Individualism and inner directed morality are inseparable. If you lose one, you lose the other.
Socialism: logically, if no one owns anything, then everyone owns everything.
How to get at this in a deep psychological way? If nothing is yours, if you are nothing in yourself, if your claims on space and time and material are inconsequential, then pushing for everyone to own everything is a bandage which salves that wound without healing it.
Most intellectuals are narcissists, I suspect. What thought does is enable one to substitute, mathematically, abstract compassion and empathy for the real thing. It allows one to be an asshole and feel good about it. As I say from time to time, I like to call myself a thought worker. Figuratively, I put on overalls. Literally, as a day job, I rub elbows with construction workers. I think this helps me, too. I will never be happy in an office. Hell: it may happen, and I need to quit whining about it in advance. Still, I will work to keep myself sweating for a living. It’s honest. It’s a tonic for me.
So many games become possible with undefined terms. Love is X, no? Compassion is Y. Social Justice: Z.
These equations are always solved poorly. Who you are is THAT, and what you believe is also THAT. And THAT, here, can be determined by tracing the path, the trail, the consequences of the path you follow through the world. Politically, it can be seen in the OUTCOMES of actions you repeat.
Another meaning for Tat Tvam Asi. While we are quoting mystics: “As above, so below”, sometimes much below, in the basement.
There is no other way to view it, in my view.
I’ll quit before I start writing koans.