Why are we acting individually when it ultimately hurts us?

The July conversation saw Suzanne Waldron and Anthony conversing for an extended 75 minute format in this discussion that traversed: ancient wisdom, the microbiome, western and eastern connection to culture and nature, agriculture and regenerative salt lakes, and the world as a self organising system. Phew! And wow did it leaving us thinking about some big things.

Conversation starters are aplenty.

• What’s the difference between collective thinking and group think? We know the dangers of the latter, how do we not let the former become the latter?

• We can’t make/buy a culture but we can foster and nurture, educate and demonstrate the attitudes and behaviour we want to see. The A (attitudes) and the B (behaviours) creates the C (culture).

• Classic social challenge - an individual might be able to a achieve a 'better' outcome by focusing on their own priorities, but that only works if the collective holds as a base level of service for that to build on. If too many people pursue individual priorities the system collapses and everyone is worse off. Education, healthcare, justice and security - comes up in a lot of areas.

• There is a lot of talk about the prevalence of the individual over community or the collective, with the underlying insinuation that it's a bad thing. Assuming that it's true (and I'm not saying that it's not), shouldn't we ask why it's happening? ie. why do people/society prefer being individuals vs community? Then, perhaps we can look at what (if anything) to do about it?