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The Best Individuals Care For The Collective
If we are fortunate enough to carry the fire, we should make sure to pass it on.
I used to make the mistake of praising the individual to an extreme.
My thought process was very simple, and as much as I tried to refute it, I never managed to: if we all strive to be our best individual selves, then the world will be better collectively too, because it will be comprised of better individuals.
From this, I inferred that being selfish was indeed the most generous act: by being our best selves and doing what is best for us individually, we would be doing everybody else a favour.
There are two main problems with this line of thought.
One: the sum of the best individuals doesn’t necessarily make for the best collective. Individuals do not stack themselves onto each other, they don’t just add up; instead, they combine and recombine to create new entities. Not all chemical components generate better composites when mixed up.
Two: not everybody has the urge to strive to be their best selves. Assuming everybody has the same drive to improve and to be better just because they can is shortsighted and immature, however logical it might look to the overachiever.