Steve,
>It seems to me that true individualism, by its own definition, is something
that can never be "pegged".
My point exactly. Any individualism, so-called, today, is pegged to
specialization. It is framed in the cocktail party chit-chat line, "so,
what do you do"? The unacknowledged implication being that if your social
"pegging point" is lower than your interlocutor is willing to settle for
they will move on like the shark they are. In this system one's
individuality is their profession (or their lie---I'm a brain surgeon and I
designed an anti-gravity machine last Tuesday. Or, I'm the CEO of Enron, a
company that successfully hedges the arbitrage points created by market
deregulation of utilities, uninfluenced by legislators, and creates value
for customers, stockholders and employees based on the true market value of
our affairs.).
It is necessary to speak of the true individual in this discussion because
we need to highlight the contradistinction to what exists; the organization
man--a cog in the machinery of the artificial or quasi human known as the
corporation. Any corportation-- public, private, non-profit, municipal,
board of education, joint stock, preferred, limited and whatever else
lawyers can come up with, is a bureaucracy and therefore the most rookie cop
is a cog, the secretary is a cog, the mayor is a cog, we are all expected to
be cogs and everyone seems to be happy with this or blind to it.
When we speak of the true individual influencing the whole we are not
speaking of the type of influence that can be peddled for a fee. I
certainly would hope to influence my society -----by example.
>"Professional socially responsible individual" harbors a distinct
contradiction.
Not if you read it as (A) professional (embedded in society) (being)
socially responsible (as an) individual. I certainly didn't mean it as
someone with a graduate degree in Socially Responsible Individuality
complete with an office, a secretary, and letterheads ending in Inc..
(Again, think of professional guild members legitimized by their competence
and remembering that the guilds were a mixture of craftsmanship and social
responsibilty. That is what has become distorted.)
>True individualism is so rare that it is for the most part not even
recognizable for what it really is, and it is certainly, again by
>definition, not something that can be taught.
No, it cannot be taught but everyone can be influenced towards it by
example. If it is not recognizable it is not because it is rare but because
society is blinded by social upward mobility on society's terms and the
fawning and pandering it requires for success. Any teaching that needs go
on is in basic intellectual training (the liberal arts) and in the use of
the imaginative faculties. True Individualism 101 is, of course, an
oxymoron.
//Van