Every once in a while, an event will remind me of the intractable differences between communitarians and individualists. The latest is the Montreal shooting, which (as I remarked earlier) has already triggered various communitarian outbursts of emotion. Almost despairingly, I agreed with a Canadian blogger who remarked, simply, that there is "no one to blame but the shooters."

By asking "what makes that such a difficult concept?" I touched on the morass that so plagues me. I don't think there is any greater single driving force behind this blog than my inability to answer that question.

It's not as if I don't understand the communitarian impulse. I grew up in an environment in which altruism was not only encouraged, but was almost beaten into me. Like many kids, I got the religious lectures, I heard that we were all like little sheep who needed herding by some Jesus or another, and (despite my poor appetite and small sickly status), I was made to clean my plate because there were starving peasants in Asia. I learned to stifle any hint of eyeball rolling, lest I literally be clobbered by communitarianism.

I grew up feeling responsible for poverty around the world, and of course in Philadelphia. I was angry and wanted to do something about it, of course, and I gravitated towards Marxism, and support for the Black Panther Party.

Life in Berkeley did not help. I continued to feel -- and be held -- responsible for countless vicious crimes against humanity, and but for the intervention of the AIDS virus I might yet harbor communitarian tendencies. But something happened, and I just burned out. Perhaps it was because there were so many people dying around me and I was running around being a nurse and an international smuggler of AIDS drugs, but there was just something about being told at the wrong time(and one time too many) that I had never suffered because I was a white man that pushed me too far. At some point in there I realized -- I mean really, internally realized -- that I was not responsible for the conduct of other people. Hell I wasn't even responsible for the presence of the AIDS virus in people! (An amazing thing, because people told me that I was, even though I was HIV negative, because of a remarkable communitarian concept often called a "climate.")

You could say I was beaten down by thoughtless communitarians, I suppose. That not all communitarians are that way. True, they aren't. But I get a little tired of being told I am responsible for things I didn't do. I have a gun, therefore I killed the kids at Columbine, and now Montreal. I voted for Bush, therefore, my hands are bloody with innocent victims of torture. I blog, so I am responsible for comments made by other bloggers. Etc.

My point is pointless though, because this will never be solved. While I don't think this is genetic, I do think that whether one thinks along communitarian or individual lines is formed in childhood. Some kids develop that way, and others don't. Some grow out of it, and others (like me) have sudden epiphanies of individualism.

But the bottom line is, there are two very different, wholly incompatible ways of looking at the world. This is not as easy as a left versus right political split. While it has long seemed to me that the vast majority of communitarian thinkers are on the left, the fact is, there are many moderates who think this way, and a considerable number on the right -- especially, though not always, the socially conservative right. (I said "not always" because I maintain that it is possible to be a moral conservative and an individualist.)

Wherever they are on the spectrum, there is just no way to reconcile the views of people who blame a shooter for his crimes with the views of people who blame other people, or other things. Communitarians will look at a shooter and see guns, clothing, haircuts, Columbine, Charlton Heston, and even Dick Clark as implicated. It comes naturally, and I think it starts with little things, early in life. Things like having to eat food because others are starving.

Communitarianism is said to be based on the notion of the greater common good, and while there is such a thing (after all, that's why we have governments), it gets so carried away that debates can become exercises in mind-numbing sloganeering. From an earlier post, here are a few examples:

The Local Living Economies Movement is about:

* Maximizing relationships, not maximizing profits
* Growth of consciousness and creativity, not brands and market-share
* Democracy and decentralized ownership, not concentrated wealth
* A living return, not the highest return
* A living wage, not the minimum wage
* A fair price, not the lowest price
* Sharing, not hoarding
* Life serving, not self-serving
* Partnership, not domination
* Cooperation based, not competition based
* Win-win exchange, not win-loose exploitation
* Family farms, not factory farms
* Bio-diversity, not monocrops
* Cultural diversity, not monoculture
* Creativity, not conformity
* Slow food, not fast food
* Our bucks, not Starbucks
* Our mart, not Wal-Mart
* Love of life, not love of money

But having a rational discussion? Much as I try, sometimes it seems that dialogue between the rational (the logical) and the irrational (the illogical) is itself irrational -- especially here, when there is no agreement on what is rational or logical.

So why write a blog post about this?

Might I harbor an irrational belief that incompatible views can be reconciled?

It might be a lingering hangover from years of communitarian thinking, but I still think that dialogue is a good idea. Let's take the idea of "living economies" as a starting point. The living economies movement is based upon the principle that the small proprietorship is a better business model than the large corporation. Fine. I can see their point, and I understand many of their arguments. It's a little like vegetarianism. If you think it's a good healthy thing, then by all means do it. You like socialism, by all means start a living cooperative, and live your dream. You don't like guns, don't buy one.

The problem for me starts when the people who believe in these things want to reach out and stop me from eating meat, owning a gun, starting a corporation, etc. I am not trying to make them eat meat or own guns, and it strikes me as unfair that they would do to me what I wouldn't do to them. So, my argument always comes down to the right to be an individual capable of individal decisions -- which doesn't seem to count to those who don't believe in the individual, or individual rights. And so, dialogue over these things ultimately reaches a dead end called the power of the state.

That doesn't mean dialogue is unimportant, though. History shows what can happen when these arguments get out of hand.