Individual vs Collective Social Systems - Zac

I share and wanted to extend Tim's concerns about collectivism and communitarianism, although I would add that the GDP case Tim analyzes seems to be more of a problem of capitalist pressures to squeeze efficiency through constant improvement, then a problem unique to collective societies.

Specifically Anderson on pg. 28 gives Sen's example that Indian women concieve as themselves as more members of their families than as individual selves. This is replicated in the US, where even progressive families typically place a majority of child care burdens on women. Rather then the decisions of individuals or individual families, these decisions seem indicative of broader collective communities, which inform discriminatory social norms. 

Unfortunately, I fear Individualism simply adopts an intentional ideological blindness to the communities and social structures around a person, and does little to change their communally determined social condition, i.e. access to child care. To be unable to ask "What should we do?" is to lack empathy and solely pursue self-interest, which I shall not recap the problems with. Furthermore, I find my mind called to Deleuze and Guattari's work Anti-Oedipus in which they define micro-fascism as a method by which capitalism through individualism creates and identifies social categories or groups that the individual constructs their identity by identifying with those groups. A simple example being a buzzfeed quiz which says what type of jeans are you - by taking and investing in the quiz, you are categorized into a new identity group, which now becomes part of your identity: race, gender, PPE major, blue jeans personality, Aries sun...etc. 

To rope this back in, it seems like collective identity systems have an issue where they erase individuals identities and desires, often marginalized persons, for some authority's goal. Alternatively individualistic identity systems seem to encourage the individual defining their identities based on characteristics, which are both outside of their control, and define and staticize what they could be or do i.e. A. you are blue jeans and will forever be blue jeans and B. as a blue jeans personality you will like X, and get along with other blue jeans personalities, but hate green jeans. 

To conclude, I don't know how to balance collective vs individualistic identity/group systems. I guess since everything seems bad because it moves towards control over persons/authoritarianism, and the hope is for real human emancipation. One of my issues with Sen and Anderson's extension is I think they just need to take a few more steps, and they'll be there (re: this weeks tutorial).

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