There is a worm in the apple of American individualism (or more broadly in Enlightenment individualism per se). Most people are just not that well suited to individualism in its positive sense - they want to fit in, they want boundaries and they want leaders. So you get our post-1960s paradox.....groupthink, copycat 'individualism'.
When I was a young man, my father and I used to have drunken arguments about things like this. And I remember one time saying to him in exasperation "so when did it all go wrong then according to you Dad?" I expected him to say something like The Beatles or Socialism but his answer took me completely by surprise...."The French Revolution" he said. Now huge good things have come from The Enlightenment but that worm has nevertheless also been eating away now for 200+ years....and we are living in the hollow shell.
" 'so when did it all go wrong then according to you Dad?' '.... 'The French Revolution' "
Although the v1.0 of modern revolutions quickly went to shit, it made us conscious of "liberté, égalité, fraternité", which survives to this day as the French national motto. Although it is an epitome of terse idealism, in a brilliant stroke it nevertheless connected 3 true "poles", respectively, for popular rule: action (the Right, as freedom) + reaction (the Left, counterweight to the Right, as fairness/"equality") + its context/matrix (the culture/nation).
A dialectic of the first two persistently winds through all modern politics, waxing and waning. Unfortunately, the two sides presenting themselves, I'd say unnecessarily, at war with each other rather than aiming for balance with each other.
It's great that a picture of John Wayne is used above. I just watched The Quiet Man, arguably the one Ford/Wayne production where the lesson of the film has to do with learning limits on one's ambitions by way of fitting into a culture. Tellingly, Wayne's character is an American who goes to Ireland to recapture his family's past.
If there's one objection I have to the column above, it's this:
"For most of American history, our national identity was based in large part on White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP) identity. Thankfully this is no longer the case"
Why "thankfully"?! Cards on table, I'm a Catholic married to an Asian Buddhist. But neither this fact, nor the fact of millions of others like me, stop America from being a WASP country; its very soul, its social, political, and economic functions are WASP. And a person who asks for it to be otherwise is essentially wishing death on it, in the same manner that a person who wishes endless organ transplants on a sick patient is willing that patient's death.
Fukuyama's use of "irrational" gives too much away. Is the recognition of one's limits, and a resolution to work within them "irrational?" This is the case only if you think boundless choice is "reason." But if a nation has a nature, if a nation has a soul, then bringing it to a better condition *is* the task of reason, and this requires some sense of limitation -- again, something lacking in the American ethos. I think it can be learned, though. It has to be, or we're through.
I just read a piece about how parts of the South are being torn apart by the huge influx of migrants, both foreign and domestic. The default American answer to this problem has always been "run!" or "start anew elsewhere!"... the idea permeates our culture, highbrow and low, as if there will always be a new, verdant, virgin meadow awaiting. This, as much as protestantism or the enlightenment, is a big part of why Americans maintain such an outsized sense of the individual. I think it also accounts in part for the imbecilic reactions to Trump's efforts at deportation.
There is some poll data showing that Americans may be learning the error of that view. I pray it's true. Do we follow Wayne to chase down more Comanches? Or do we finally seek out our bride at Innisfree? Let's hope it's the latter.
"If there's one objection I have to the column above, it's this:
"For most of American history, our national identity was based in large part on White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP) identity. Thankfully this is no longer the case"
Why "thankfully"?"
That was also my reaction. That statement seems antithetical to the author's position against too much individualism.
I'm reminded here of Fischer's "Albion's Seed." FWIW, I've always been partial to the Scots-Irish "Borderers" component of American culture, because I've seen it work as the most successful assimilator of other white identities.
I come from the land of "Deer Hunter" weddings. Nordics, Slavs, WASPs, Meds... we all got a heaping helping of "pioneers" talk at school and it worked: people invested in their homes, their gardens, their cars, their communities with their own hands. I don't think most people now realize just how much deindustrialization was fatal to all of that. Younger people can't -- they didn't see it. American identity to them must seem like a distant and weird thing -- at least any identity transcending consumerism.
