Individual vs. Collective Action

[Agnapostate]

I'm still a novice in many ways, and I'm curious to know if there's a term for the phenomenon of committing individual action that conflicts with a belief about collective action because of the marginality of that individual action...despite the fact that a collective is an assortment of individuals, and if every individual had the same idea, no collective action would exist.

It's true that a single vote changes nothing, but since people conceive of themselves as individuals, if many people did not vote as a result because they assumed that each one of them was separate from "everyone else," there would be a significant effect in that case. I regularly eat meat despite supporting Singer's utilitarian defense of animal rights because it has already been prepared, and my personal abstinence will not change the nature or extent of animal mistreatment and slaughter, but if everyone abstained, with each person out of the group necessarily conceiving of him or herself as an individual, the market would be crippled.

Is it necessary to deceive people of the value of individual action as a result of this? Moreover, is this a form of cognitive dissonance, moreover?

[CartCollector]

The term for where people are separated from each other and can't work collectively is called atomization. So that describes a part of it.

Actually, now that I think about it some more, the correct term might be diffusion of responsibility. It refers to when people don't do anything because there's a whole bunch of other people that could take action instead of them- the responsibility is diffused amongst the group.

[Dean]

Propaganda of the deed. Its a contested issue here, just do a search for that phrase....