Radical Individualism

 

   Our universe is made up of many categories. Many groups and identities for objects, people, and systems exist throughout reality. We like to categorize objects and "things" so that we can interact with them more easily and attempt to better understand them. Categories and classes are a common and relatively simple way of ordering things and creating hierarchal systems and arrangements. Most hierarchies and categories aren't super complex. They are pretty straightforward.

     Even so, I wanted to do a little thought experiment tonight. Something I've been trying to hash out in my head for awhile. It's called radical individualism, and it involves a hypothetical universe of an uncountable amount of objects or "things." However, in this hypothetical universe, every object that exists is completely unique and individualized to where there is no other like it anywhere in existence. It is one of a kind and every individual "thing" is completely unique and of its own class. In this thought experiment, there are no categories. No classes or hierarchies, since everything is a true individual. 

Now I've been asking myself "what does this do to all those objects?" Well, for one, it makes everything in that universe indispensable and irreplaceable. You can't waste anything. Everything has infinite value because of the uniqueness of all objects. Unlike making everything the same, which pretty much reduces the value and quality of everything to almost zero, a radically individualistic universe would do the opposite. It would make everything priceless. An unquantifiable value and worth. Categories and classes would be useless, and would not be able to diminish the worth of all these objects or make one class greater than another. 

On top of the uniqueness of the objects, each object in this hypothetical universe would have a unique type of value, not monetary, but a method of measuring value that would be completely unique to each object. Not only would there be a countless amount of individualized things, but also a countless amount of types of value for each one of them. 

Now, in the real world, categories and classes are quite inescapable. We have categories of atoms and classes of matter and structures that are naturally hierarchal because of gravity and physics. There are inequalities that can't be avoided or eliminated. Even humanity has classes that are very established and quite unavoidable, but the main part of radical individualism, the uniqueness component, should first and foremost apply to people. I mentioned earlier that radical individualism makes the individuals indispensable because they are one of a kind. When applied to humans it makes every human life infinitely, intrinsically, and unquantifiably valuable. It creates an "equality of uniqueness" instead of an "equality of sameness." It makes it so you truly "can't put a price on human life" as the old saying goes. An equality of uniqueness increases the value of people to the Nth degree, instead of reducing it to almost nothing like sameness does. 

You can still have classes and categories, but prioritizing the individual and the uniqueness of the individual takes away some of the detriments of focusing too much on the classes, categories, and groups. Since it increases the value of each individual, it makes it harder to depreciate the value of people based on their categories and groups. It's harder to dehumanize an unquantifiably valuable individual than a typecast group in the same way it is harder to degrade a cut and polished sapphire than it is to degrade clay.

It is said that every star has a name. A unique identity. Well, in another thought experiment, what if every basic building block particle had its own unique name. It's own unique identity. That would create quite the complexity of individuality, and that complexity is quite beautiful. Oftentimes what creates an individual is its label or "name." That can individualize things that would usually be classified or categorized. If every building block particle has a name and a uniqueness to it, it would make all of them indispensable and unwasteable. It would give each one a priceless quality.

That's the most beautiful thing about radical individualism. It makes everything priceless, irreplaceable, where destroying even one thing is extremely egregious. It makes it so you can't throw away anything. To where everything is precious and has intrinsic worth. Applying this to everything might be a stretch to some people. We're not quite ready for that as a species, but applying such radical individualism to people would be a very beautiful thing. Almost divine. It turns every human life into a precious, irreplaceable thing. That's how God intended us to be.