So you had the disconnect of a fairly perceptive analysis that recognizes--correctly, I think--that public performance, social posturing for "likes"--is a big part of the growth rampant and unconstrained individualism, and in the middle of it you have what amounts to a blatant appeal for "likes" and acceptance for saying the "right" thing.
I read your article and I found it both thought-provoking and timely. Your analysis of the balance between individualism and the need for robust institutions is a crucial discussion in today's society. I particularly appreciated your insights into how our national identity and social institutions shape individual freedoms and responsibilities. Your call for a rediscovery of communal values and a re-emphasis on formative institutions resonates deeply.
Thank you for your compelling arguments and for shedding light on such an important issue.
Individualism is not selfishness; to the contrary, it's the least selfish ideology there is.
Individualism respects the rights of every individual, even those we dislike, whereas alternatives squash the rights of others (especially the disliked) in the name of claimed "greater goods". Invariably, the "greater goods" are self-serving, which means that their advocates are elevating themselves above others in ways that individualists do not.
We do ourselves a great disservice by conflating individualism with selfishness.
Individualism and social atomism in their libertarian senses are completely compatible with all desirable aspects of collectivism, communitarianism, and altruism (but there is no room for so-called “democracy”). It is unconstrained collectivism that is the problem. And that is what this article is in effect advocating.
You write: " A Yougov poll in February of this year found that only 16% of Americans would volunteer for military service if “a new world war broke out and the U.S. was under imminent threat of invasion.” This finding is profoundly discouraging, but perhaps it should come as no surprise."
Why is it "profoundly discouraging" that more than 40 million Americans would volunteer to defend the US in war? When there are currently less than 3 million people in the US military?
I enjoyed the article on what I consider to be a serious societal problem in the United States: runaway individualism.
I made a note a few years ago while thinking about this subject; I believe it has some relevance here.. 'The trait of individualism within the white race is admirable when it produces great advancements in science, engineering, math, art, architecture, medicine and quality of life...making Western Civilization the greatest. But when individualism facilitates white self-hate, it is pathetic.'
I don't think unconstrained individualism is the problem. I think it is moral relativism that is shredding the fabric of a stable and thriving society. This is not limited to the individual but manifests everywhere including institutions. Great article though!
I just read today an aside in de Tocqueville. Let me paraphrase it. "Morality requires faith."
There's something in that because common morality needs an external authority to legitimize it. This is where a deity comes in. And if the tenets of the faith are shared by many, they're therefore constrained by this shared morality.
And sects that share similar tenets are similarly compatible, in terms of a moral code.
Then you have areligious folks like me, who have made up our own codes. Mine are almost identical to most mainstream Christian sects, but derived independently because I had no religious instruction, at all.
But other people like me, areligious or irreligous people, may not come to the same moral conclusions I did, and so you can have moral relativism at its worst.
I think if someone is not religious, the commandments 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 align with our natural conscience; we instinctively know they are just and would not want others to violate them against us. Those are values I believe healthy parents would want to teach their children.
We forgot the “rugged” part of American individualism, meaning an individualism that is not coddled or subsidized by the rest of society. What we have today is facile individualism.
That is the constraint. People left alone own must form communal ties *out of necessity.* This in turn limits the extent of individualism because at the end of the day, people need each other.
Yes. This type requires external sustenance--a surfeit of resources--to allow it to make repeated anti-social mistakes and not suffer catastrophic consequences.
This can only happen in a polity that has super-abundant surpluses of almost everything, such that no conformance or compromise is needed to obtain subsistence.
America is suffering from a lack of individualism not too much. Descending into collectivistic concepts You now have an anti racist, anti religious and anti national state. Consensuses in bureaucracies rule, not the hearts of Americans. We do not love our neighbour but use the cold, stealing, state apparatus to do it for us.
This is why the ultimate individualist is some genial Christian entrepneur that employs 200 people and gives generously to charity. While the ultimate collectivist is some unpleasant spendthrift marxist professor that lives begging donations off his family and friends for his gambling addiction or lifestyle creep.
