Individualism

by Robert Villegas

  Social Status prejudice takes place when we assume certain things about an Individual because of the level to which his family has risen or fallen in society irrespective of his character and value.

  Each of these prejudices involves the same thinking error, drawing a conclusion about an Individual because of characteristics found in some members of the group to which that person is presumed to belong.

  We must each encounter the world with our own mind. We are each responsible for doing our own thinking. This is inescapable. We must decide if the ideas our parents and teachers have taught us are correct. This can be a daunting task if one is not schooled in clear thinking. Many do not complete the process of checking these opinions, or they develop opinions without a full process of thought, preferring to handle important issues with quick analysis and judgment. This is the mistake that causes prejudice. It is easier to get judgments from others rather than to analyze the facts fully. There is often pressure from others to accept prejudices and one might be ridiculed for thinking otherwise. Many people opt for prejudice to feel safe.

  Sometimes considered prejudice is what we call preference. To prefer something is to like a particular thing or quality more than another. Preference is not always prejudice (although sometimes there is an element of prejudice involved). Preference is not evil. It is the right of every individual. It is not always an issue of rationality, but only the Individual is responsible for the consequences of his choices; and this is the key. With preference, you live with your choice and no other person suffers. With prejudice, others suffer.

  Another way of understanding prejudice is to observe what I call Markerism. This is a method of thinking that assigns characteristics to an Individual based upon what we believe to be true of him. If a person espouses atheism, we mark him as an atheist. If his skin is black, we mark him as an African (or black), if he professes to like people of his own gender we mark him as a homosexual, etc. Such markers are often accurate, but a collection of markers assigned to a particular person represents only a small number of the total characteristics he possesses. Markerism is therefore inherently inaccurate as a thinking process because we seldom know everything about a person. Socially, it is undesirable and impolite to presume to know a person that well. When we generalize about a person based on racial or ethnic markers, our thinking is mostly inaccurate. Not all markers associated with a group (collective) are true of each Individual presumed to belong to the group.

  You will also find in our society, people who maliciously assign markers to individuals. For instance, in intellectual and political debate, you often see one person assigning markers to another that may or may not be correct. The debate is switched to the other person's markers and away from the issues at hand. In logic, this is ad hominem, arguing against the person instead of the issues. Today, many of our leaders practice this consistently. It stifles debate, rationality and the pursuit of truth. It does serve a political purpose: it disenfranchises opposition.

  Markerism is collectivism. It is cruel, vicious and harmful. A truly fair person would not engage in it. If we advocate Individual rights, we should grant to each Individual the right to "self-create," the right to define himself and not be unfairly defined by others. We should respect the right of each person to live as he desires so long as he does not violate the rights of others. We should not jump to conclusions. We should acknowledge the difficulty and the undesirability of Markerism and grant to every person the civilized benefit of the doubt.

  At base we are each human. Most people have similar aspirations, the same human fire for moral and happy living. These are proper markers to assign to people. If we use collective terms, race, ethnicity, class, etc., as defining markers of individuals, we cannot apply principles to individuals. Using pre-assigned collective characteristics to individuals is the height of racism and prejudice

  Those of us mired in the negative consequences of Markerism, stereotyping and racism are the front line in this battle. Only by fighting for our individuality can we hope to gain the promise of the American dream. The battle to defeat racism and collectivism has barely begun. Next we’ll analyze the concept of discrimination.

  To discriminate means to single out, to find a difference in something.

  Intellectual discrimination is a very human thing and is a psychological necessity for man. The philosophical branch of epistemology studies how discrimination operates in the mind. It means, simply put, that you distinguish a particular thing from others by reference to its characteristics. As such, discrimination is objective. The human mind needs to discriminate in order to think clearly. Properly, such discrimination must be based upon evidence and valid reasoning, not prejudice. The quality of the associations we form determines the accuracy of our thinking.

  Social discrimination is a very different issue and involves only the singling out of a particular individual. It means, on the negative side, that prejudiced judgments are used to deprive individuals of the rights, benefits or opportunities that go to others. It even creates the suffering inflicted on people who have positive qualities, beauty and intelligence and is responsible for the destruction or corruption of those qualities (some forms of discrimination are necessary, such as that extended toward criminals and violent people).

  One of Gobineau's basic premises was that some Aryan "races" had declined because of the level of degeneration they had acquired. Degeneration for him was based upon the so-called purity (that is to say, the lack of it) of the Aryan blood-line. The level of a civilization's rise or decline was purely a matter of how well an Aryan group was able to resist miscegenation, mixing with other races. This view created the desire to maintain purity, to struggle against anything that would lead to a weakening of the Aryan blood-line. The result was separation, segregation, exclusion and genocide practiced by the men in power toward helpless victims. The result was discrimination and exclusion based upon "race." The residue of such thinking is found today in the views of modern white supremacists and subconsciously in racialism. It is also found in reverse form in the views of some non-Aryan racists who claim their "race" is superior.

