Evolutionary biologist slays the beast of Individualism
I&#x27;ve never really understood &quot;Individualism.&quot; There don&#x27;t seem to be any circumstances in which &quot;Individualism&quot; is superior to &quot;Cooperation&quot; or &quot;Collectivism&quot; (and that in of itself I believe is a false dichotomy to begin with as there are situations in which individualism is necessary to maintain overall collectivism) unless you ignore the fact that the individual is benefiting from past &quot;Collectivist&quot; actions.<p>Rand&#x27;s Objectivism is not mutually exclusive with Collectivist, nor is it always necessarily Individualist.<p>Personally I believe individuals are becoming more and more far removed from the benefits of &quot;Collectivism&quot; and therefore are wrongly believing their (in)abilities are a result of their actions solely. Your own actions, of course, have an effect on your life, but we don&#x27;t live in a vacuum.<p>If we collectively pollute the planet and it turns out that pollution makes it harder for children to learn, is it the child&#x27;s fault for not learning properly or <i>our</i> fault for creating such conditions? Of course, the answer is it&#x27;s a little of both.