The phrase "You shouldn't generalize" has been growing in popularity quite a lot in recent years.
The idea is that we should always treat everybody as an individual, and never as a part of larger collective or reference group. Everybody is unique, everybody is special, and everybody deserves a chance at our undivided attention.
I used to believe this, too, but as I've gotten older, I've started to see how this is bullshit. While it's true in theory that everybody is an individual, yes. But in practice, it just doesn't hold up, at all.
The biggest problem with thinking this way is that it consumes a lot of energy trying to give everybody a chance. What I mean by this is that when we try to have a dialogue with someone, it always consumes our time and resources, which are limited to begin with. It can be considered noble and admirable to try to connect with someone with opposite views, but how many times do you remember changing someone's mind in a debate?
Individuals exist, but they are extremely rare. The way the vast majority of people function is they latch on to a reference group, learn and embrace their memes, and act accordingly from that point on.
A feminist spreads feminist memes; an environmentalist spreads environmentalist memes; a socialist spreads socialist memes; libertarians spread libertarian memes. Hell, ironically, individualists spread individualist memes.
I absolutely admit that as a "contrarian" I spread contrarian memes. It's a habit, it just happens that whenever I'm part of a group for a given time, I start pointing out its flaws and becoming a contrarian.
There's very little room for original thought with most people, and I'm not arrogant enough to claim that I'm filled with them, either.
The problem is that these people often think that they came up with their thoughts on their own, even though they're just parroting the charismatic leaders of their chosen reference group.
It's largely pointless to even focus on people as individuals, since if you want to predict outcomes, you need to learn the mechanisms and functions of the things you want to predict.
And humans are no exception. We are a mechanism.
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about Finnish immigration. She supports it, I don't. She asked me why I don't support it, and I said that it doesn't work, it doesn't produce favorable outcomes. She then asked for my opinion on a recent political debacle in Finland, closely related to immigration, and I told her I have no idea, I don't follow politics.
She was confused as to how I can have an opinion on immigration if I don't even follow politics.
I then tried to explain to her that I don't have to know what is going on right now. All I need are the variables of the immigration policy, the mechanism behind it, so to say, and I can pretty much say that the end result will be a catastrophe. I've been saying for a long time, and since people are being worried about it now, it seems that I've been right.
My point being that whatever is going on right now has always been the inevitable outcome of the immigration policies. Had the negative effects not happened now, they would have happened a year from now, two years from now, three, five, ten.
Humans are predictable.
It's an unpopular idea, but my bold claim is that you're a lot better off studying collectives instead of individuals. What it does is it saves your energy. By treating everybody as an individual, there's an almost certain chance of you investing your time on idiots, and not making a return, while learning how collectives act, there's an equally large chance of you being able to avoid idiots.
Yes, you will probably miss out on an interesting person or two, the chances are hugely in your favor when you choose the latter option.
If you don't believe me, think of members of different reference groups you've had conversations with. Feminists, socialists, libertarians, environmentalists, Christians.. ever noticed how a large percentage of them sound exactly the same?
When you've had a conversation with a third wave feminist, you've had a conversation with all of them. And the same goes for all the other groups you can think of.
This is why it just makes sense to learn the patterns of these larger groups, then make note of who belongs in what collective, and either interact with them, or avoid them, based on whether or not those patterns are favorable to you.
If a group's behavioral patterns are harmful to you, and society, you should just avoid people who are a part of that group. Just straight up. Why waste time on someone who with a 99% certainty is an idiot? That doesn't sound smart at all, and this is why the modern age gospel of "Everybody is an individual" annoys me to no end.
Trust me. Individuals are very rare, and chances are you won't even encounter any.
Sometimes you do, but you probably just got lucky.