link to original reddit post by /u/ViralInfectious
There is no collective.
We are individual human beings and we each make our own decisions. You can not be called a hero because you come in to work and do the bare minimum when your country is doing well economically. You can not be called a villain because you choose not to wear a mask and your country is not doing well with some pandemic or another.
When it comes to schooling or employment it is on you the individual to do what you need to get what you want. you choose how and what and when to study. You choose how hard and smart to work. You choose how you eat to get the physical nourishment you want. You choose how you exercise in your daily life to have the physical strength and stamina you want.
It is always a choice you the individual make. The costs of doing what you do can not be paid by others. The rewards of doing what you do can not be enjoyed by others. Though the government will try to tell you that you should be able to do anything you want for school and work any job you like and get the same rewards and costs as anyone else... That is immoral.
There never was a collective.
Whether it is an enslaved people or an organized army where the men chose to sign up - they are still individuals and not a collective. We are individual organisms with individual brains. We each make decisions every moment of every day and the actions we make come from within; even if social pressure wants us to act a certain way, we can act differently.
There never will be a collective. (Except in some technological dystopia... more on that later)
No matter how authoritarian a state or how bloated its legal system, we continue being individual brains which each have a choice to make any time we perform an action. "Just following orders" is not and never has been an excuse for acting immoral.
It is immoral to eat whatever you see all your life and then expect others to pay for your healthcare when you find out all the chocolate bars and slurpees you had in your 20s actually do impact your body negatively later in life.
It is immoral to spend on whatever you want and then expect others to subsidize your lifestyle when you have no savings later, nothing to spend on emergencies.
It is immoral to go out and chill and relax in your teens and 20s and then expect to have the same expensive lifestyle as others who spent less time drinking beers at the bars and more time working late nights.
It is immoral to ask the state to confiscate from those who have to subsidize those who have not. It doesn't matter if you were born into nothing and another was born into a lot. They probably did so because their parents, their grandparents, and probably the rest of their family were able to plan some of their future. That doesn't mean you get to rob them now because you don't find that fair. You have a chance to make that happen for your descendants. If you don't want to put in the effort you do not deserve the rewards. Sacrifice and risk have payoffs and you must endure and take them to get the results.
Only in a technological dystopia when you can be physically prevented from acting and controlled in what you think will this be any different. And we are nowhere near achieving that kind of overwhelming nightmare. You can not export your bad decisions to others. There will always be resistance to charlatans that tell you otherwise, no matter which style of hat they wear or what they claim as their source of power.