Role of the individual in the group

Sane, for the time being

Ever notice a hedge, or any unpruned tree-shrub with a shoot sticking way up beyond the rest of the shrub? People are like that too. This story has been recounted more than once in more than one country. 

In Hungry, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, after studying the matter of childbirth fever, suggested washing hands would be advantageous.

The reason for doing this was his undoing. Purpose for washing hands was because there was something dangerous on everyone's hands that was  too small to be seen. In France, I think it was, a doctor proposing there was something too small to be seen was dropped from the staff as a weirdo. Sounded sensible at the time. Do the names Pasteur or Lister of Listerine strike any bells here? 

Semmelweis however was famous for saving lives. But he was committed to an insane "asylum" with maybe the early onset of Alzheimer's where he was "beaten by the staff and died from his injuries, it has been reported. 

Time being

In their defense my memory reminds me of the coiner of the most important moral principle of the individual, self preservation,  Herbert Spencer, who maintained that the majority is not always wrong.  Only an individual can shoot beyond the group. Only the group establishes the view of sanity in the group. So if the individual shoot gets ahead of the group too far, they are seen as insane. The group thinks he is insane because they, the group are sane, at least for the time being considered so.

In the this our country, the total wording of the God based Constitution completely defends the individual from the group. This may explain why this country was the first, and to my knowledge the only, government to abolish slavery as well as avoid the "unavoidable" 1800's Malthus view of impending starvation. Correct at the time, but incorrect in time. As for slavery, unfortunately human trafficking today seems to suggest completely abolishing slavery "unavoidable".