Collectivism, Individualism, and the Environment.
Are we a collective or atomized individuals? This is one of the central dividing lines for all human worldviews. In the past, the collectivist mindset held sway. Tribes, kingdoms, races were seen as a whole, with people merely being parts of the collective that could be sacrificed or punished to serve the whole. At the extreme end if members of one tribe killed one member of another, it could very easily lead to vengeance being taken on the entire tribe. Outside of one’s tribe, personal responsibility did not exist, the responsibility was collective. The same mindset is carried into today in the form of communism in which all the citizens of a given country are treated as nearly indistinguishable parts of the whole.
In more recent history, with the rise of republican and democratic governments, following in the wake of the Reformation, a more individualist philosophy has arisen, which at its extreme advocates for complete selfishness and acting without any sense of obligation to anything or anyone else.
What does any of this have to do with the environment? Both outlooks create bad outcomes for people and for the environment in which we live. Most people will readily agree that the individualist mindset hasn’t been great for the world. It’s hard to swing a keyboard without hitting pictures of animals swimming in oil or of massive landfills bursting at the seams with plastic. It’s easy to see how one can draw a line from that through consumerism and to the short term thinking that results from the idea that I’m an individual and I can do what I want. People in the future can figure out how to deal with future problems. But what about collectivism? How is that bad for the environment?
That has to be addressed since there is a fresh drive back to that mindset. Given the weaknesses and excesses of extreme individualism, it might make sense to go back to collectivism. After all, all the pollution didn’t start until individualism came along. Right? Wrong. Fact is, when you take on a collectivist mindset, the tendency is to push responsibility for things onto others. Whether you just assume someone else will pick up that trash, or you count on the government to do what needs to be done, the point is, you aren’t doing anything yourself. If things go poorly, it’s almost inevitable that people will just shrug because it’s all out of their control anyway. And in a socialist society, it is. If you want proof, look at pictures of the environmental devastation that was revealed in Eastern Europe when the Iron Curtain fell.
So, what is the answer? What if I told you the answer lies where Aristotle always said virtue was, in the middle? In realizing that we are part of a collective in the sense we are all living on the same blue green jewel hurtling through the void we realize that we are connected, that there is a greater whole. In recognizing each other and ourselves as individuals within that collective we take on responsibility for our own actions. We realize that for the collective to be healthy, we have to individually make good choices for ourselves because our choices can affect many others. Instead of shrugging at the litter, you deal with it. Instead of waiting for the government or some organization to do something about the plastic in the ocean, you buy in bulk and so use less plastic.
It almost seems too simple doesn’t it? The thing is, people tend to be drawn to one extreme or the other, to go all in until the damage is done. Then the pendulum swings back and the cycle continues. Over and over and over.
One thing you can do in addition to the simple little everyday things like just using less junk is contributing your individual data through TARTLE. That allows organizations to analyze it and determine consumption habits and what sort of products, policies, and services people are looking for as well as get suggestions on how those organizations can themselves do better to help protect the world we are all a part of.
What’s your data worth?
Outside of one’s tribe, personal responsibility did not exist, the responsibility was collective. The same mindset is carried into today in the form of communism in which all the citizens of a given country are treated as nearly indistinguishable parts of the whole.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to TARTLE Cast with your host Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanities gets into the future and source data defines the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:24):
Hello, everyone. Welcome to TARTLE Cast. Good morning. Good morning. If you are watching us in the studio here, you will notice that we have the earth up on the screen and we here at TARTLE always drive back to this idea is that, it's your world. You've all seen the statement, "It's your world. I'm just living in it."
Jason Rigby (00:47):
Yes. Yeah, yeah. You remember the '80s movies? Well, you, you probably weren't born then Alex, but there was these 1980 movies that were high school and they were really cool and had Molly Ringwald and they were just-
Alexander McCaig (01:00):
Breakfast Club.
Jason Rigby (01:01):
Stuff like that. Yeah. And it was just the whole idea was, it's my world. Screw the rules, screw everything. This is my, and I know that's adolescence and growing up and understanding you becoming, there's a metaphor for that, you becoming an adult, but in going to that ritualistic process of having the ability to be able to perceive and be self-aware and all that, but-
Alexander McCaig (01:26):
Puberty. Your body puberty, and mind.
Jason Rigby (01:29):
Yeah, exactly. But whenever I look in, because we can go selfish when we say, "Your world." Or we can look at it and say, "Your world," and now I'm filling a responsibility of service.
Alexander McCaig (01:44):
Yeah. We want to flip the perspective on what we talk about with your world. We have all seen, all of us, that in that concept of your world, ego first, materialism, all these things have created a lot of problems. This idea of that we have our own isolated identities, and we're so separate from one another, that this fundamental concept of our view and our interaction with one another has created a world of limitation and also a world of disparity, disunity, detriment, war, famine, all the things of the like. But that definition of how we even looked at it in terms of the '80s and bringing that to now, and this even ideas of the American dream and then the rest of the world chases that idea because we post up in the limelight because we're these, the king of marketing, essentially in media. That paints this very selfish picture for what's going on here.
