I think I might be radically individualistic. I don’t care what other people think about me, I don’t have any interest in listening to anyone unless I’m convinced I should. I don’t really want to do anything for anyone else. Or maybe that’s just a part of me.

    In practice I’m a very caring and affectionate and agreeable person. I don’t like conflict, I hate making demands. I think I mostly like being left alone, and I want to leave other people alone. I don’t have any appreciation for group projects or group endeavors. I’m not a do gooder, I don’t want to do things to “make the world a better place” by some sort of collective action or personal participation. I only see myself and other individual people. I don’t have any collective interest in the good of anyone or anything.

   But I like individuals. I want to help them, or at least help them help themselves. I don’t want to take the place of them doing things for themselves. And I don’t really want anyone else to do things for me. I don’t welcome it. That’s almost perversely individualistic. I’m inherently suspicious of all group efforts. They seem dangerously abstract and dislocated from individual reality to me. 

   I’m not endorsing any of these instincts, just recognizing that they exist, that they are part of my psyche. Only a part, but a strong part. I know plenty of people who are different, even opposite. I know people who feel a great obligation to the collective good and group efforts, but don’t really like individual people very much, as strange as that sounds. People are complicated.