  Social discrimination contains two basic components. First there is the wrongful thought, the prejudice or stereotyping that many individuals practice. Secondly, there is the exclusion that results from it. Such exclusion includes a refusal to deal with people with certain characteristics or from certain ethnic groups; it includes Jim Crow laws (a post-Civil War phenomenon that created a separate society for blacks in the South), housing exclusion, deprivation of education and private forms of discrimination that create a lack of opportunity or prevent deserving people from being successful. This last type of discrimination is most common in the business world and includes the refusal to do business, the refusal to cooperate, the refusal to teach or otherwise assist a struggling newcomer, setting higher prices for select individuals, making excuses for refusing to cooperate, making false assumptions, steering opportunities away from someone, jumping to conclusions about the quality of a person's work, spreading false rumors, giving more critical evaluations, finding more fault, fabricating reasons to hold a person back in his career.

  The following are the four major types of discrimination in our society. Their impact, because they are an outgrowth of racism or ethnicism, is the economic disparity we see today.

  THE WELFARE SYSTEM

  The Welfare System presumably provides advantages to needy people. The consequence however, is that it keeps them from assimilating into society, separating them to such a degree, that they cannot function without the "help" of the government. It imposes on certain people the status of "beneficiary" and removes them from the status called "self-sufficient." It even encourages the "beneficiary" to maintain this status for as long as possible. Of the four most devastating means of discrimination today, the welfare system has had the worst impact on the lives of people and the quality of cities.

  SELF-EXCLUSION

  Self-exclusion is a form
of reverse discrimination (my definition of "reverse" discrimination means that one discriminates against oneself, not another "race"), where an Individual believes that he has no chance of success. The Individual virtually writes himself off without making the effort to try. To complicate this, a person of color, very often has to make a monumental effort to overcome the real discrimination that exists. Many are not willing to make the effort. A rationalization often used to cover up self-exclusion is the cry, "Our society is totally racist and I cannot succeed because of it."

  THE REFUSAL TO BE "WHITE"

  The refusal to be "white" is another form of reverse or self-discrimination. By ridiculing the qualities exhibited by successful whites, one sets up the opposite qualities as desirable. Very often, these "anti-qualities" remove the Individual from employability. This attitude has a highly harmful effect on young lives. Parenthetically, this attitude, the refusal to emulate successful "whites," is the major reason for poverty among "whites."

  GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS

  A major obstacle to the reward of virtue is the inversion created by government regulations that rob our economy of its vigor. The general principle, in economic terms, is that regulations obstruct positive economic processes that would otherwise go their own course. When an economy is burdened by regulations, it goes out of balance (meaning that the law of supply and demand is not allowed to function normally) and many, often the less educated or those lacking skills, suffer. If one examines the purpose behind such regulations one finds two elements: the justification for the regulation that decries the anarchy inherent in a free-market, and the real reason for it, to give established people or companies an unfair advantage.

  Government regulation is privilege extended toward those who have established power, and a closed door against those who cannot pay the cost of regulation. Government regulation is a useless invasion of the right to compete. There is no other purpose or goal, regardless of the arguments used to justify it. It is a remnant of a policy called "the King's prerogative" where the King in monarchic systems could give certain privileges to those of his choosing. This often conferred great reward to the favored person because it excluded all others from competing against him. In our time, that other person is often a struggling minority businessperson.

  The phenomenon of ethnicity is a pernicious concept that is closely associated with racism. Early definitions of the word ethnic referred to groups that were not Christian or Jewish. An ethnic group was a group of "heathens." In modern times the term ethnic has entered our popular culture to designate a population or subgroup of people having a common heritage including customs, physical appearance, language, dialect, history, etc.

  If one looks at recorded history for a term used to designate such a group, one learns that the most common term was "race." This means that the term now referring to purported fundamental divisions of man was in early times used to designate smaller groups that lived in certain areas or cities.

  Almost all "holocausts" known to history destroyed a specific ethnic group that was thought not to "deserve," the right to live in peace. Even though many such incidents have taken place (and are taking place), genocide has yet to be punished by the world since the Nuremberg Trials.

  Many wars were fought among ethnic groups who vied for land and resources where one group rationalized its bloodshed by pointing out the "inferiority" of the other. Whether it was blood-purity, physical or intellectual characteristics, habits, traditions, or past wrongs, such "reasons" were nothing more than rationalizations.

