relevance of the individual

can an individual alone shape history? many people say no on the basis of the insignificance of the individual. note: by individual, i mean (non-rigorously) an given unknown individual--flattering the self or evaluating self importance is not relevant.

lets move past the trivialities. if an individual is alone in movement in that they affects no others, then of course no others are affected. we will ignore this trivial interpretation of "alone." one might say change requires others to be affected, but every individual affects others. i am just showing the silliness of such basic counterarguments.

my claim of individual relevance is stronger than just that the individual affects change (ie, only) in a superrational context--ie, the individual can reduce global waste by recycling because every symmetrically recycling adds up to something significant. im talking an agent based model here. im talking non-linear dynamical systems. in other words, think butterfly effect.

indeed, my view of the individual as relevant follows from the butterfly effect of chaos theory; the insignificance of the individual butterfly, though obviously true, is irrelevant! in direct linear democracy models of society, the individual indeed cannot effect the whole (except superrationally of course). the point is that, however in a non-linear agent based model (ie, consensus building), the relevance of the (every) individual emerges (i use that last word literally). for example, in Critical Mass, every rider is unknown and unnamed and unimportant, yet an individual rider's decision can effect the evolution of the whole (ie, a single person shouting left at an intersection might get all 6,000 people to turn).

perhaps this belief that "individual insignificance implies individual irrelevance" is a product of conservative-democracy thinking?

another way of thinking about it: i dont deny the insignificance of the individual, i just take it one step further to recognize the insignificance of the whole. yes i am insignificant in the universe, but so is humanity as a whole, thus the insignificance of the self is irrelevant in feeble attempts to argue that the individual cannot have a relevant affect on history.

please note, im using "significant" and "relevant" in specific and perhaps non-standard ways in order to differentiate two orthogonal concepts. by "significant" i probably mean more like "important." to make matters worse, i use "relevant" is multiple contexts, as a idea, and as a description (ie, talking about the irrelevance of irrelevance). sorry.