#covid19 Eventually all debates if they continue return people to first premises of arguments and ideas. In…

#covid19 Eventually all debates if they continue return people to first premises of arguments and ideas. In this case, ideas in health care around individual vs collective have also collided with political ideas in the same area. . /1 https://t.co/6zA4LA1spn

Political libertarians have been the main drag upon worldwide pandemic efforts, but we're also seeing ongoing tensions between public health professionals and physicians, which reduce to the same ideas. Individual vs collective. /2

All of these fields share the idea that there are individuals, and groups/society, and you have different methodologies for dealing with each. At best they suggest some sort of compromise, where individuals sacrifice some freedom for the greater good. /3

What's less studied is that the distinction itself is nonsense. There are no individuals, just as there are no groups. You can't define an individual without using collective elements, just as you can't define a group without using individual elements. /4

Individuals create groups, to empower them as individuals. Groups in turn are nothing but those same individuals, delegating some small part of their agency to the group, for mutual benefit. /5

Nearly all of the daily Left v Right rivalry is arguments over a fiction. Individuals don't exist without groups, groups don't exist without individuals. It's not two things, it's one thing. Just as material, like water, can exist in different phases (solid, liquid, gas).../6

...individuals are one phase of human life, groups another. Made of the same thing, agencies with shifting scale, at one moment you might be alone in your yard, the next part of a global Twitter conversation. It's all you, at different scales. /end