common sense work measures, like a maximum 30 hour work week, that would give more people good jobs and everyone more time at home to spend with their families.  Likewise, school would not be allowed to extend beyond 30 hours of work a week, whether it's time at school or homework or spent studying to pass the next test.  Children should be allowed to get a full healthy night's sleep just like adults can without failing their courses as a result.  They should be allowed to have fun with their friends and go on dates with their romantic partners and grow up learning the things they care about and want to do.  School as it stands is more onerous than work, when we should be coddling our children the most.

Mandating marriage by the age of 25 such that every boy can get a girl and every girl can get a boy, and banning divorce except in the case of flagrant violation of the marriage contract.  Also, whoever violates the contract receives nothing in the divorce -- the children stay with whoever honored the contract, as do all the assets of the couple, and you still have to pay child support, etc -- so cheating on purpose in order to cancel the marriage still comes with high costs.  Even worse, while people who were forced into divorce by being the victim of a bad spouse could remarry with each other, those who broke the marriage contract would be banned from forming any relationship ever again, effectively cutting them off from human society and any further demonic offspring from their demonic gametes.  They would never benefit from forcibly destroying the bond the government in its wisdom and kindness gave them.  For people who can't find a romantic partner on their own the government would look through various survey data and match people up scientifically via a computer program at age 25, like dating services already do today, and that's just tough if the match isn't ideal.  Those people should have acted sooner while they had the chance.

This would have a number of advantageous effects.  First off, it's been shown in study after study that married couples are happier than singles.  This is true even when you compare apples to apples -- for instance the same type of people married versus living together.  People who remain single are willfully and stupidly harming themselves, and they would be better off if someone forced them to do the opposite.  Second, every time a boy or girl insists on staying single, because the gender balance is 1:1, he or she is forcing an innocent victim on the other side to also remain single for life, condemning them to the same miserable statistics as they themselves have volunteered for.  Endless studies have shown that people with one or two sex partners in their lives are happier than people with zero sex partners in their lives, who are in turn happier than people with 3+ sex partners in their lives.  We have evolved to marry and we are happiest when we follow our instincts appropriately.  In fact, a married couple acts so differently from the same people as lone individuals that it could be likened to how a caterpillar lives and acts completely differently from its later butterfly form.  People who stay single stay like larvae, never reaching nature's intended form, the life stage wherein people's virtues truly bloom and become fully human existences.  Even if single people think they prefer being caterpillars, the moment they metamorphose into butterflies, they realize what a childish and stupid preference that was, and are thankful to have become their final, fully evolved selves thereafter.

The only problem plaguing the institute of marriage today is how easy it is to divorce again.  You are better off never having a relationship in the first place if you are just going to lose it later.  This is true of wives, where everything you experienced together is utterly ruined by the betrayal at the end, which names everything said previous to that point a lie, but is even more so true of children.  To have children, to love them from the day they are born, to look forward to seeing them every day as the highlight of your life, and then to have them ripped away from you forever, to the point that they forget all about you, or even grow to hate and despise you due to what your ex-spouse tells them, is worse than if you had never grown to live for their sake in the first place.  It is unreasonable to force men into marriage today when they could just lose all of their money and their children on a woman's whimsy.  Only by banning divorce could we insist that they marry in the first place.  Likewise, it is unreasonable for women to be forced to marry if at any time the man could leave them financially high and dry with children they can't support.  By banning divorce, men will be obligated to take care of their wives and children forever, so women can rest easy in the knowledge that they do not have to develop a career while single that can support themselves.

