Parodites wrote:"We're dealing with the smallest sorts of things we can perceive, we don't possess the instruments capable of distinguishing them, yet, but I suspect we will some day."
What does it mean to "see" something for example, either with your own eyes or through a camera? It means to bounce a photon off an object and capture it via reflection. Well quantum particles are so small and fragile that the photon actually fucks them up, and distorts or destroys them. So we can't measure them for that reason. There is nothing magical or spooky about it.
My point wasn't that there's something spooky going on, but that types of subatomic particles, like electrons, neutrons, protons and photons probably only appear to be exactly the same, cookie cutter like, because our instruments are presently too blunt to detect variation between and within them, just as the surface of a table may appear smooth to the naked eye, but under a microscope we see cracks, crevices, peaks, valleys, and life forms, all manner of variation.
They're probably immensely complex, worlds unto themselves, worlds within worlds, but they're at the periphery of what we can presently perceive, so they appear simple and indistinct.
My larger point is that particles, parts, simplicity, solidity and stability, yang if you will, isn't more real than waves, wholes, complexity, unsolidity and instability, yin (similarly the mind isn't a by-product of the brain or vice versa, they're different names and ways of apprehending the same thing).
Examine the former carefully and you will find some of the latter and vice versa.
But the atomist/individualist only sees things in terms of units, compartmentally.
Atomism/Individualism doesn't encompass holism/collectivism, anymore than holism/collectivism encompasses atomism/individualism, you have to harmonize the two, if you're to attain the golden mean, which's imperative.
Moderation in virtually all things, nothing in excess or deficiency, metaphysically or socially.
But balance isn't uniform, it somewhat varies because situations do.
There's a need for both generalization, and particularization.
There's no such thing as perfect balance, but we can improve.
Individualism doesn't encompass the insights of conservative (greater group dominates), progressive (lesser groups dominate) or other forms of (collaborative, separative, unitive, etcetera) collectivism, all by itself, it's their negation.
Agency isn't better at explaining variation in human behavior than biological and cultural determinism on the right hand, or discrimination and the environment on the left.
There're different forms of individualism too, for example is intellectual property a legitimate form of property?
Or is something yours, just because you pay taxes on it?
What if you're not physically occupying or using it?
What if you never have, never will or can't physically occupy or use it?
Is government and the commons legitimate?
Where does the self and its property end and otherness begin?
Can you be violated by another's pollution, pollutants in the air, water and soil, noise pollution?
What're we to do with children and other sentient species?
Can you sell yourself into serfdom or slavery?
Are building codes necessary?
Buyer beware?
Individualism is far from settled, it's not this monolithic, middle ground between different forms of collectivism.
