2022

While we mustn’t ignore the importance of the individual, the truth is that reducing society to a collection of unattached individuals would be like trying to reduce nature to a collection of unattached atoms. It doesn’t get us very far. Sure, we’d have gold and nitrogen and even diamonds (which are just well-organized carbon). But we wouldn’t have water or sugars or proteins, all of which are essential to life, and all of which are molecules—combinations of atoms. Even oxygen gas is a mash-up of two oxygen atoms, not individual particles floating in space.