On community and the individual (rant)

Okay, so I got into a discussion not long ago with some of my fellow regulars on one of my favorite message boards, and the subject of individualism vs. community came up. One poster asserted that only a particular brand of "rugged individualism" allegedly peculiar to the United States was really worth anything and ought to be the model of conduct for people in any nation. Basically (according to this person), the entire reason the U.S. is a successful nation is because its people have traditionally eschewed the idea of the community as a whole being responsible for its members in favor of an "every man for himself" approach.

Needless to say, I took exception to this idea. From my perspective, community is every bit as important as being able to take care of oneself. They're the twin faces of the same coin. I personally would no more want to live in a community where no one did anything for themselves and waited for the community as a whole to do it for them than I would want to live in a world where everyone concentrated solely on themselves to the point where, if they saw someone injured or sick, they would just walk on by and ignore them because it didn't appear pertinent to their own lives. And as for the formative period of the U.S., our "success" as a new country would not have come about were it not for cooperation among its citizens and especially among those most intimately involved in its foundation. A bunch of people concerned only with their own individual selves and unwilling to band together for the common good when necessary is about as likely to create a new nation as a set of Legos strewn around the living room floor are to spontaneously assemble themselves into a miniature replica of the Acropolis.

Human beings are social beings. We don't live solitary lives, staking out territories that we only allow others into for the purposes of mating, like some wild animals do. We live, by and large, in groups. We've been doing that since the beginnings of our species, no matter by what method you may think we had our beginning. Whether we evolved from social animals to be social beings, or whether we were created by a Deity and given the tendency to seek out others of our kind and live with them as some sort of Divine gift, either way there's no getting away from it.

Throughout recorded history and in the various legends of our species, we see time and again that the image of the solitary wanderer, the hermit, and the loner is regarded generally as an aberration of sorts. It is treated as a given across nearly all human cultures that the state of being truly alone is contrary to our norm and our nature and that when it occurs it is usually not permanent - and if it is intentional, it is merely a means to some purpose. The wise hermit leaves the village and goes to his cave to spend his life in contemplation. The prophet wanders into the wilderness to receive his vision. The criminal or the misfit is shunned and driven from society, the support of his fellows withdrawn from him. The fugitive avoids community entanglements out of fear of discovery rather than from personal preference. And the loner who remains in society but not part of it is regarded with suspicion, because his intentions toward the rest of the group are rarely clear and so he is perceived as a possible threat.

Only in America do we for some strange reason make a fetish of individualism such that it eclipses the recognition of our very nature as social beings. We upset the balance and then claim that ours is the intended nature of humanity and that everyone else has it wrong. Even the many among our citizens who purport to follow a religion whose very Scriptures - regarded by the "faithful" as the ultimate and inalterable Word of God Almighty Himself - paint a picture of human community and contain countless admonitions to care for one's neighbors and tend to the needs even of the stranger at one's gates... even many (though thankfully, not all!) of these who allege to be children of God and followers of Christ place the teachings of the cult of individualism above the teachings of their own scriptures to the contrary. Worse yet, some of them then claim that this is how their God intended it to be. Oh, they'll point all manner of judgmental fingers at anyone they perceive as "picking and choosing" among Divine commandments, but if you ask me, that's nothing more than pure projection. Logs and motes, my friends... logs and motes.

Don't get me wrong. Individualism is a good thing, a necessary thing, even a thing to be celebrated, and as much a part of human nature as the need for community. But do not make the mistake of saying, "this one part is the whole nature of man" and discarding all the rest. Individualism is necessary, and so is community, and it is only in striking a healthy balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the community that a harmonious life is even possible. If you are one of those people who cannot abide community and the expectations of mutual aid that are part and parcel of living as a member of one, then by all means feel free to sever your ties and go into the wilderness (assuming you can find any) and live apart. Only remember that if you do, you must then not come running back for help if you get in trouble. Oh, you may indeed receive help due to another's altruism, but you will be in essence stealing that which is not rightfully yours, and don't think that won't come home to roost one day in some form or other. God sees you. Karma knows where you live. Your own conscience may well convict you when you least expect it. You may go to bed one night thinking yourself among the sheep, only to wake up amongst the goats.

(Isn't it amazing how some of the people pushing this whole idea of individualism often profess faith in a religion whose very core tenets involve the idea of caring for one's neighbor as oneself? The dichotomy would be amusing if it weren't so profoundly sad.)

For that matter, even on the American frontier, people pulled together if they were close enough to do so and helped each other out. Good grief, all one has to do is take a look at the total picture of those days to see that tied intimately into the picture of the individual pioneering homesteaders are things like barn-raisings, helping one's neighbor with haying or harvest, and even the image of wagons headed west in a group if for no other reason than the sake of the safety found in numbers, and that was often not the only reason.

Now, at this point in the discussion, a dispute arose about the difference between individuality and individualism. Let's start with a basic primer on the origin and meanings of the words "individuality" and "individualism". At the most basic level, they are synonyms for the quality of being an individual. In that sense, they can be used interchangeably (which I had up until that point done in my exchange with posters that thread).

So let's move on to the additional elements of meaning carried by individualism that individuality does not have. Individualism elevates the quality of being an individual to the level of primacy in the hierarchy of human attributes relating to social interactions, placing all other considerations below it. In this context, it is closely related to (some would say synonymous with) selfishness. In fact, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his 1835 book Democracy In America, described it in terms of its tendency to cause human beings to be concerned solely with themselves and their immediate families, a trend which if it continued unchecked would eventually lead to a decline in society. While I disagree with various of de Tocqueville's related observations in this vein, I cannot fault his logic in extrapolating from a present-day (for him) diminution of concern for one's fellow man to a future in which the vast majority of humanity is disconnected from all but the closest of family and friends and our species descends back down into the sort of raw, primordial eat-or-be-eaten competition from which we have struggled over millennia to lift ourselves. Indeed, a reasonable case may be made that we are seeing some of the fruits of that decline in today's world.

And interestingly enough, on one level I am perhaps not so far from agreement with the individualistic position in that I firmly believe that whenever practicable, human society and especially governments ought to strenuously avoid unduly limiting the rights of the individual to engage in self-determination and to live as he or she sees fit. I am very strongly libertarian in that regard. On the other hand, if society as a whole cannot work to sustain the progress that enables and enhances the enjoyment of such individual liberty in the first place, then what a man may or may not freely do will in fairly short order become uncomfortably circumscribed not by any mechanism of control or expectation on the part of society but rather by the simple reality of what is and is not possible for individuals in an environment of limited resources, limited mobility and limited leisure.