Alexander McCaig (02:50):
And it's been detrimental to our mind our evolutionary development of global consciousness. And it's also harming that planet. So at TARTLE, when we look at this message and this idea of, "Your world," it's not the delivering the message of your world to say, "Oh, it's just about the ego." No, it's about your responsibility of this world. It's the one that you live in yourself, this is my personality, this is my identification of me, but it's also your world in the totality of the macro sense of everything, how you identify and how you interact with that full world.
Alexander McCaig (03:29):
So when you look at that, how that's baked in, it's no longer just about me. It can't be any more. That's driven us to the brink of oblivion, our climate, species going extinct, not having enough food for certain people in specific areas, that shouldn't be like that anymore. That should be that wake up call for your world. And understand that your future is going to be dependent on the health of your world. The one within your mind, the one you interact with in your local town, and all the other things that are interconnected throughout this globe, in it's seven and a half billion people that are indirectly affecting one another. So your world needs to be a focus in a more holistic, inclusive sense rather than one that is very separative and very ego-driven.
Jason Rigby (04:21):
Yeah. Whenever I hear, "Your world," I'm always amazed, especially those of us that live, whether we live in Europe, or we live in United States or Canada, in these, Australia maybe, even parts of Australia where we're so privileged. And we were born into this and we go on Netflix and we watch this documentary and we see this guy and he's in the rainforest. And he decides to put his saw down. And he's like, "I'm not chopping the rain forest down anymore." And we applaud, we sit on our comfy couches, eating our bowl of frosted flakes and we just applaud. And even some of us may shed a tear and we're like, "You go guy, you do awesome, great job. I'm glad you put the saw down. You're not hitting the rain forest. That's what needs to happen in this world." And then we turn around and we hop on Amazon, or we go to Walmart or whatever, and we purchase the same shit that's causing them to have to go out there with the saw. It is our responsibility. We're the ones that's consuming this material.
Alexander McCaig (05:22):
I bought a $3,000 couch from Crate and Barrel. And it's got teakwood from some Amazonian rainforest, stuffed with the fur of a tiger, human skin as the leather. You know what I mean?
Jason Rigby (05:37):
Yeah. But then it's like, "Well, they haven't evolved completely yet." It's the us, versus them. We have, they need to get their act together. No, that's not, this is an equal playing field. The responsibility of this globe lies on every single one us.
Alexander McCaig (05:57):
Right. And just because you may sit in a country, that's more developed it doesn't exclude you from responsibility of how you interact.
Jason Rigby (06:05):
A hundred percent.
Alexander McCaig (06:06):
Just because you have access to more things. And there might be a perception that you're eco-friendly, that doesn't mean like, "Oh, I can spend more now."
Jason Rigby (06:15):
It's almost like that idea. It's like, you're poor and then when you start to make money, you're like, "Oh, I can now better my lifestyle. I can do. I can," now I have this idea that I'm wealthier so now I should be consuming more. It's okay to consume more.
Alexander McCaig (06:30):
But with more privilege comes a greater responsibility.
Jason Rigby (06:32):
How many times, you're saying, "More power, responsibilities," it's like the Superman quote.
Alexander McCaig (06:36):
Yes, yes, exactly.
Jason Rigby (06:39):
This is not science fiction. This is not a fucking comic book. All right. This is your world with human lives dependent on it. Think about how shook people are when they see a dead body at a funeral. They've never seen a dead body in their entire life.
Alexander McCaig (06:53):
Right.
Jason Rigby (06:54):
Okay. What happens when 275,000 people die at once during a tsunami? Do you know what a pile of 275,000 bodies looks like? No, you don't, but I can tell you right then, it would change your entire perspective on life, how you treat others and how you treat this planet. Because you realize, because you bought that couch because you over-consumed, your lack of respect and responsibility for your world has in some crazy dimensional, interconnected effect have added to the instability of the climate that is creating tsunamis or typhoons or whatever it might be of the like.
Jason Rigby (07:32):
If you find comfort somewhere, it has to be balanced by discomfort. So realize where that might be. And look at those choices to say, "I may have a gain here for me, but what's on the other side of it." Don't just look about you. It is your world. Yes, it is. It's your own life to live.
Alexander McCaig (07:50):
What people don't realize is it's all interlinked and chained together. What happens in Indonesia is going to affect Canada. You may sit there in your little bubble because that's what we sit in these little beautiful comfort bubbles of consumerism. You may sit in that little comfort bubble, and then you have the ability to be able to spherically look at everything all around you. But at the end of the day, the decisions that you make now, especially here in the United States, the amount that we consume, we're blaming China and India for pollution. And then how much food waste are we throwing away in restaurants?
Jason Rigby (08:25):
How many products are you buying from Walmart that were made in China?
Alexander McCaig (08:28):
Exactly.
