The Pros And Cons

 What are the pros and cons to group-living and individual-living?

  First, let me define terms.

Group-living is that primary social mode of living where, familially, socially and at work, one either spends more time with and willingly spends more time with or is physically, psychologically, electronically, and emotionally connected to others, more than spending time alone with oneself. Of course, the asocial mode of individual-living is secondary in the lives of each group-liver, whether that quality and quantity of time spent alone is intentional, accidental or just necessary--for example one drives to work alone or may sleep alone in a one-bedroom apartment.

Individual-living is that primary but asocial mode of living where, familially, socially and at work, one either spends more time or willing spends more time apart or is physically, psychologically, electronically and emotionally divorced from others, spending more time alone than with others.  Of course, the social mode of living is secondary in the lives of each individual-liver, whether that quality and quantity of time spent with others is intentional, accidental, a mere habit, or necessitated by factory work or riding a commuter train home from work or shopping.

In general, even an individualistic people like American are in a country where group-living is the norm and individual-living a atypical. Also, the categories are vague and deliberately fluid, because the degree, to which each person elects to group-live versus individual-live or the other way around--this proportion varies for each citizen. And at various times in life, one is more group-oriented (children) and more individual-living as one ages.

And, one can artificially adjust the degree to which one group-lives or individual-lives by consciously making the adjustment, as intentionally and artificially as setting out to diet and lose weight.

These lists are not exhaustive, but what now occurs to me.

What are the advantages to group-living?

1. People are herd-creatures by instinct, so group-living instinctively seems appropriate.

2. There is strength in numbers.

3. Groupists are less lonely.

4. Group-living is emotionally satisfying, and pleasurable.

5. Life is automatically meaningful. One just adopts the group customs.

6. Humans suffer naturally from low self-esteem, and group-living gives people approval, social ranking, a enjoyable level of popularity all make one feel okay most of the time.

7. If one works, is basically decent, moral, and sane, then one is ordinarily well within side the group's norms for behavior, and such conformity guarantees group-approval and a sense of guaranteed belonging.

8. God's call to each person to be exceptional can be suppressed in group-living rather effectively. The individual lives with so many layers of lies and illusions surrounding her that it is difficult or impossible for truth to penetrate such a protective hide of consciousness.

9. To the degree that people possess moral sense and feel sympathy towards others, joiners may care for the less fortunate among them, and unite to complete huge projects. At its best, group-living accentuates cooperation and minimizes competition among insiders.

10. When people run in packs, they feel powerful as a unit, and they are. Each member is a nonentity, but gains pride and the group power built on personal powerlessness of its faithful members, by serving their pack faithfully, even willing to die for their pack and its ideology.  What irks mob members is not the sins they commit, but how unbearable they find being weak, and as a unit they wield power, and each member identifies with that status and soaks it up.

What are the disadvantages of group-living?

1. To the degree that the culture rewards group-living for its people, altruistic, law-of-the-jungle fighting for mates, power, position, and one's share of the pie, is maximized, as ruthlessness, lying, dishonesty and selfishness are daily practiced, even enjoyed.

2. God calls each of us to live as exceptional individuals. To the degree that each group-liver wields free will, then he will be punished in this world and in the next for disobeying and defying God.

3. The joiner is deprived of chances to develop her personality, to think and learn to think, to make up her own mind, to do her own thinking, to strike out on her own, to test her talents against the hostile world, to live as an independent person.

4. Jordan Peterson is completely dismissive of self-esteem worries--as are other conservatives like Dennis Prager--but I like this psychology. We are naturally depraved, which means we mostly do not like ourselves and loathe ourselves. When one hates oneself, one is filled with anger, bitterness, and ineradicable unhappiness, and that drives one to act out this resentment in the world to gain ineffective but short-lived relief by attacking the self and others verbally, emotionally, sometimes physically or sexually in various sadistic and masochistic roles of misbehavior. I recommend individual-living wherein one self-realizes and is close to God and the Good Spirits in a mood of joy, love, optimism, inner peace, merited self-respect based on performance, and healthy self-esteem rooted in self-discipline.

5. Peterson wants us to live meaningful lives by taking responsibility for ourselves and all that we do. Self-realizing in the asocial mode of individual living is the best way to lead a meaningful life.

6. Individual-living can leave one depressed and horrified by encountering Being itself, but, if one gains courage and a love of embracing the bracing truth, then there is a deep emotional reward of satisfaction and accomplishment that one no longer runs away from one's existential duty and divine destiny.

7. Individual-living can be quite lonely and there is nothing more terrifying, punitive and empty to most people, but if one gives it a go, and maverizes and learns to live peacefully and calmly with the isolated self while maverizing and serving God, then divine energy entering one's soul and whole person will do much to end feelings of loneliness.

8. For most people individual-living is not natural, but the asocial mode of living can be taught as an ethical mode of living, taught like other virtuous habits practiced until they become second nature for the good adult. Even those that are nature or nurture prefer to live alone, individual-living as an individuator is a mode of living that they will have to acquire.

