This was the exact insight I had in 1977, after I read the book, Brave New World.
I lived in communist Hungary at the time. I was an award winning architect, the daughter of a statesman, and suddenly I had the insight: the great system, the great idea of “nobody left out” left everyone left out.
There was no room for individual achievement. For individual growth. For being an individual. That wasn’t part of the deal: if you were, you suddenly weren’t part of the everybody, you were the one left out.
Human evolution happens through individual evolution, but in the most advanced, the most prosperous, the most efficient, productive nations people are dumb as a door knob.