Especially people in the West laud how great Japan its collectivist society is, how streets are clean, relatively little gets stolen, personal responsibility is still a thing, etc; But they completely skip over the other side of the coin: collectivist societies crush much of the independence out of a person.
So, in this one sense, you can trade independence for social “efficiency”. I imagine it is much the same for humanity. We could become more harmonized, at the cost of becoming more drone-like.
An interesting book that deals with this exact dilemma (among other things) is “A Deepness In the Sky” by Vernor Vinge. Worth a read!
The example often given is Japan vs the West.
Especially people in the West laud how great Japan its collectivist society is, how streets are clean, relatively little gets stolen, personal responsibility is still a thing, etc; But they completely skip over the other side of the coin: collectivist societies crush much of the independence out of a person.
So, in this one sense, you can trade independence for social “efficiency”. I imagine it is much the same for humanity. We could become more harmonized, at the cost of becoming more drone-like.
An interesting book that deals with this exact dilemma (among other things) is “A Deepness In the Sky” by Vernor Vinge. Worth a read!