Conventional thinking has overemphasized and over-stretched the
collective perspective. Meanwhile, I think certain approaches to
libertarianism have over-emphasized an individual or
individualist perspective—or at least have a bad reputation for
seeming to. Calling this "atomized" individualism is certainly a
rhetorical move on the part of collectivism, but it might also
contain some useful lesson. Over-emphasizing the individual
perspective probably came as an understandable reaction to the
absurd overreaching of collectivist thinking, in which the
"mere" individual is to vanish in the great tide of the
collective. Moreover, the undertone is usually not far away that
if the "mere" individual does not cooperate, force will be
applied. The great blind spot of collectivism is that such force
can only ever actually be applied by other acting individuals
wielding such force (whether they work for the state or such
does not alter this fact). In contrast to all of this, what is
needed is the ability to use both ind