“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself,” said Oscar Wilde.
Here’s hoping you’ll afford me the same right as I enquire into what best serves the common good—group-think or individualism?” About which Wilde had plenty to say:
“Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force,” he writes in his 1891 essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism.
Wilde was a huge fan of Socialism as a system to alleviate suffering. Not such a fan of authority, though. But the more cruel the tyranny the better. Why? Because it would “encourage the spirit of Individualism that would arise to rebel and quash the tyranny.”
Just the spirit we need today. To push back against increasingly popular notions of a global government that would discredit Individualism as a selfish act.
In defense of Individualism, I turn to…
- Oscar Wilde and
- Nikos Kazantzakis
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“A disturbing and disintegrating force—therein lies Individualism’s immense value,” Wilde says. “Because what Individualism seeks to disturb is the threat of man being reduced to the level of a machine.”
And yet, increasingly, we hear people call it selfish to question the majority opinion.
Wilde questions that notion. “Selfishness is not living as one wishes. On the contrary, selfishness insists that others live as I live. And un-selfishness is leaving other people alone.
“Selfishness mandates conformity, while un-selfishness accepts infinite variety, sees it as a delightful thing.”
Is it selfish to think for oneself, Wilde asks rhetorically. Obviously not. What about insisting that your neighbour think like you do? Obviously, yes, that is utterlyl selfish.
“The person who does not think for themselves does not think at all,” says Wilde.
Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957)
Nikos Kazantzakis, the Greek author and atheist, was likewise in love with socialist ideals. Until he realized that a level playing field might cause one to miss the plot of life. Kazantzakis suggested as much through his literary hero, Zorba the Greek, who famously asserted: Life is trouble!
Kazantzakis tried on every religion and philosophy—from Christianity to Nietzsche’s nihilism to Beat philosophy and Buddhism and on to Bolshevism and back to Christian mysticism. He concluded that:
“It isn’t to a person’s advantage that Life should be comfortable or fair. The Muse most worth of Man is Difficulty.”
Difficulty—not security or fairness—drives us to achieve. The supreme human achievement, according to Kazantzakis, was to confront the void without panicking. Likewise, the poet John Keats attributed to human greatest that same rare quality of extreme equanimity — the ability to abide in uncertainty without panicking.
Assuming a utopia has as its goal the flowering of human achievement, the level playing field may not actually serve that common good. Not if you believe that our mental and spiritual development ultimately serves us better.
We’ve all experienced it, how difficulty inspires us to dig deep. With enough grit and resolve we might break through the veil of habit and outmoded beliefs that have stood in the way of our greatest happiness.
To Kazantzakis, contentment and security were mortal sins. “If you respect your own soul, you have to spend yourself without stint. You have to be willing at every moment to gamble all you have.”
I’m no Zorba
I’m no Zorba, although I aspire to his independent spirit.
I grew up in a socialist household. My dad was a founding member of the CCF party in Quebec. He hated me saying that socialism shouldn’t be an end in itself but rather the means to a greater end. Like Oscar Wilde’s socialism.
For Wilde, the “soul of man” would be liberated by socialism. In freedom’s wake would arise that disturbing and disintegrating force that rebels against tyranny. And against the selfishness of the you-better-think-like-me-or-else herd mentality.
The Individual strays from the herd. Yes, you’re a Black Sheep, and for that you are attacked. But you gain something by being attacked—you become more completely yourself. People might even call you crazy. If it defines you as an Individual, so be it.
“A person needs a little madness,” said Zorba, “or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.”
We started with Oscar Wilde, let’s finish with him:
“Be yourself! Everyone else is already taken.”
