What most people imagine to be their individuality is, in truth, little more than atomic individuality: one particle among millions of other particles in a society that mass-produces identity, turning us not into powerful and independent individuals but into homogeneous, shapeless human masses.

Today, across large parts of the world, historical forces of crushing conformity—from tribal mentality to traditional beliefs and religions and modern ideologies—continue, as they have throughout history, to target the destruction of unique and free human individuality with all their strength.

What is more tangible than ever in our age is our enslavement to public opinion, the comfort of not thinking and not seeing, and surrender to the undisturbed ease of modern affluence. These forces have placed the Enlightenment project and the liberation of modern humanity before a serious challenge.

Under such conditions, freeing each individual mind from society and recovering the power and responsibility of “being one person” is the first and most important step toward liberating a society. As one person, we are always free to choose between the magnificence of being human and the horror of being human, and to become the change we wish to see in the world.

Aydin Areta