“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

Ayn Rand

The Truth is a Paradox.

This is The Vikid Truth.

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We experience the world as individuals. As of this moment, I sit in hotel room in Hyderabad, alone, opposable fingers on the keyboard, experiencing life from my own perspective. Two eyes capturing light, one mind controlling my digits, on my own phone, which is tailored to my individual usage patterns.

On the other side, this massive hotel and everything in it, the plane I came here on, the taxi that picked me up from the airport, the air conditioner keeping things cool in the room and the same phone in my hands, were all built by collections of organized individuals.

This is the collective and if you permit me a rather strained analogy,

The Individual is like a molecule of H2O.

While the Collective is akin to a body of water.

Take the ocean, it has entirely different properties from a molecule of H2O.

In scientific literature this expression of different properties, which is generally not analytically reducible, is called “Emergence”.

Something emerges from the collective which cannot be seen or extrapolated from when examining its individual components.

A single dog or a pack of dogs is another fine example. If you’ve ever been approached by a pack of dogs you will know exactly what I mean.

And thus it occurs with us humans. We experience the world through the perspective of an individual, but the world around us is the result of the collective. And the collective is another beast completely. When we become part of the collective, we in turn become another kind of beast.

So we make a categorical mistake. We look inside, make judgements on what we think is right. We make often make decisions as individuals but we often don’t see it’s actually the perspective of the collective. It’s a type of blindness. You are in the pack, but you think you are autonomous and out of it.

Take immigration…

1 immigrant (Vikid is such an immigrant), may be a throughly good chap. He might even be a Superhero. But 1,000,000 immigrants is another thing all together.

One immigrant blends in. One Million immigrants is a blender. The Wagyu stake and chips becomes mashed-minced meat.

A molecule of H2O has many chemical and physical properties, but the creation of a typhoon is not one of them. A molecule of H2O can’t support sea life either. You can’t drown in it.

Even now, new discoveries are being made about water. In thin layers it forms what is called the Exclusion Zone (EZ). This EZ water has many more magical properties which literally brings us to life when found in our tiniest of capillaries.

Often this change in properties is a function of scale but not only that, it is a change in quality itself.

Which brings us right round to the ideas of Ayn Rand, a philosophy called Objectivism and its focus on the individual. The ideas of Marx, Socialism and Communism. It brings us round to the Enlightenment, the discovery of modern science and the politics of Liberalism.

These ideas are all a study of balance between Individualism and Collectivism and how in Praxis they get implemented.

They are about how power is distributed, how corrections can be made to this power, because it has been found that power concentrates naturally.

Have a look at Elite Theory, which says there’s not much you can do about it. No matter what the system.

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It follows a power law, as do most phenomena in Nature.

It comes down to a serious discussion between Natural Law and Divine Law. Which is nothing more than a disagreement between what “is”, and what “should be”.

It all comes down to Praxis. Which is the study of how thoughts are implemented in practice, through deliberate human action.

Because humans are thinking creatures, who convert ideas to reality. A deliberate activity.

We think as individuals but we also think as a Pack.

Through history, individuals have been seriously punished, excommunicated or killed, for thinking outside the group structure. It is a deep part of our evolutionary psychology.

A significant portion of the population believe that society needs an imposed structure to function properly. That without it there would be chaos.

There are two main camps. The scientific and the religious.

The scientific types want to study nature to maximize “well being” by understanding, developing and implementing logically sound and researched societal rules.

The religious types want to impose established rules given by God, usually written long ago in some book.

Objectivists and other classic liberals believe the Individual ultimately has the right to do anything he wishes with the small proviso that it should not harm other individuals. That society shouldn’t dictate terms.

i.e. the pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness through voluntary cooperation and without aggression, coercion or violence.

Each idea has its advantages and limitations.

Each idea has worked to some extent in the past. And each idea has failed spectacularly also.

Because humans are extremely good at gaming any system. We are experts at breaking the rules and using coercive means when persuasion or deception fails.

The amount of violence being expressed in the world right now is a direct consequence of everything we have spoken about above. Pack behavior, the clash of civilizations, the gaming of systems and rules, chaos and tyranny.

There is but one cure.

To see it for what it is and knowing when to be H20 and when to be water.

And that’s,

The Vikid Truth

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