Collective can not be treated as an individual because individuals do not below to a single collective, and collective is an abstract generalization of their knowledge.

Therefore collective guilt, a concept often used in journalism and politics, is false and its application is an error.

It is possible that when high level of pressure is applied on many individuals that they align their goals more and more with collective goals. However, this situation is often manufactured by centralized power using mass media and economic sanctions. The same individuals, when pressure is released, quickly give a lower priority to collective goals and focus on individual goals.

For individuals, collective is a source of intelligence and knowledge. They outsource some of their cognitive tasks to a collective and evaluate only results. Individuals have a very high capacity in evaluation of collective intelligence results, however their decisions appear poor to those who do not share their resources, pressures, and overall situation.