Tag Archives: individual standards vs collective standards

The Rules to Which we are Obligated are Always a Function of the Individual, So Let’s Stop Obligating People

I submit that we are so concerned and obsessed with the idea that people must do this and must not do that according to the dictates of those in “authority”, or those “outside of us”, that we fail to understand and/or realize that before these behavioral (or intellectual or moral) demands can become a burden for collective humanity, someone must have decided for themselves, alone, what must and what must not be done. That is, only when an individual decides how life must be lived can these decisions become a collective obligation.

Therefore the real question is not: what things must or must not be done? But rather, since all behavioral or intellectual or moral standards are at root a function of the individual and his own moral and intellectual agency, by what assumption(s) and what rationale(s) do we assume that the right of one individual to decide for himself what he must or must not do does not also and necessarily apply to all?