9. The person alone is vulnerable, but a society of millions of people that individual-live but cooperate via their anarchist-canton constitutional republic would be a most powerful group of people to attack or make war on.

10. One disadvantage to individual-living is that the loner may be overwhelmed by mobs around him as they denigrate his social ranking, ostracize him, attack him, thwart his career, isolate his friends from him and even plot to kill him.

What are the advantages to individual-living?

1. When the individual learns to individual-live, he is defying his natural inclination, but the reward is that he becomes better, smarter, and more alive, a living angel.

2. There is great strength in being alone. He must rely on himself to make it. There is no one (the Good Spirits are there of course) to lean on. He will learn to be smart, tough, creative, and versatile, or he will perish. He must swim or sink, and most of the time he will prevail and flourish because he did not previously understand how resourceful he could be if he pushed himself, really extended his range.

3. Once he maverizes, coming to know God, being, others and reality without pretense, objections, or rationalizations, he will be at the point where he accepts the world as it is, and then decides what to tolerate as it is and to change what is wicked or unworkable. He will not be lonely because God, truth and love are so much a part of his heightened sense of self.

4. Emotionally, at first, he will be horrified and manic, but, with time and self-training, he will learn to temper passions and feelings, so that he feels, but his sentiments do not rule him. That state of existence should be emotionally satisfying.

5. The Father and Mother are Individuators, and we are made in their image and likeness. As we love, grow, maverize and create, our lives will be suffused with purpose and incomparable meaning.

6. As an individuator and an individual-liver, he will learn to be good morally and spiritually as he loves himself and others in an enlightened way. His self-esteem will be high without becoming vain, pretentious, smug, or self-obsessed.

7. As more and more adults, in the future decide to individual-live as their primary social mode, then joining or not joining, affiliating or not, or to whatever degree preferred will not be a socializing burden or impediment. If the individuating loner is good and kind, she should be popular and welcome in most group settings, and her herding instinct drive will thus be met and nourished without her abandoning the preferred way to live.

8. Once she is individual-living, living a life of lies and self-deception become almost impossible to sustain as repeated interaction with the Good Spirits compels one to own the truth.

9. No decent, sensible, ethical individuator will ever forsake the obligation to deprive those in real need from receiving charity. His love of others will include his encouraging them to bootstrap themselves into a position of prosperity, self-development, and self-reliance to the degree that they in terms of ability, sanity and competence are able to fend for themselves. Each person nees liberty, means and power to maverize.

10. As the joiners in a pack revel in its power of powerlessness and enjoy their pride of tribalism, the power of self-empowerment and pride of personal powerfulness are abandon, and these latter traits belong to the followers of God. Tribalists do not belong in heaven.

What are the disadvantages to individual -living?

1. His natural herding instinct is repressed, and he must do what he does not innately prefer.

2. He is isolated, so he does not easily feel safe and protected by lots of others around him. He is exposed.

3. His loneliness is so overwhelming that it staggers him. He wants to die, to go insane, to suffer no more. Meeting God and Being face to face is a brutal awakening and he has to be made of some sturdy stuff to get over the initial introduction.

4. Individual-living is extremely difficult and painful, but afterwhile, once she is used to so living, her pain has become an intellectual pleasure for her, so she now enjoys how she lives and is proud of what she has done.

5.  She must engineer a framework of meaning for herself to work and live in, and, if she fails, she turns to Satan or goes mad, or hides inside some cult.  If she survives, her meaning will sustain her through anything new that crops up.

6. If she tries and makes it as a maverizer, her self-esteem will be solid, high, and genuine, but the gaining of it was not automatic nor for certain, and it may require 15 to 20 years for her to reach the point that she is comfortable with herself and whom she has become.

7. Nothing scares people more than being deprived of peer approval and that warm sense of belonging. We are emotional creatures and the groupist feeling of warmth is the most powerful of motivator for humans. Both Satan, Lera and the Evil Spirits manipulate this natural herding impulse in humans to bind these poor souls to the Dark Side. If humans journey over to the Light Side, maverize, individual-live and serve God and the Good Spirits, the rejection and punished from former group members comes crashing down on these new nonconformists, and most timid groupists are unable to non-conform to such cruel, powerful pressure: they just surrender and stay members of the pack.

8. The individual-liver or loner is now without excuses. If she makes it, the awards, accolades, and rewards are hers, and will be given her. If she fails, lapses, backslides or goofs up her assignments, the blame and assignation of being a failure will be promptly assigned to her. She cannot run or hide from what she is or is not, or what she has done or not done.

9. As she grows in the asocial mode of existence, her love of self will grow and grow. The more she loves herself, the more she will love God, the Good Spirits, other people and being itself.

10. As an individuator and individual-liver, the citizen has the chance to make the world better and no longer make it worse, He replaces the groupist pride of powerless with person pride of powerfulness, and this real pride allows him to forego scheming to erect a class system with those above that he kowtows to, and those below that are to bend a knee to him.