Lastly, we need a law that requires people to receive a license before they can have a child.  Any child conceived without permission will be forced into an abortion or disposed of after birth.  Any man or woman who conceives a child without a license should be executed.  This helps people in a variety of ways.  A)  It lowers the population of the country, which gives everyone remaining in the country better prospects due to owning more natural resources, having more free open space to live on, and having better job opportunities with less competition.  B)  Children are guaranteed to start life with two good parents who clearly meet the requirements set for them as both nature-ers and nurture-ers.  In this way, we can screen out children with bad genes, for instance children with genetic diseases, stupid children, ugly children, mental disorders, etc.  We can also screen out parents who wouldn't be good parents.  There would be no more unintended pregnancies, and every couple would have to prove they are getting along and looking forward to the child before getting the license to have one.  Naturally, all children would be allowed only from married parents, and in a society that bans divorce, this assures the children a mother and a father from birth until adulthood -- which endless studies have shown to be extremely important to a child's well-being throughout life, and their ability to form successful families and raise successful future generations.  If we screened out poor couples, for instance unemployed people living off of the citizen's dividend, we could also assure every child to be growing up in affluent homes that can afford all of life's little luxuries, like good food, summer vacations, their own room, good health care and a good education.  However, I wouldn't go so far as to say all poor couples would be bad parents and ban any of them from having children.  This would have to be a more case-by-case scenario, but the point is we could lean the country towards children all growing up in affluence instead of poverty, which would be a great aid to their happiness in the present and the future.  Naturally, parents who took drugs, swore, drank, got into fights constantly, had piercings and tattoos, were obese, or showed any other proof that they would be bad role models for their kids would be disqualified from reproducing, and their ignoble behavioral flaws couldn't be transmitted to future generations.

Naturally, immigrants would also require a license, who would have to fulfill the same restrictions as newborn children, but with the additional hurdle of having to prove that they can quickly and easily assimilate into the host society and would be loyal to it.  We can imagine only a vanishingly thin number of immigrants would receive these licenses and they would all be top quality material, but not enough to disrupt our goal of a more environmentally and socially healthy population level than the present day.

In a society like this, who wouldn't succeed?  Think about it.  At birth, you have a mother and a father that are guaranteed to love you that are guaranteed to be there for you for life, a guaranteed good set of genes that won't incapacitate you intellectually or emotionally or behaviorally or physically, a guaranteed life income or a guaranteed job, and a guarantee of marrying at least someone later in life who also has a guaranteed set of good genes, guaranteed good parents, a guaranteed income or job and is guaranteed to stay with you for life.  Now we are no longer talking about natural born winners, like the Mitt Romney's of the world who had everything handed to them on a platter effortlessly.  We are no longer even discussing the Ralphs of the world, who sacrificed everything in order to live like Mitt Romney against all the odds.  Now everyone in the country is as happy as humanly possible, and no one had to make any dramatic sacrifices to be so.

If Joe prefers collective action that leads to this result, rather than self-sacrificial actions of Ralph in order to 'be like Ralph' and succeed as an individual, yes he is being lazy.  But it is this very laziness that will lead not only to a better result for Joe, but also for Ralph, and for Fred, and for everyone else in the country.  If he weren't lazy, he could be better off, but only at the expense of Ralph, Fred, and everyone else in the country.  Do we really want to tell people it is their own fault that they aren't cut-throat enough to only care about themselves?  Do we really want a system where 'there can only be one', a giant Hunger Games world of winners and losers?  What about the Joes who just can't stomach depriving others of their dreams in order to achieve their own?  What if a Joe is so far-sighted he sees that his accomplishment just means driving the next man down, Ralph, into despair?  Should he punished for choosing not to participate in the rat race for that motive as well?

In any case, if people are not willing to compromise for anything short of an ideal world, whatever their motive, that is the right decision.  Because allowing people to suffer who could've been saved is the same as making them suffer yourself.  This is why it is inexcusable for God to set up a world where people are suffering all of whom he could have saved.  This, in itself, proves God does not and cannot exist.  For the same reason, it is inexcusable for society to leave individuals in the lurch and let them become victims when they have the power to help.  This in itself proves it is not a good society and should not exist.  An America that makes $50,000 per capita can afford to help all its citizens, not just its hard-working Ralphs, and certainly not just its natural-born Mitt Romneys.  Anything short of happiness for all Americans, when we have $50,000 per capita to work with, is simply blasphemy and sadism rolled up into elephant dung and smeared across every holy thing left on Earth.