Let It Be, Together

Let It Be, Together

By Rick Smith

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."

-Jane Addams, founder of U.S. Settlement House Movement

A clash of individualist and collectivist ideology has consistently been a characteristic of western society, particularly in North America. While ideologues of either camp continue to smear each other, the time has arrived when we must take a decisive course of action to end this dispute. While the battle rages, time for real action is lost. The solution we must make that will bring about the most lasting and progressive changes are to take an individualist perspective in terms of personal freedom, but for all intents and purposes a collectivist ideology must be applied economically. In this way, humanity can finally prosper and work harmoniously.

Individualism promotes and economic ideology of capitalism that has had a detrimental effect on society. When such ideologies came to prominence in Canada in the 1990s, those in poverty rose from representing 15.3% of the population in 1990 to 16.2% in 1999. Youth crime experienced a net increase over this period of time, with 1999 youth violent crimes levels 41% higher than a decade earlier. Under a capitalist economy, people are encouraged to compete mercilessly for resources, often with little regard for those left behind in the reckless pursuit of wealth. Those that are left behind suffer unacceptably, experiencing higher death rates and greater health problems. Higher death rates are evident in a 1986 study that pointed out that poor white men (those who earned less than $9,000 a year) experienced a death rate 6.7 times higher than rich white men (those who earned more than $25,000 a year), with a 5.4 times higher death rate among equivalently poor and rich black men. The United States has the greatest amount of income inequality, with the average American CEO earning 531 times what the average worker did in 2000. By contrast, that number is 25 in Britain, 16 in France, and 11 in Germany. It should come as no surprise therefore that crimes rates, mortality rates, and health statistics are all visibly poorer in the United States than in Europe.

This is the result of the American love affair with unregulated capitalism, believing it to be equivalent to maximizing personal freedom, and must come to an end to keep society healthy. Collective action must be taken to ensure a fairer and more just society. Evidence exists to suggest that such things as strong social welfare, government investment in an economy, and providing quality universal education all not only produce economic growth, but a more harmonious society as wealth is distributed more evenly. While pundits tend to suggest that those who are poor are lazy and those who are rich have earned their position, there are countless factors that prove this wrong. Among them are access to private education, mental health, personal connections, family or emotional stability, inheritance, prejudice, or just plain luck, which could take the form of investing in the right stocks at the right time to being a lucky gambler. Even John D. Rockefeller, among America’s richest people in history, described the process of becoming rich as “1. Go to work. 2. Stay late. 3. Find oil.” To suggest that those who are poor are not hardworking is ludicrous when in Ottawa alone 100,000 people are living off of low incomes, which is to say that they are part of the demographic of “working poor”. Capitalism as promoted by individualists promotes divisions and fractures communities, while alienating those who work for the benefit of another. For this reason, reducing income gaps and sharing the wealth in communities is necessary towards producing a more functional world.

That being said, maximizing individual freedom must be paramount. Placing community needs above the needs of an individual can be detrimental to freedom as a concept. Such instances are shown in the 1981 TV movie “The Wave”, based on the book by high school history teacher Ron Jones in which he documented an experience in which he re-created a Nazi environment in his high school class. He found himself unable to explain to his students how even non-Nazis in Nazi Germany allowed the government to get away with exterminating millions of people. He recreated the circumstances, starting with mild classroom discipline and eventually manifesting the new rules into a club that he dubbed the Third Wave. The group soon became out of hand, whereby non-members were excluded and those who did not agree with the authoritarian nature of the club were ostracized and even bullied. The otherwise unassuming high school students had become virtual Nazis themselves. The message was clearly that individual thought is always of the utmost importance, and what Canadian could disagree with this? Important alongside individual thought is individual expression. Culture is important to the survival of any community, and culture relies on the creative input of all people in the population. This has been recognized as a sociological and anthropological fact for ages. It is creativity that has led to not only rich cultural manifestations such as theatre or visual art, but also inventions and discoveries ranging from automobiles to electricity that have, for better or worse, impacted our society. The importance of individual choice, of course, is underscored when faced with the options of choosing to smoke or not smoke, have an abortion or to not have an abortion, go to a university or pursue a skilled trade, and other such life-altering decisions. However, allowing the choice of an individual path to negate the awareness of a need for community action for collective benefit must not be allowed. Humans are born into social groups, be they families or circles of friends, and throughout or lives work, play, and die in groups. Humans are not hermit-oriented species, but are best fulfilled through the esteem of others.

In conclusion, the battle between individualism and collectivism takes two extremes that, in one way or another, are each harmful to the eventual attainment of a grand order for humanity. Should we hope to make the greatest strides humanity possibly can, end the dog-eat-dog competition for resources that leave the innocent, honest and humble to die, and allow for personal decisions, we must learn to take action together but to leave decisions that affect the individual to the individual. Let us drop individual pursuit of wealth for a united and prosperous community that is united behind allowing it’s members to live and let live.