Saturday
I would like to add to something I wrote (here) about the benign, volitional collective as opposed to the malign socialist version.
The latter is essentially the ignoble rule of the mob by brute force, though it had a necessary, if primitive, origin.
Man first gathered in order to hunt. Each person had his role to play and conformity to the group’s needs was paramount. This was the origin of tribes – and the origin of conformity to its group worldview and the intolerance of other opinions. Refusal to conform during the hunt was a physical danger to the whole tribe. Hunting something like a Mastodon was a dangerous endeavour requiring both skill and cohesion. I have no doubt that any display of individualism would have been severely punished. Possibly to the degree of banishment from the tribe. That was a death sentence; none could survive on their own in such a harsh environment for long.
It was only with the introduction of money and the subsequent transformation of human groups into much more complex structures – societies – that individualism (and sophisticated language) could emerge. A tribe eschews individual thoughts. Society, with its different incentives and purposes, thrives on them.
Why that is so is explained in the first article, so if you are still interested, click the link.