A few really interesting posts on individualism across the blogsphere this week. The first two are from MoBlo, my brother's blog. (here and here) He's addressing individuality in the more social sense. He gets at how people who attempt to be individualistic tend to go about it in a rather conformist way. Sort of how all the kids with tats and tattered jeans all dress the same way. Same with the goths, and dozens of other groups all expressing their individuality. Chris takes as his starting off point the book I'm Special by Hal Niedzviecki and gets into some very interesting comments. My favorite quote from his comments:
. . .the rebel here isn't out for independence, they are out for fascism where they become themselves by getting others to support their endeavor. The weaker they are, they more they need society to change to support them. In this sense the new individual is like those guided clients on Everest. They want to be able to say they did a hard mountain, but they want the consequences that define it as such minimized for their window of opportunity.
For a rather different take on individualism and individuality consider Richard's discussion at Philosophy Etc., one of my favorite blogs. In order, his three posts are "Personal Identity", "Vague Identities" and "A Self Divided". The latter post is one of my favorites since it brings up one of the many experiments on the brain that pose such interesting problems for naive views of self or mind. Consider a person with the two hemispheres of the brain divided. According to most evidence this actually divides the self and provides two separate divided streams of consciousness. This has all sorts of implications and one day I really must blog on some of the interesting religious questions this raises for Mormons. Anyway, I want to blog on some of Richard's points this week. We'll see if I can find the time to do so.
Just a quick note, Brandon over at Siris has up a response to Richard's post on individuality.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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Blogged by Clark Goble