She built this from scratch!

DSV (7yrs,10mo) model house built from scratch, 1/28/24

She’s got the eye of a cutting edge architect she does…

Stop romanticizing “the masses” and protect individualism. It might be our only bulwark against autocrats.

Countries colored with green have cultures that are more individualistic than the world average. Countries colored in red have relatively collectivistic cultures. Reference:
Beugelsdijk, S., & Welzel, C. (2018). Dimensions and dynamics of national culture: Synthesizing Hofstede with Inglehart. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(10), 1469-1505.

I used to be one of those people who romanticized “the people” and valorized “the masses”.

Now I’m feeling a little different.

I’ve experienced a couple of decades of various masses in various countries increasingly choose nationalism, religious fundamentalism, chauvinism, xenophobia, autocracy, and brute naked majoritarianism when making political choices. All while whipping themselves up into a frothy hysteria just because they’re depressed, miserable, and need someone to blame.

Progressive collectivist ideals have failed to stem the tide of obscurantism and fear that the masses of the world are subjecting themselves to. It takes too long to get a message of social cooperation across the rising cacophony of rightwing fear mongering that appeals to our baser, easier to access emotions. Currently I fear the only bulwark against this rising fascism and misogyny across the globe is the rise of individualism that has, ironically enough, undermined leftist ideals of collectivism.

I don’t think the collective needs as much protection as leaders would have you believe. We are a social species and always will be. Even in this current age of mass disconnection due to digital alienation, people seek community any which way they can access it. We will never lose the social and we will never abandon the collective…for the simple reason that it is impossible to do so.

Humanity doesn’t need to fear individualism. On the contrary, I daresay we should cherish and nurture it. We already know that the individual needs the collective, but it’s important to understand the converse is equally true. The collective needs us to be individuals.

We don’t need saviors, prophets, or great men.

We just need each other as rational, individual beings.

Bangalore is a polluted dump, bursting at the seams.

A gas chamber of a city. This video of Bangalore traffic was shot at 11:36pm on Jan 12 2024 en route to the airport.

I wish I could say that our family vacation to Bangalore, the city of my late childhood, was pleasant.

But it’s hard when all I feel is overwhelming relief being back in Minneapolis, a place I now feel privileged to call home.

The air pollution in Bangalore is so bad, so chokingly bad, that it overwhelmed all the other good parts of the vacation (the best of which was seeing my kids spend quality time with their doting grandparents).

The city itself, I’m sad to say, is a polluted dump.

(Our little Goa sojourn was great though…in no small part due to our respiratory systems getting a much needed break.)

It’s really sad for me to feel a sense of foreboding in visiting Bangalore. Every time I’ve visited, the pollution has gotten worse and my apprehension for future visits has increased as a result. This latest visit has replaced that sense of foreboding with cold blooded fear at the very thought of visiting again.

It is so overwhelmingly bad, I have survivors guilt now…from just “escaping” to a less polluted place. I desperately wish my parents had chosen a less polluted city to retire in.

So it goes.

Bangalore is not a pleasant place to be in right now. One hopes that it turns into a nicer place in the future, but I’m not holding my breath (metaphorically or otherwise).

I’m just glad to call a different city home.

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Broken Shackles Media | Citizen Journalism | Jan 21 2024