Jason Rigby (08:29):
Are you kidding me? How many of your spices you're cooking your food with are imported from India. Just so you can get that little, stupid little spice jar. Okay. At Trader Joe's sitting there on a shelf and you can feel good about buying that saffron.
Alexander McCaig (08:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Rigby (08:48):
Think about the amount of human effort and tax, just to get that thing shipped from India, which is a country, by the way, you've never been to, because it's too expensive for you to fly over there. Or you don't have the time to travel there. A piece of saffron made it over here for your convenience.
Alexander McCaig (09:02):
For five bucks.
Jason Rigby (09:04):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (09:06):
So how did it become so cheap?
Jason Rigby (09:07):
So how did it become so cheap? Right.
Alexander McCaig (09:09):
Considering you take that and go all the way over here.
Jason Rigby (09:12):
Because our idea of our world is that we have become so economically efficient. That it's phenomenal, but we never looked at what costs to that efficiency?
Alexander McCaig (09:23):
What costs to the environment?
Jason Rigby (09:24):
Yeah.
Alexander McCaig (09:24):
And what costs to humanity?
Jason Rigby (09:26):
Yeah. And people have a hard time looking at what's going to happen tomorrow for them. And then when we try to talk about your world and that world, 40, 50, 60, 70 years from now, it seems so out of the frame of reference, but it's not. You got to understand that the choices you make now for your world and how you look at your world, create a stream of cause and effect, a line of probabilities. And you're driving it towards that brink of oblivion with our probabilities. But we ignore it because we don't bring that future looking frame of reference into play. We don't actually recognize the cause and effect of what we're doing, the choices we're making.
Jason Rigby (10:04):
So when we look at something, when I talk about your world and how our company is describing your world, we are the masters of our own problems. We have created these things. We have defined what humanity has looked like, but we defined it without balance. So when you talk about your world, it can't just be about you anymore. Everything is too instructively interlinked. So you need to look at your world, in the fact of me, what I do and how that also affects everybody else, the planet, the species.
Jason Rigby (10:34):
When I take a breath of air, okay, I'm going to pull it in. This air is currently around me in my atmosphere. And I'm going to let that breath go out. Carbon dioxide, being released, other gases that just sit in this little local area that carbon dioxide can go anywhere across the globe. This whole system is interlinked. Just in the sense of your breath. I don't even have to get into thoughts or you purchasing an item, but realize that every breath of air you intake is also shared by seven and a half billion people, think about that. Really ruminate on that thought.
Jason Rigby (11:11):
And if you can see the depth and the value in that type of thinking, that will change how you make your choices and how you feel about your future and how you actually want to respect your world, your planet, because yes, it is your world and I am living in it, but it's also my world too. So let's look at that balance together, but not as separate identities, but one as a unified identity. We're human beings, recognize the species we have wiped out. 99% of all species that have ever touched this planet have gone extinct. You give it enough time it's gone.
Jason Rigby (11:44):
What do you think you're special? This is not a function of being special. It's about a preservation of life. These comforts and enjoyments that you feel now in your world will cease to exist. They'll cease to exist for your children. Those beautiful blue skies, you won't see those anymore. And this is not a function of negativity, this is a function of realism for what your future will look like because of these short-sighted choices you're making at this very moment.
Jason Rigby (12:09):
So when we talk about your world and the problems we have created together, collectively, we need to solve them collectively. If there's a tool to come out and solve that, to talk about those thoughts, choices, behaviors, those things that have driven us to that brink of oblivion, let's solve it with that data. Let's come together in a unified means as a collective of human beings, regardless of how we look, regardless of how we think and look to solve our future.
Alexander McCaig (12:35):
So we have seven and a half billion people on this planet.
Jason Rigby (12:40):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (12:41):
Why is it their responsibility, all seven and a half billion, regardless of what country you're from, where you're at, why is it their responsibility to sign up at TARTLE?
Jason Rigby (12:51):
It's your responsibility to sign up at TARTLE because it's everyone's responsibility to support this system that supports us, simple as that. If you want to support the earth, because it gives you your food, gives you your opportunity, it gives you a choice. It gives you the landmass you want to walk upon before it becomes flooded. It's your responsibility to then make sure that you preserve that thing, to be a steward of this planet. Because without that stewardship, individually and collectively, we'll never be able to achieve a sound bright, beautiful unifying harmonious future that we should have.
Jason Rigby (13:26):
There's no reason we can't have something like that, but it's our responsibility to make that choice and to take that step, to take that choice, it's to sign up on that marketplace, to accumulate that data and all of these things that we're doing, and then share that with others. Through that sharing, through that open dialogue, through that uplifting of all people, that is what is going to preserve the future of our species. And that's an important thing. It's not going to be space travel for us, not leaving this world behind, but fixing the thing that we have absolutely abused. So let's invert that abuse and turn it into something that we can all applaud ourselves for. That's why you need to sign up on TARTLE.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Thank you for listening to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path. What's your data worth?
