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They have none of the mental blocks the "West" tends to suffer from when it comes to weighing "individual freedom" vs collective action. The West needs to take

They have none of the mental blocks the "West" tends to suffer from when it comes to weighing "individual freedom" vs collective action. The West needs to take a long look at itself in the mirror, seeing as some of its fundamental ideas are inadequate when dealing with a blind, pure-numbers threat that only cares about statistics. I'm not saying some of the collectivist excesses seen in some parts of the "East" are okay, but the other extreme turns out to be maladaptive, too.

lr4444lr 5y ago
You know what's funny, when I look back at that old WWII media, America was pushing an awful lot of "civic responsibility" messaging on people. My father, God rest his soul, used to tell me recalling that all young men really were embarrassed about not having a good excuse not to be enlisted. There were the freedom gardens, scrap metal collections, war bonds... This isn't to glorify war or anything, but just to note that there was a time when we did all work toward the greater good.
- Florin_Andrei 5y ago
  Yes, the pathology of "freedom" is somewhat more recent, at least in terms of its extreme intensity. My gut feeling is that it can be traced back to Ayn Rand & Co, but it's hard to say. But around that time, and near that environment, some spectacularly evil things came to be accepted as "reasonable".
  - meowfly 5y ago
    The science historian and author, Naomi Oreskes has argued that the hyper-individualistic attitude of the 70s-80s was a result of the cold war. The US was so anti-communist that anything that smelled of communism/socialism was denounced.
    - Florin_Andrei 5y ago
      That's kind of what happened to Ayn Rand. She and her family suffered quite a lot from the Communist Revolution. I think she probably had a form of PTSD or similar. The mythology she came up with is so obviously opposite-to-communism-in-every-way (even when it makes no sense). Like someone who almost drowned in the ocean, and then thinks showers are evil.
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      This is also a theme of Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head [1]. 1: https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/

lr4444lr 5y ago

You know what's funny, when I look back at that old WWII media, America was pushing an awful lot of "civic responsibility" messaging on people. My father, God rest his soul, used to tell me recalling that all young men really were embarrassed about not having a good excuse not to be enlisted. There were the freedom gardens, scrap metal collections, war bonds... This isn't to glorify war or anything, but just to note that there was a time when we did all work toward the greater good.

Florin_Andrei 5y ago
Yes, the pathology of "freedom" is somewhat more recent, at least in terms of its extreme intensity. My gut feeling is that it can be traced back to Ayn Rand & Co, but it's hard to say. But around that time, and near that environment, some spectacularly evil things came to be accepted as "reasonable".
- meowfly 5y ago
  The science historian and author, Naomi Oreskes has argued that the hyper-individualistic attitude of the 70s-80s was a result of the cold war. The US was so anti-communist that anything that smelled of communism/socialism was denounced.
  - Florin_Andrei 5y ago
    That's kind of what happened to Ayn Rand. She and her family suffered quite a lot from the Communist Revolution. I think she probably had a form of PTSD or similar. The mythology she came up with is so obviously opposite-to-communism-in-every-way (even when it makes no sense). Like someone who almost drowned in the ocean, and then thinks showers are evil.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    This is also a theme of Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head [1]. 1: https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/