The Collectivist Fallacy

When you enter my house, you become part of my family. I'll bring you a glass of water before drinking any myself. If there's one piece of pizza left, I'll encourage you to have it. If the building is burning, I will carry you out first then go back for the photo albums.

Once you've entered my circle of trust, I'm a hardcore collectivist. I don't keep track of money at all. I constantly tell my friends to stop arguing or trying to split the bill. Just accept that I'm paying for dinner and the show. I've given random people thousands of dollars just because I liked them.

Don't ask questions. Trust that I'm a competent decision-maker, as I trust you are worthy of my generosity.

Ideally, all of humankind exists within a collective. We pool our resources, we steward the planet. We uplift each other and celebrate life. Alas, it is not always so.

Why not?

It comes down to finite resources. We only have so much time, energy, and attention. We're forced to pick among whom we will live and die. All 8 billion people is a frivolous non-answer, which is why Seth has spent decades encouraging each of us to cultivate generous culture.

If you move to a new city and get a new job, befriending a stranger at work might take a few weeks. Some people take longer than others before they're ready to invite folks over for dinner with the fam.

Your close friend introduces you to someone new. Because you've known this friend for years and trust them with your life, you're willing to hang out with the new person right away, even helping them with random favors.

An idealist might call this privilege. It's certainly a form of privileging cherished relationships over weaker ones. But given that we're human beings, pragmatically we don't have a choice. To be human is to privilege certain other humans. Whether we like it or not, it's our responsibility to define our personal collective.

We can certainly do better or worse at deploying trust and allowing merit to guide our actions and favors, rather than self-interest or comfort at the expense of others. Even better, why not align self-interest with merit? I enjoy having diverse friends. These ideas have nothing to do with name, gender, or skin color.

It's easy to get on my good side by sharing good ideas and living accordingly. I can detect fairly quickly if we align on curiosity, kindness, truth-seeking, respect. Importantly, I will never seek to change you. I do my utmost to respect your individual choices, even if they don't align with mine. Have a nice life.

That said, I'm supremely grateful when close friends and family hold me accountable to my own high standards. This is the ultimate form of love. It's selfless of my people to empathize deeply enough to offer kind and generous influence in dialogue with me. I hope it's appropriate to reciprocate at times.

Collectivist versus individualist is a false dichotomy. "Collectivist" is more of a default human trait, and "individualist" is more of a required social operating function since our species surpassed Dunbar's 150 population count long ago.

It's simply a fact that if I don't know you or trust you (yet)—regardless of how much DNA we might share, as long as I'm not causing harm—you have zero right to impose on my selection of who joins my collective.