Collectivism and Meaning

by Will Wilkinson on May 28, 2008

Great stuff in today’s WSJ from Cato executive veep David Boaz on the collectivist blowhards running for president.

Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is “self-indulgence,” that building a business is “chasing after our money culture,” that working to provide a better life for our families is a “narrow concern.”

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

Right on. So why the nonsense? Arnold Kling says it’s Hansonian altruistic signaling. Sure, there’s some of that. But why does this get a grip on us? Why are people such suckers for the idea that collective sacrifice is a source of meaning.

Here’s a question. Is sacrifice for grand collective projects really meaningful? Probably it is. But the reward, the compensation for sacrifice, is indifferent to the content of the project. Probably genocide is meaningful for those who devote themselves to it. Religion is meaningful, too. But it’s a pack of lies. Meaningfulness is too promiscuous, justifies too much. I suspect there’s little sense in mounting an argument against meaning, per se. Everybody wants it, even if we badly overestimate how much we need it. But I think we’re obliged to do better in discriminating between sources of meaning and their effects. We tend to indulge people’s irrational fixations when they claim that they find them “meaningful.” But why? That it is “meaningful” to X may be a reason to be especially hard on X, if X is dangerous and meaning is really so attractive. Collectivism is meaningful, but it is mindless, pathetic, and the essential fuel for the greatest cruelty. That it does feel sublime to submit to the will of the whole, to lose oneself in something bigger, that it is a special kind of bliss to transcend the small grubby thing that is one’s own small life, is why human beings will so cheerfully slaughter one another. This should probably be discouraged.

Viewing 11 Comments

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    Is "meaningful" a sufficiently well-theorized term for all the work that it seems to be doing these days? A naive person might well conclude that it just means "things that I think are good but that you don't like." Is there a reasonably widely accepted meaning beyond that, or it just a stand-in for a dislike of utilitarian concerns?
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    Of course if the collective effort is aimed at something positive - say, national health care and cleaning up the environment - this would not mean human slaughter.
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    Well where exactly does Obama deny that "every human life counts," or that "[y]ou have a right to live [life] as you choose." Where does Obama insist that pursuing "happiness" is an "self-indulgent"?

    Oh, he doesn't.

    Boaz is responding to relatively innocuous, trite, pleasing talk on the theme of public spiritedness with counter-formulations that are significantly more misleading than anything Obama said in the referenced speech. Measured skepticism about "collectivist" rhetoric is one thing; casting public spiritedness as somehow incommensurable with individual achievement (or with the "pursuit of happiness") is another.
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    It is hard to have an accurate discussion on such generalities. But:


    1) I would guess that the people who built America actually did see a lot of meaning in what they did.

    2) Arguably, there is not a lot of "meaning" in pursuing the heavily advertised, commercialized picture of the good life. The advertised picture of the good life involves status games and sometimes an emphasis on fear intermixed with more "real" or basic pursuits (like being a good dad). If (i) advertising tends to push on our fears or our "negative-sum" desires (like status), and (ii) pursuit of those desires can alleviate the fear but not create happiness, then it is wise to encourage young people to develop an independent picture of the good life.


    So, both Mr. Boaz and Messrs. Obama/McCain are off the mark. Whether I pursue riches in my profession is only vaguely related to whether I am pursuing meaning.

    Obama/McCain are wrong to say that pursuing wealth is antithetical to meaning.
    Boaz is wrong to say that chasing after money is inherently healthy because of the invisible hand.

    The truth is more like this: The scolds are partly right! It is wise to avoid the heavily-advertised collectivist consumer mindset. Or at a minimum temper it with independently derived sources of satisfaction. But the scolds overshoot the mark: it is not necessary to avoid "pursuing wealth" per se. Founding a company can be extremely meaningful.
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    Last point: Maybe the invisible hand inevitably leads money-grubbers to improve society. Great. But first, we should appreciate the force of the caveats (corruption is not a net good for society). And second, we should not only care about whether the money-grubber creates value for society -- we should also care whether the money-grubber is happy. To this end, the message "don't focus too much on status games" sounds like excellent advice.
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    Why are people such suckers for the idea that collective sacrifice is a source of meaning.
    WW



    Because we are social creatures who's very evolutionary success was a result of "collective" behaviors. Our successful families are collectives, our successful companies are collectives and our successful countries are collectives.


    Every society is based on some degree of collectivism. There is not one society that you can point to that runs without some degree of collectivism...same for company , same for family.

    Collectivism allows some people to write and dream in safety and prosperity of non-collective utopias that never have and never will exist.
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    This is Godwin on speed. Or maybe the fallacy of the excluded middle. If there are no choices other than libertarianism or totalitarianism, then libertarianism would be a more attractive doctrine than it is. However, you need to argue that it is impossible to have a moderate ethic of public spiritedness, that there can be no other virtue other than performing your contracts, paying your child support and not infringing other people's property rights.

    People are going to want feelings of collective identity, even if these are "discouraged", just like people are going to want sexual experiences or more money, no matter how often these desires are denounced. That's just human nature.
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    "And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others."


    Or you might just find in your chase of the almighty dollar that you are in the advantagous position of being a Wall Street Banker or Hedge Fund manager benifiting from the Fed and it's inflationary policies such that you can make massive amounts of wealth on speculative assett bubbles that add nothing to economic productivity and in fact steal from those "every single humans that count" and are hard working actually producing something of true economic value. It's possible you might find that those "every human lives that count" don't count as much because of your blind pursuit of the dollar you were able to shake the invisible hand or tie it to a chair.
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    Maybe you could go a day without thinking something has to be different.
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    mk,

    Who says there isn't a lot of meaning in playing status games? I thought the problem with status games isn't that they are meaningless, but that they are zero-sum. They are meaningful for those who win.

    Pithlord,

    However, you need to argue that it is impossible to have a moderate ethic of public spiritedness

    This might be on point.
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    "Our successful families are collectives, our successful companies are collectives and our successful countries are collectives." is just so much BS. The "group" is just an abstraction for several individuals. Sacrificing some for the "good of the group" really boils down to sacrificing certain individuals for the benefit of other individuals, with the state, in it's infinite wisdom, deciding who gets the elevator and who gets the shaft.

    The collectivist policies being espoused are just legalized plunder, being forced on us by the state. A prime requirement for an individualist society is a sound monetary system, which we are far from. The only moral role for government in a free society is contract enforcement and protection of property rights. Social interaction amongst individuals must be voluntary, not enforced by the state under threat of violence.

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