The Mugwumpery

There’s an old joke (this version is from C. Fink):

A Jewish man and his friend, a Chinese man are sitting at a bar.

The Jewish man turns and punches his friend in the face.

The Chinese man shouts “What was that for?”

The Jewish man replies, “That was for Pearl Harbor.”

The Chinese man says, “I’m Chinese not Japanese!”

The Jewish man replies, “Chinese, Japanese, what’s the difference?”

Then the Chinese man punches the Jewish man in the face.

The Jewish man says “Why did you do that?”

The Chinese man replies “That’s for the Titanic.”

The Jewish man says, “I didn’t sink the Titanic. That was an iceberg!”

The Chinese man smiles and says, “Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference?”

That’s groupism. A random Japanese person is not responsible for Pearl Harbor. That crime was committed a long time ago by other people.

And a random iceberg isn’t responsible for sinking the Titanic. It was another iceberg that did it.

Groupism is blaming innocent people for the crimes of others, because of some irrelevant thing they have in common.

And yet, there are many societies in which collective guilt is a thing – mostly small, primitive societies. Collective guilt has the useful property of making everyone watch one another to prevent crimes – because everyone, including the innocent, will be punished for any crime committed by a single member of the group.

Modern people usually have big problems with that idea, but it has been a successful way of living since ancient times.

I’m one of the people who has a problem with it. My concerns are:

(1) Collective guilt breaks the whole idea of individual freedom and responsibility. In that system, my neighbors get a say on how I live, because they will suffer the consequences of my bad decisions.

But freedom doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t include the ability to make choices that other people don’t approve of. If you care about individual freedom at all, this is a huge problem.

(2) People usually don’t get to choose which groups they belong to. If I’m born Japanese, and the world treats me as Japanese, and so guilty of the crimes of all other Japanese, I’m screwed – because even if I disagree with and oppose the actions of other Japanese, I still get blamed for what they do.

If people could join and leave groups voluntarily (as with “corporations, associations, colleges, etc.”) then this would be much less of a problem. You’d still have an element of collective responsibility, but people who disagreed with the collective could leave it.

But that’s not how groupism usually works.

(3) Collective guilt societies usually also have collective responsibilities. If I’m born into one, it may be (for example) my duty to obey my elders, to marry only whoever they decide I should marry, to live where they tell me, to do the work that they tell me to, etc., etc. One day, if I live long enough, I may become an elder and get to tell other people what to do.

Basically this means that everyone is a slave of the group. For life. With no way of leaving slavery without breaking the rules of the society.

Again, if you care at all about freedom and think slavery is a bad thing, this is a bad thing.

(This post is adapted from an answer and comments on Quora.com.)