Rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism might be a roman­tic notion, but ulti­mate­ly a lone­ly one. At a time in which the glob­al pop­u­la­tion is climb­ing toward nine bil­lion, there’s not a lot of room to be alone. All the more rea­son to learn how to live togeth­er and hon­or uni­ty with­in multiplicity.

“You are not just a drop in the ocean, you are the mighty ocean in the drop.” — Rumi

The ancient African con­cept of ubun­tu can be trans­lat­ed to, “I am because we are”. This con­cept acknowl­edges the one­ness of all that exists in var­i­ous states of rela­tion­ships. We are also well served to remem­ber that we, as indi­vid­u­als, are actu­al­ly many peo­ple at once. We can vary accord­ing to the state we’re in at any giv­en moment. And that, like a crys­tal, each facet of a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al per­son is vital to the over­all integri­ty of the individual.

In the nov­el, A Wrin­kle in Time, the book’s vil­lain is IT, the hive mind that cor­rects all behav­ior that devi­ates from the estab­lished norm. This aban­don­ment of self, and total sub­mis­sion to anoth­er author­i­ty, is a peren­ni­al threat to each of our right­ful claims of author­i­ty over our own lives. Any coer­cive means of sub­ju­gat­ing indi­vid­u­als to the con­trols of an exter­nal force—whether reli­gious, gov­ern­men­tal, or otherwise—is, with­out excep­tion, wrong. Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty is beau­ti­ful and bio­log­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary. Our lives can, and should, have many par­al­lels to the lives of oth­ers but, at the end of the day, we must ulti­mate­ly con­tin­ue along our indi­vid­u­at­ed jour­neys as dis­tinct waves of energy.

We feel it’s impor­tant to dis­cern the sig­nif­i­cance of the indi­vid­ual in a right­ful con­text of the col­lec­tive. Free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism is quite con­tra­dic­to­ry in its treat­ment of the indi­vid­ual. As a the­o­ry, it con­cep­tu­al­izes us all as lit­tle autonomous units, mak­ing ratio­nal choic­es in our own self-inter­est. How­ev­er, this is illu­so­ry. Con­sumer choice is not indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. We are grant­ed a par­a­lyz­ing­ly vast range of choic­es with­in a suf­fo­cat­ing­ly small range of expe­ri­ence. Often, our mode of liv­ing is large­ly dic­tat­ed from above by the insti­tu­tion­al forces that con­trol the flow of capital.

The “sov­er­eign con­sumer” was a term ini­tial­ly pro­posed in 1936, by econ­o­mist William Harold Hutt, sug­gest­ing that the ulti­mate source of author­i­ty over the mar­ket should be the indi­vid­ual choic­es of con­sumers. In this frame­work, the con­sumers are the “boss­es” and they shape soci­ety by vot­ing with their mon­ey, there­by par­tic­i­pat­ing in a per­ma­nent elec­tion. His­to­ri­an Niklas Olsen deems the idea of the sov­er­eign con­sumer as the key actor of neolib­er­al­ism. But the prob­lems with this idea are fair­ly evi­dent. First of all, any sys­tem that equates an unequal­ly dis­trib­uted resource (mon­ey) with vot­ing, is inher­ent­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic. Sec­ond­ly, nobody is born a nat­ur­al par­tic­i­pa­tor in a mar­ket. They are taught the rules and the restric­tions accord­ing to a cer­tain order estab­lished long before they came into the world. Main­te­nance of a mar­ket order implies a type of coer­cion, most often per­pe­trat­ed by those who ben­e­fit most from it.

Orga­niz­ing our­selves around the prin­ci­ples of mutu­al aid is a way to rec­on­cile indi­vid­u­al­i­ty with col­lec­tiv­i­ty. Mutu­al aid describes a form of vol­un­tary exchange between par­ties in which all involved reap the ben­e­fits. Basi­cal­ly, mutu­al aid means coop­er­a­tion. We can con­sid­er it the polar oppo­site of com­pe­ti­tion, the defin­ing fea­ture of today’s econ­o­my. There are sev­er­al pre­req­ui­sites to allow this type of unmedi­at­ed coop­er­a­tion to func­tion well through­out soci­ety. There must be no insti­tu­tion­al­ized pow­er imbal­ance. There must be no prof­it motive, in which one par­ty accu­mu­lates more resources to the detri­ment of the oth­er. It must occur in a con­text in which basic needs and civ­il rights are guar­an­teed to all. And final­ly, all par­tic­i­pants must be free to rep­re­sent them­selves in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process, as well as be giv­en equal foot­ing to do so.

Peo­ple would be free to live as they pleased, pro­vid­ed they do not infringe upon the rights of oth­ers. “Do no harm” is espe­cial­ly applic­a­ble as a mode of con­duct in a soci­ety orga­nized by mutu­al aid. Freed from coer­cion, all human activ­i­ty would be tru­ly vol­un­tary. The rights of the indi­vid­ual could be ful­ly expressed with­in this col­lec­tive con­text. Work­ing hours would be based upon need, not inflat­ed to trig­ger growth. And all peo­ple would have real auton­o­my over how they choose to spend their valu­able time.

Coop­er­a­tion is by far humanity’s great­est strength. There is no aspect of cap­i­tal­ist com­pe­ti­tion that could not be achieved just as well through coop­er­a­tion. Russ­ian sci­en­tist and rev­o­lu­tion­ary, Peter Kropotkin, inter­pret­ed the evo­lu­tion­ary con­cept of “sur­vival of the fittest” from a per­spec­tive that takes “fittest” to mean “most skilled at coop­er­a­tion”. He argued that this skill amongst com­mu­ni­ties of ani­mal species has his­tor­i­cal­ly been the great­est indi­ca­tion of suc­cess­ful sur­vival and devel­op­ment. We have an innate tal­ent for coop­er­a­tion, but have orga­nized our econ­o­my in a way that makes it dif­fi­cult to prac­tice. Rela­tion­ships based on mutu­al aid have been inte­gral to our eth­i­cal evo­lu­tion and have the great­est poten­tial to pro­pel us ever fur­ther. We can ele­vate the impor­tance of indi­vid­u­als by sit­u­at­ing them with­in strong and sup­port­ive collectives.