  If we look at the history of nations, many ethnic conflicts developed as a result of tribal migrations. The members of a newly arrived tribe came either as conquering warriors or as refugees needing a new home. They often came to lands prized by other tribes. Many times, deadly conflict broke out. In other cases, new tribes migrated without conflict.

  Ethnic conflict is an outgrowth of social insecurity. Tribes with more dictatorial political structures tended throughout history to view the arrival of a new group as a "theft" of their land, as a warlike act, and acted accordingly. Those of more individualistic character, tended to view other tribes as prospects for trade, as more "workers" to produce abundance. It is this openness to immigrants that has created some of our history's most monumental changes. The creation of the United States and its early acceptance of immigrants was an outgrowth of the latter belief. The result was a melting-pot of abundance, cultural tolerance and Individual rights (the experience of slaves notwithstanding). On the other hand, Nazi Germany, being a dictatorship, had, by 1938, stretched human resources to the breaking point and needed land to exploit and bodies to enslave.

  One can conclude that, since there is no such thing as race, most racial conflict is ethnic conflict. If we take this perspective, we begin to see a more realistic process in "group" relations. When you consider that one of the major components of ethnic conflict is territorial protectionism, we begin to understand that racism is, in reality, ethnic exclusion.

  There are basically two attitudes that one could develop regarding the issue of ethnicity: 1) Ethnicity as political collectivism, and 2) Ethnicity as diversity and historical interest.

  Ethnicity as political collectivism

  Very common today is the movement to balkanize humankind, to divide individuals into tribal groups called ethnic groups. Such a movement appeals to people who believe that belonging to a group is the best condition of living. Loyalty to the group is sold as necessary to perpetuate the values and myths of the group. Complete obedience and faith are demanded. Individuality and independent thinking are ridiculed and forbidden. Such conformity leads (with the arrival of certain demagogic leaders), to the storm trooper mentality where the enemies, scapegoats, of the group are to be fought with swift vengeance. Group rights, group values, group goals, etc. are considered sacred. Group warfare is the outcome.

  Ethnic collectivism is the chicken coming home to roost, so to speak. After decades of teaching our children conformity to the ideas and opinions of others, and that group solutions are better than Individual solutions, it should not be surprising that group identity is more common today than in the past. It should not be surprising that group warfare is imminent. It should not be surprising that many of the leaders coming to the forefront today are vicious racists who will capitalize on the "solidarity" created by ethnic "pride."

  Ethnicity as diversity and historical interest

  Ethnicity as diversity and historical interest views the development of nations and peoples as part of our history, to be studied and understood. It holds that a rational person can self-create, that he need not conform to traditions and beliefs held by people in the past, that there is nothing sacred about unexamined beliefs. Such a person has a "take it or leave it" attitude toward even his own ethnic heritage; he may consider it interesting to know about, but knows that it is not mandatory that he belong to a group at the cost of independence and intellect. Such a person does not believe that belonging to a group invokes certain rights that only the group holds. He knows that the markers associated with the group are not a badge upon him to wear. He realizes that what is important about an Individual is not skin color, but the degree of rationality each has brought into life.

  It is the collectivization of humankind, through races or ethnic groups (or any other group) that is the culprit in human relations. The term "ethnicity" does not define an individual. It defines some of the people living in or coming into a distinct territory. Ethnicity and ethnic differences are not fundamental categories among individuals or groups, just as "races" are not, and should not be used to "define" a group and associate negative qualities with individuals. When the terms are used according to the tenets of political collectivism, the danger of harming individuals is very real.

  Scientific theories aside, not all individuals have the markers associated with a group. To look at ethnicity in any context other than a study of groups and their histories is a misuse of human knowledge. To use
it to define individuals is prejudice. As logic dictates, there are no such things as collective characteristics. Statistics do not determine truth. They determine only trends. There are only Individual characteristics.

  The foundation of racism is racial theory. This theory sought to warn Aryan men against the "dangers" of miscegenation, mixing with other races. It sought to prove that such mixing was the downfall of great nations and it sought to convince Aryans to avoid mixing. That such mixing is dangerous for the course of world events, or dangerous in any manner has never been proven. Such attempts deteriorate to what they are: hatred and fear of anything that does not appear as "we" appear.

  Escaping Ethnicity

  In the previous chapter, I postulated that racial conflict, because there is no such thing as “race,” is really ethnic territorial protectionism or ethnic conflict. Because, in my view, “race” is not a valid line of separation for human groups, and because racism is really ethnicism, I speculate that territorial protectionism is the underlying principle beneath ethno-centric views. Ethnicity, though a valid concept for identifying specific groups by means of generalized ethnic markers and springing from or being associated with a specific territory, has within it the real roots of hatred, warfare and human conflict.