University of Bucharest Review  Vol. II/2012, no. 2 (new series) (M)OTHER NATURE? Inscriptions, Locations, Revolutions 20 Eric Gilder ∗ and Mervyn Hagger ∗ ‘Me and my Shadow’ Reinterpreted: Collectivism Applied to Individualism as a Stereoscopic Overlay Producing an Illusion of Reality Keywords: Individualism; collectivism; reality, human life; illusion; “God” conceptions, bio-power Abstract: Because no human being ever chose to be born, every human being is dependent upon at least one other human being, after the moment of conception until they reach a non-specifiable age of individual survivability. But that phase may not last until it collides with the involuntary boundary line called death. Individualism is therefore (at best) a fleeting possibility to be acquired during a non-impaired period of human life, and its construct thus voids any legitimate claim to it as a “natural” birthright. Most accurately, individualism may be explained in terms of “penumbras” and “emanations” once employed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in writing the 1965 majority Opinion for Griswold v. Connecticut, (381 U.S. 479). Its 1973 maternal companion in Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113) presents a conundrum to dissenters, because their opposition requires atheists to concur that only a “god” has the power to give and take life. Clearly, the planned and unplanned fruits of conception belie a deistic source of life-giving power - while converse biological foes; planetary instability; national Armed Forces; terrorist warriors and self-motivated killers belie supernatural means as causation for the termination of human life. However, self-sustaining sectors within humanity continue to strive towards the idealism of individualism, which in reality only an immortal and almighty entity could possess bio-power, in Foucault’s terminology, thus has both a natural and supra-natural source. When Frank Sinatra and a plethora of other individual singers, each proclaimed that “it was my way” in which they “traveled each and every highway”, they were obviously relating a fiction. Without collectivist collaboration from Paul Anka (who penned those lyrics with Sinatra in mind), 6 there would have been no road for ‘Old Blue Eyes’ to travel within the duration of that song. Although Sinatra also became known as ‘The Chairman’ after he started a record company, he lived his life according to the whims of other people in a collectivist entertainment industry, and yet he was a uniquely individualistic human being within that setting. ∗ Hannam University; South Korea ∗ The John Lilburne Research Institute (for Constitutional Studies); United States of America 6 How Sinatra did it My Way – Guardian Online, Thursday 5 July 2007, at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jul/05/popandrock1 [Accessed: June 28, 2012]