At bottom, there are too many people. The more people, the more craving for individuality and individual integrity, but the less space for both. Surrendering to the collective is the path of less resistance; i.e., less work. Judging from your picture, you (and I) grew up in a world of about 1.5 billion people; now there are 7 billion. Our collective success is destroying the possibility of becoming an heroic, integritous individual because our institutions — govts, corps, military enforcers, scientific innovators, etc — have to run harder just to keep in place. Your voice is only 1/7,000,000,000th. In the deteriorating west, easy sex, easy food, easy entertainment is much, much more enticing than the integrity of self-confrontation, actually learning something, and doing something that’s worth it. In the end, Aristotle will have been shown to be wrong: people DON’T want to know. Darwin knew that a species’ success could be its undoing.
