While we keep seeing individuals and groups as two separate things, the libertarians will win. They’re one…

While we keep seeing individuals and groups as two separate things, the libertarians will win. They’re one thing. Groups are made of individuals, individuals exist only because of groups. Groups are one ‘phase’ of individual life. Like water has solid, liquid and gas phases. /1

We create groups to allow us to be individuals, to delegate effort and free up space and time. It’s all individuals, acting sometimes individually (one ‘phase’), and sometimes collectively. We all know this, we’re in clubs and other groups. /2

We know we’re an individual when we’re in those groups. But also that some of our effort when in those groups is loaned to the group, for collective reasons. It makes life better and easier for us and everybody else in the group. /3

If I help out at the local netball club, I’m still the individual doing individual things elsewhere in my life. Nobody is oppressing me, I choose to do this because it enriches my life, as an individual. Even when working with the club, I’m still an individual. /4

Again, individual and group are different social ‘phases’, in the physical science sense of different ways the same entity behaves, at the same time. Not opposing forces, that’s nonsensical. Another example, renewable energy. I have solar panels. They help me, individually. /5

They wiped out my power bills. But I also export some of the energy, to the grid, for others. The panels allow me to be individual and collective, at the same time. There’s no binary here. The binary is a debating trick from politics, not a reality. To define two teams. /end