Personal Solutions vs Collective Solutions: Don’t Confuse them!

I have written about this before, but I’m gonna do it again: DO NOT CONFUSE PERSONAL SOLUTIONS/ADVICE/SORCERY WITH COLLECTIVE OR SOCIETAL ONES.

If someone comes to me and says: “Hey, I am so poor I don’t have a dusty fart to my name, what should I do?” I am gonna figure out what options they have, what skills they have, what opportunities and connections they have, and hopefully help them take advantage of those to better themselves and their life. This is great for the person in front of me, but it’s terrible advice for solving “poverty” itself. That takes massive systemic change involving legislation, long cultural shifts, and millions of people.

If someone comes to me and says: “Hey I am a female going away to college and am worries about campus rape?” I am going to advice self-defense training, various safety measures, and not getting into certain situations. This is good for the person in front of me but does nothing to solve the problem of campus rape as a whole. It also places the burden on the potential victim which isn’t right, but at the moment is still where it is.

If someone comes to me and says: “I am stressed to the max and barely holding it together, what should I do?” I am going to talk about meditation and other mindfulness practices that have proven useful for addressing this problem for those who practice them. This is good for the person in front of me but does nothing to address societal stressors, the economy, technological stauration, political situations or anything else that might be a cause of stress on a societal level.

It seems obvious that these are different things right? Sadly, no. Collectivists are not just working on addressing collective and societal solutions anymore, they seem increasingly to want you NOT to work on your own personal solutions.

Lets jump through the three examples I gave.

Here is an article on How Mindfulness Privatized a Social Problem. The article doesn’t challenge the effectiveness of mindfulness for the practitioner, mind you. The writer is upset that mindfulness is being used to help people get off welfare benefits, and create a “cruel optimism” about life.

Similarly a few years ago a nail polish was invented that detects the presence of date rape drugs. This is got a lot of press because Rape Crisis groups did not endorse the invention. The reason for not endorsing the product or other measures like it was that “It implies that it’s the woman’s fault and assumes responsibility on her behalf, and detracts from the real issues that arise from sexual violence.”  Think about this. A product or action that can save YOUR life is being treated as a problem because it doesn’t address the societal solution.

As to finances, I see this over and over and over again. Tony Robbins is coming under a lot of deserved criticism lately, but  few years ago a review of his programs caught me eye when the reviewer stated that self-help programs “in general distracts its adherents from their actual material conditions, allowing them to misattribute both successes and failures to their juju rather than the intersection of their privileges or oppressions.”  This person is not saying that the methods don’t work, or can’t help you. They are upset that it is distracting you from placing all of your attention and effort on societal oppression.

Listen folks, I am all for collective solutions to collective problems. Solving things like poverty, rape, and stress at a societal level take massive change, legislation, millions of people fighting, and more than anything: time. Personal effort dedicated to collective solutions is effort well-spent. But if you spend all your energy there, you are neglecting the actions you can take that will result in direct solutions and increased happiness in favor of waiting for other people to take responsibility for your life. More than that, when you solve your own personal problems, you often wind up in a position to do MORE about collective issues than you would be if you focused all your efforts on those issues.

In sorcery and in life, please, do not confuse these two types of problems. They demand very different solutions.