funny how “communal” is such a feel-good word and individualism is so shat upon.
like
individualism is the right to tell your community’s norms to go fuck themselves. it’s where you get to declare, “you don’t get to have a say in what i do or who i am or how i present myself.”
it’s the ultimate refuge for weirdoes and freaks.
if you care about the kinds of people that are widely and unfairly reviled, some within their society, some within the very home in which they were raised or are forced to live, i really, truly don’t get this absolute elevation of the communal and denigration of the individual.
in an individualistic society, an outcast might rightly fear their neighbors. in a communal one, the outcast fears the collective.
i have no doubt about which one i’m personally more scared of.
I get the feeling that we don’t hang around the same types of people.
(In my circles, “individualism” has an unmitigatedly positive connotation, and “communal” or especially “collective” has a very negative connotation.)
I love communal things, but I definitely love them with the understanding that they’re super voluntary and I can just fuck off elsewhere if the community decides to do things I don’t like.
Shieldfoss 