Well...you've got some interesting thoughts here.

I disagree that the purpose of monoliths are for othering. They're natural groupings. Mini populations. Also concepts. If they weren't useful, they wouldn't exist.

Urchling has this saying that she's developed that applies here. She says, "the more people abstract, the more they have to abstract". How this saying she's honed in on is humorous, but what she's remarking on is that every abstract that humans make creates a problem of some sort down the road that must then be resolved by another abstract and now we have a loop error.

I think k that applies to monoliths. Monoliths are an abstract means of thinking about, referring to, etc population data sets, especially in the context that you're talking about.

Then again, perhaps the reason I have less trouble with monoliths is because culturally, my culture uses super plurals. 'Men' never meant every single individual man in the whole world and why would anyone ever think it did. To say so absurdly takes away the manhood of every male who ever existed, even amongst other species of hominids, who do or didn't do whatever it is that's being talked about. It's absurd thinking.

The problem is one of relativity. You have to have a handle on who the speaker is to know the persoexrive of what's being said. That's more or less what you were getting at. That's not hopeless though. Keep in mind, we haven't been a global society for that long or been able to instantaneously communicate across the flobe with anyone for very long. Most of us still tlack the language and therefore the thought processes of dealing with super plurals and being able to shift back and forth with ease.

Cut yourself and the rest of us some slack. We're on a learning curve. House rule #3: We don't get put in trouble when the rules change without a fair chance to adapt so long as we're not being belligerent. That's not fair.

May the House Rules as agreed upon during the Great Parlay of 2008 reign forevermore.

The answer to your angst here is to develop the ability to think of yourself as both an individual and an equal and proportional part of something else and be able to slip back and forth between the two in your thinking and your speech without falling apart at the seams.

I do feel like men are disadvantaged by this because they can't get pregnant. They won't ever physically be part of a 'we' that they will remember and be able to consciously think about.