Yes, I AM an Island. And So Are You.
And you and you and you. And your property too. (DN 2.10)
Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |
(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 |1.20 | 1.21 |1.22
(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10
Chapter 2.10:
The Archipelago
Islands of people
“No man is an island.”
—John Donne
When John Donne said “No man is an island” in a 1624 sermon, he was making the point that the loss of one human person diminishes the whole of humanity:
No man is an island entire of itself […] Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The phrase “No man is an island” began to grow in popularity during the 20th century, but is now generally used in a somewhat different context:
To express that humans are a social species.
To justify forced collectivism.
Thus, the phrase has become simultaneously true and also a terribly toxic and dangerous expression.
Why it’s true:
Humans are indeed an ultra-social species. We are biologically and neuro-chemically wired for social interaction. We go crazy in solitary confinement.
We want to be with others. We need to be with others. We must engage in cooperation, economic specialization, and trade, or life really will be “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Why it’s toxic and dangerous:
Because collectivists, communists, statists, and totalitarians of every stripe say it, or words like it, with a smug, smiling face…right before they start oppressing you.
No man is an island…
Therefore the individual must subordinate to the collective.
Therefore the individual is just a cell of the larger body of the collective.
Therefore the individual does not exist.
It is as predictable as the sun rising. They go from the recognition that humans are a social species to “the individual must thus be effaced for the good of the collective” in five seconds flat. And those brave souls who dare to disagree with the collective must be “forced to be free,” as the emotionally and mentally unstable Jean-Jacques Rousseau said…giving philosophical license to every savage totalitarian who followed.
People regularly fall for this (including some who should know better). They feel the call of our ultra-social nature. They hear “No man is an island” and they feel the truth of it. Because they like people. Because they know we need each other.
And then, like so many in generations before, they fall for the propaganda and fail to spot the difference between chosen community and forced collectivism. The next thing you know, the individual is being sacrificed on the utilitarian altar of the collective. Because no man is an island, dontcha know.
BUT I AM AN ISLAND.
And each one of you is too.
You are not someone else’s appendage. You are not a cell in a larger body.
You are YOU.
You are indivisible. You are the fundamental unit of moral concern.
You are a unique, sovereign, rights-holding, self-owning, precious, irreplaceable being.
Any society that has any other starting point is a society that will inevitably end in oppression. Any society that begins with the phrase, “No man is an island” will—if allowed to reach its fullest, stinking flower—end up at mountains of corpses. Which is exactly what we saw, again and again, in the 20th century.
Yet most people continue to believe that individuals get their rights from the collective, and that we must sacrifice those rights whenever the collective says so.
Except that collectives cannot talk, so it’s always a small cadre of people speaking on behalf of the collective. And we let them—because after all, no man is an island. Who cares if you get broken, little egg, so long as their collective omelet gets made.
No.
No no no no no. Never again. We’re done.
You ARE an island. You are an island of infinite ineffable personhood. You are an island of inalienable self-ownership and rights, which you possess as a natural and ineluctable fact of your very existence.
No one has a right, or any legitimate authority, to touch your island. To land on your island. To do anything whatsoever to your island without your consent.
You CHOOSE to share your life with others. You CHOOSE to link your island to another’s. No one gets to force ANYTHING upon you, with that filthy old excuse that “No man is an island” as cover. Or with any other excuse, for that matter.
You are an island. And so am I.
Without that as a philosophical starting point, we are doomed—and failure, oppression, and misery are just a matter of time.
And so, my adorable island friends…
That is, and must be, the starting point of the distributed nation.
The distributed nation begins as an archipelago of free, sovereign human beings.
Islands of property
Sovereignty is impossible without property. Survival is impossible without property.
I understand that some people have adopted an anti-propertarian viewpoint
as a result of misuse of property by governments, corporations, and the wealthy,
as a result of experiences with sleazebag landlords,
due to heavy propaganda or ideological indoctrination,
out of a religious, spiritual, or ideological belief that we should share the Earth in common or that “no one can own the Earth,”
and a host of other reasons. We will be devoting a section of an upcoming chapter to exploring the complexities of this topic. For now, we will summarize…
You cannot survive, or be sovereign, if you cannot occupy a particular space. And in order to occupy that space, you must be able to exclude all others from it. If you cannot, then they are standing on you, stomping on you, crushing you.
You cannot be survive, or be sovereign, unless the food you are about to put in your mouth is yours. In order for it to be yours, you must be able to exclude all others from its use. If you cannot, you will starve.
The bed you sleep in must be yours. You must be able to exclude others from it. It cannot be “everyone’s.”
The bed must be in a house. The house cannot be everyone’s.
That house must exist on a piece of land. That piece of land cannot be everyone’s.
When you fashion a broom to clean that house, or a hoe to till that land, it must be your broom. Your hoe. It cannot be everyone’s.
You must be sovereign where you stand. You must be sovereign where you live. What you own must be yours. Without this, no enjoyment of any natural right is possible. Without this, all is chaos.
Just as there can be no legitimate superior landlord of your body and being, so too can there be no legitimate superior landlord over your property and home.
The distributed nation is an archipelago of people and their property.
Members of the distributed nation may form local communities.
The distributed nation is an archipelago of such communities.
Members of the distributed nation may cooperate in pursuit of larger aims.
The distributed nation is an archipelago of such cooperation.
The distributed nation is a worldwide archipelago of sovereign people, sovereign spaces, chosen communities, and voluntary cooperation.
We still have a ways to go to define the distributed nation. Help me help us get there.
I lived in a socialist cult for a year. They kept saying, "You need to sacrifice your individuality." It was clear that the only reason anyone remained there was because of this very sacrifice. All property was supposed to become common property, so that no one owned anything. We were supposed to confess our "sins" publicly and be shamed when we would not. It was a collective humiliation.
Now, when people try to convince me that this system can work on a much grander scale, such as nation states, I'm simply appalled. It didn't even work in a group the size of a football team. Or, it appeared to work externally but the people were miserable. The children and adults worked all the time, and it was all for the "collective." Or rather for the hierarchy of leadership which chose everything we should wear, believe, do, and want. They shamed anyone who wouldn't obey. It's most definitely a cult. I had to escape by cover of night. And guess who ended up there? Broken and homeless people who had nothing.
Forced collectivism is evil.
My Man! I just published something very similar to this but from the philosophical perspective as in: at your ultimate core, you are but a Soul: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/how-to-see-the-world
Seeing everything in this light simplifies it all and as a soul, you are an island. Your body is the island.
Love the quote on property as well. Definitely resonate with this message so thanks for sharing.