Goal
Today, I discuss how to retain your individuality and why it is crucial you do so.
Table of Contents
- You are an Individual
- How To Fight Collectivists and Retain Your Individuality
- They Cannot Tell Your Story
- Actionables
You are an Individual
Although it sounds like a corny cliché, it is true: there is no one else like you.
You are an individual. Anyone with your genetic makeup, past experiences, unique perspectives, and studied capabilities has never been and never will be. You are you. You alone define who you are, what you can be, and where you should go.
But The World Is Determined To Break You
“Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority– where he may forget ‘men who are the rule,’ as their exception;– exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
However, in our culture, as in every other, collectivists oppose your individuality. Collectivists do not like strong-willed, capable individuals because they are uncontrollable. Therefore, weak people must break you and sever your individuality.
The collectivists break you by defining your worth, life, and potential through arbitrary identities. These identities are typically unchosen realities of your existence: your race, gender, nationality, and so forth. Therefore, you do not choose them, and what isn’t chosen or earned cannot be defined by your efforts and character.
For example, I am black. However, I do not identify with “blackness” (which no one can define) or black culture, especially with this culture’s more heinous and self-destructive aspects. I wish to be judged by the quality of my character and my actions – not by genetic and historical accidents I have no control over.
But the collectivist cannot have that. If I have no loyalty to a genetic accident, race hustlers’ emotional hemming and hawing can not control me. Thus, I am less useful to the ruling classes, mobs, and elites, because I have loyalty to virtue instead of their machinations.
When you seek to retain your individuality, collectivists will attack you with words, insults, canceling, and eventually violence.
How To Fight Collectivists and Retain Your Individuality
Collectivists need you in a box because you are easier to manipulate and control.
When you don’t define yourself by what is arbitrary, arbitrary identities cannot confine you. You become free to pursue what is in your best interest at the expense of what weak and evil individuals want you to do. You won’t contribute to their accumulation of power. Thus, collectivists will hate your individuality.
But who cares? The collectivists will wish to define your life for you. You must fight back. Although individualism is hard, it is the only path in life worth walking.
Here are a few ways you can push back against collectivism and retain your individuality.
1) Define what you want out of your life and achieve it
Personal achievement is the antidote to collectivism. If you determine your goals, plan, and accomplish the tasks ahead of you, you create yourself. You define who you are based on what you have done and the virtuous path you have set. No one else can claim your prize, and no one can decide who you are or what you are worth.
With goals comes self-respect. When you set precise desires for your life, you develop a reason for living that exists beyond your immediate gratifications. Once you pursue something deeper than comfort, you will separate yourself from others.
Remember, weak individuals do not support personal responsibility or long-term thinking. Therefore, you know you’re on the right track.
2) Accept collectivists are not on your side
Collectivists will shout about community but will attack the first man seeking to elevate himself. They will not regulate your iniquities – they will attack your virtues.
For example, I was frequently called a “house nigger” and “Uncle Tom” within the black community. Why? Because I wanted to learn, achieve, and support horrible ideas like lower taxes and personal responsibility. All the gang bangers who terrorized their communities by killing children and having pointless gang wars were treated with disdain. However, they were never considered “traitors” despite how destructive their actions were.
As soon as you step out of line and question the accepted narrative, the collectivists will swarm. It does not matter how virtuous you wish to be. You must remember, collectivists do not support virtue. The ruling classes, elites, and mobs want you addicted, broken, and tired.
Accept that they are not your allies, and you will better retain your individuality.
3) You can create a community based on virtue and greatness
Your community should be made of virtuous individuals.
“I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.” – Ayn Rand
Collectivists always argue individuals cannot form communities outside of what is arbitrary. However, you can create a community that supports your most virtuous self while you do the same for them.
The best way to build this community is to cultivate virtue internally. Then, seek places where virtue is often celebrated and rewarded: church communities, volunteer communities, certain political circles, and so on. Once you’ve built your community, you will have your social needs met without the need for collectivists.
They Cannot Tell Your Story
People are miserable because they do not live their lives. They go through life aimlessly following a collective and refuse to embrace responsibility for themselves. Because of this, they end up lost and depressed.
We can try to externalize our desire for greatness, personal involvement, and personal success. But we are who we are. You will always have goals, a desire for challenge, and the want for something bigger than an arbitrary identity. You can pretend otherwise, but you’ll make yourself miserable.
Your life is not an amorphous blob defined by people you have never met and who do not care about you. Your life is defined by your actions, behaviors, goals, and beliefs.
Go and be an individual. Control your urges. Focus on virtue. Achieve your virtuous ends. Do not waste away in a crowd of idiots yelling about their stupid identity. Go forth and be worth something before it is too late.
Actionables
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” – Coco Chanel
- Do you value your individuality? What separates you from others?
- What arbitrary identities do others foist upon you? How do you respond to this?
- What are your favorite virtues? Why? Which virtues do you struggle with the most?
Please remember that it’s important to do the actionables. You’re not on this earth to simply read but to do. To become an individual, you must act more than you consume.
*Image credit to Unsplash.
