The Individual

Before I go into the final outlines of Informationalism, I thought it would be best to write something solely concerning the individual. One must not forget what has been said earlier, that you cannot separate the good of the individual from the good of the species, they are one and the same.

But, as always with Informationalism, it is important to define what it is exactly that I mean by this. My statement, while sounding high and mighty, can be used to defend the police state and the libertarian state alike.

So, what do I mean?

Individuals must deal with each other as just that, individuals. It is very easy to treat another human being as if he were something other than a fellow human being. Differences of opinion, sex, race, or nation can make another human being seem alien.

It is natural for human beings to feel a certain amount of discomfort to the alien. The fear can transform the mind and cause it to act in ways that we would find discomforting in a so-called sound state of mind.

As an Informationalist we must strive to never forget that the people we are dealing with are people just like us. They may not be Informationalists, they may believe that a super natural god controls their lives. They may not feel that Informationalism or the survival of the species is something vitally important. As human beings we make our own choices, because we are individuals.

So when you interact with your fellow human beings, remember that they feel and want just the way that you do. Their pain is pain that you can feel, their joy is joy that you can share. As Informationalists we feel that Information and its freedom are of vital importance to our joy and our happiness, but this does not give us the right to inflict pain onto those who do not share our feelings.

We will do battle with them in the arena of free discourse. We will fight them with tools of science, logic, and good will. A man who will blow himself up in the name of his god is not an evil man, he is a man who has had his mind corrupted. The people who would stop the free flow of Information are not bad people, they have simply been lost in visions of their own grandeur. They have been the victims of the misdirection of natural feelings from within their own bodies.

As children they may be dealt with as a parent deals with a child who misunderstands, as adults we must deal with them as fellow citizens of the world. We must be confident that in the end they will agree with what can be demonstrated before their very eyes over and over again.

If they chose not to, then this is their choice, and we cannot stop them from making their own choices. It is not our business to invade the private sphere. They must be allowed to live their lives, though we will not shrink from the challenge of showing them the results of how we feel.

Should they chose to try and silence the free flow of Information, then we must react. If they chose to try and silence it with violence, eventually we must answer it with violence if we wish to maintain our way of life.

But this is not a good thing, victory by violence is never a good thing, for it means that Information has been destroyed. An individual destroyed by violence is a tragedy; it does not matter if the individual was an informationalist or not.

We want to preserve and expand ourselves. There is no final end, there is only the will of the individual and the collective will of the species to continue onward. Embracing this will means embracing the value of the lives of every individual.


If my point sounds familiar to you, I would not be surprised. Countless movements have embraced this altruism for the moment that it suited their best interest. However, one by one, they gave into the idea that by force they can eventually make an adult human being "better". Learning and the changing of the mind of an individual with decades of experience shaped within a psychological framework is not something that can be changed forever by force. It will only breed resentment.