So I was telling the missus about the difference between North and South Korea (she doesn't keep up on these things). I was telling her how the North is controlled by an insane communist dictator and is constantly on the verge of famine while the South prospers. She asked me, "Why can't we murder all of the communists?"

I almost cried. I've waited so long for her to say that. What a perfect marriage.

It got me thinking, though, while I was on my way to work. As I sat at a traffic light and watched it turn from red to green to yellow and back to red to the cacophonous symphony of car horns, I wondered if humans are inherently collectivist or individualist? It's certainly a hot button issue, with communists on one extreme wanting to virtually eliminate all differences between people and the hard-edge individualist who insists that stresses strict self-reliance to the detriment of the weak and the stupid. Each extreme insists that their vision is the only way to achieve utopia, and there's been a tug-of-war between the two forces since the rise of the modern nation state (before that everybody was a slave to the local warlord/noble, so it didn't matter). So what's the real answer? What are people naturally? Are we bees all buzzing away for the good of the hive or are we spiders, looking out for number one?

During my drive to my hellish job, I realized that, as always, there is no clear answer. It seems to me that individuals can be either. Certainly humans have a strong tribal instinct, but they also have a keen grasp of their own interests. It seems, too, that the relative strength and weakness of those desires vary widely from person to person.

The groups people belong to are strong arguments for natural collectivism. Many people are eager to submerge their identities into groups, whether they're social, political, or religious. They want to be told what to think and how to live. In return, they are protected and supported by their group. Some go so far as to let the group decide their allies and enemies, and are willing to kill just because the group says so.

The other extreme is populated by people like me. I am about as solid as individualist as I can be. I hate belonging to organizations because I loathe the idea of having a label slapped on me. "Oh, he's a member of THAT group," they say. "Therefore, I know everything about what he thinks, eats, wears, etc." It simplifies the world considerably if you can take all 6 billion people in the world and lump them into a couple of dozen large groups. It takes out the hassle of actually having to KNOW them.

As with everything else, most people are in the middle. Most people only pay lip service to the groups to which they belong. Even the groups themselves aren't a good reflection of collectivism. Every group has a leader. That leader's individual desires are amplified by those who follow him/her. They become a tool for his/her personal aims. In a sense, groups are nothing more than a gestalt individual. It's a bit more complicated like that in real life, but you get the idea.

The real danger is thus: as an individualist, I can respect that some people feel safer in a group. Fine, whatever. Knock yourselves out. It's the collectivists who want to FORCE everyone into their group that are trouble. Stalin didn't ask Poland nicely if it wanted to be a satellite of the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek didn't have a referendum to see which of the two dictators the people preferred (like it would have mattered). These days both US political parties wand to force their philosophies down our throats to the joy of only their diehard supporters. If only we could set aside parcels of land for all of the fanatics to build their own nightmarish dystopias without bothering the rest of us. Wait, we have those already. Iran and North Korea are good examples. So much for that idea.

So the bottom line is that people are fundamentally attuned to their own interests, which make them individualists first, members of any group second (excluding nutcases). If they can find a bunch of people with the same interests, so much the better, but they'll bail if the group isn't helping them. That's humanity 101.

The moral of this story is that utopia is unobtainable. Anyone who says otherwise is either an idiot or wants to control you.