J.S. Mill is my kindof guy

I just turned in my Western Civ II paper a few minutes ago which was a focus his work On Liberty. Amazing book, by the way. I'm not even joking. Every time I re-read it, it makes me want to be a libertarian. And that's saying something.

However, this particular time I read it... I felt an overwhelming since of dread.

We're screwed.

As a nation.

As a society.

As a civilization.

Maybe even as a species.

Here is my intro paragraph from an early draft:

In John Stewart Mill’s On Liberty, he envisions a dystopia that will come about if human kind as a whole ceases to value individualism as the chief value of the human experience. He believes that if humans continue to value the opinion of the masses over the importance of difference of opinion, we will quickly be “encroached” with overwhelming uniformity where “all deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it.” (Mill 71). Mill’s concerns over despotism and the forces that crush individualism are as valid today in 2007, as they were when he originally wrote On Liberty in 1859. Moreover, unless we as a human race recognize these concerns and take active steps to value individual differences of opinion, humankind is destined for a dystopian civilization that will make it impossible to do so in the future.

So I wrote that. And then at the end, I interpreted current forces that were crushing individualism...and there is a ton. Mills contention is that when people stop valuing being different, we cease to expand as a species. And, people, we've stopped.

Like Rome, maybe our time has come.

A civilization that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians. (On Liberty, Mill, Ch. 4)

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This is where B pops me upside the head for being a pessimist. I sure hope I'm wrong. Anyone out there? I have no problem being completely off-base with this. I am sure I am in some regards, but seriously how far away are we from 2+2=5?