The individual in our world has been replaced by the group. For instance, the individual is the customer who buys products and services. But. The marketing for those goods and services is directed towards the "group" to which that an individual consumer belongs. And yet, the group rarely buys those goods and services. Sure they influence what a member of their group will buy, however, they rarely buy these items in bulk and redistribute them inside their mob. The exception to this experience is found within Australian Aborigines culture. If you become immersed in an Aboriginal Tribe as I have at various times in my life [for a variety of reasons] then you will experience immediate "culture shock" due to what is happening around you. The reason Australian Aborigines can work this way [perhaps] is that they decide who gets what via a consensus. More specifically, they have a consensual decision-making process that works well within their culture. And that decision process is based squarely on clear boundaries between "us" and "them".
In our world today we are being forced to join some version of "us". Once we do that we spend inordinate amounts of time rejecting everything [ideas, morals, religions, etc] about "them". However here is the rub. Because one is so busy opposing "them" and supporting "us" it may never dawn on individual members of any mob that the power they once held [as an individual] has shifted to an amorphous something "out there".
Perhaps, there is no better example of the force "out there" [which must be opposed] than the algorithms that now run the world of data collection and transfer. As humans [individuals and groups] we are locked into a battle with a complex shadow of ourselves [the algorithms behind AI]. We see these algorithms as "them" and thus we are ceding power to AI in ways that will inevitably come back to bite "us".
Richard
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