Mike Dilger on Nostr: I read that note already. I think it's the same thinking in different words. Here ...

I read that note already. I think it's the same thinking in different words. Here again are great leaps. How does individuals persuing their own interests erode social bonds? It doesn't. Persuing my own individual interests demands social bonds. What is shared responsibility? Not defined. Hand waving. Being individuals "creates a vacuum of meaning?" Life is, always was, and always will be utterly meaningless, and that absolutely isn't a 'vacuum' of any sort, it is a recognition of a mistaken idea that doesn't need replacing, and so that imaginary "vaccum" cannot just be filled by anything he imagines will come in and opportunistically fill it (I know the Christians utterly disagree with me on this point but I can only say it how I see it). It is a "just-so" specifically constructed slippery slope.

Now if you want to say something concrete like "civility benefits us both, and many other people I know, let's enact some laws and collectively enforce them to keep out the riff raff", that is reasonable and actionable and local and is a kind of "collective good," but it is bottom-up, doesn't presume people who aren't involved are involved, etc. And it is different from the collective good over in the next valley. And the larger you grow that concept, the more meaningless it becomes (or so I think), even if there are proposals that are wildly popular throughout humanity like "let's not kill each other". It's still kind of meaningless when Palestinians and Israelis and Russians and Ukrainians and Saudis and Houthis are not really on board.