There is a worm in the apple of American individualism (or more broadly in Enlightenment individualism per se). Most people are just not that well suited to individualism in its positive sense - they want to fit in, they want boundaries and they want leaders. So you get our post-1960s paradox.....groupthink, copycat 'individualism'.
When I was a young man, my father and I used to have drunken arguments about things like this. And I remember one time saying to him in exasperation "so when did it all go wrong then according to you Dad?" I expected him to say something like The Beatles or Socialism but his answer took me completely by surprise...."The French Revolution" he said. Now huge good things have come from The Enlightenment but that worm has nevertheless also been eating away now for 200+ years....and we are living in the hollow shell.
" 'so when did it all go wrong then according to you Dad?' '.... 'The French Revolution' "
Although the v1.0 of modern revolutions quickly went to shit, it made us conscious of "liberté, égalité, fraternité", which survives to this day as the French national motto. Although it is an epitome of terse idealism, in a brilliant stroke it nevertheless connected 3 true "poles", respectively, for popular rule: action (the Right, as freedom) + reaction (the Left, counterweight to the Right, as fairness/"equality") + its context/matrix (the culture/nation).
A dialectic of the first two persistently winds through all modern politics, waxing and waning. Unfortunately, the two sides presenting themselves, I'd say unnecessarily, at war with each other rather than aiming for balance with each other.
It's great that a picture of John Wayne is used above. I just watched The Quiet Man, arguably the one Ford/Wayne production where the lesson of the film has to do with learning limits on one's ambitions by way of fitting into a culture. Tellingly, Wayne's character is an American who goes to Ireland to recapture his family's past.
If there's one objection I have to the column above, it's this:
"For most of American history, our national identity was based in large part on White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP) identity. Thankfully this is no longer the case"
Why "thankfully"?! Cards on table, I'm a Catholic married to an Asian Buddhist. But neither this fact, nor the fact of millions of others like me, stop America from being a WASP country; its very soul, its social, political, and economic functions are WASP. And a person who asks for it to be otherwise is essentially wishing death on it, in the same manner that a person who wishes endless organ transplants on a sick patient is willing that patient's death.
Fukuyama's use of "irrational" gives too much away. Is the recognition of one's limits, and a resolution to work within them "irrational?" This is the case only if you think boundless choice is "reason." But if a nation has a nature, if a nation has a soul, then bringing it to a better condition *is* the task of reason, and this requires some sense of limitation -- again, something lacking in the American ethos. I think it can be learned, though. It has to be, or we're through.
I just read a piece about how parts of the South are being torn apart by the huge influx of migrants, both foreign and domestic. The default American answer to this problem has always been "run!" or "start anew elsewhere!"... the idea permeates our culture, highbrow and low, as if there will always be a new, verdant, virgin meadow awaiting. This, as much as protestantism or the enlightenment, is a big part of why Americans maintain such an outsized sense of the individual. I think it also accounts in part for the imbecilic reactions to Trump's efforts at deportation.
There is some poll data showing that Americans may be learning the error of that view. I pray it's true. Do we follow Wayne to chase down more Comanches? Or do we finally seek out our bride at Innisfree? Let's hope it's the latter.
"If there's one objection I have to the column above, it's this:
"For most of American history, our national identity was based in large part on White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP) identity. Thankfully this is no longer the case"
Why "thankfully"?"
That was also my reaction. That statement seems antithetical to the author's position against too much individualism.
I'm reminded here of Fischer's "Albion's Seed." FWIW, I've always been partial to the Scots-Irish "Borderers" component of American culture, because I've seen it work as the most successful assimilator of other white identities.
I come from the land of "Deer Hunter" weddings. Nordics, Slavs, WASPs, Meds... we all got a heaping helping of "pioneers" talk at school and it worked: people invested in their homes, their gardens, their cars, their communities with their own hands. I don't think most people now realize just how much deindustrialization was fatal to all of that. Younger people can't -- they didn't see it. American identity to them must seem like a distant and weird thing -- at least any identity transcending consumerism.
Yes, same here. It *jumped* out.
So you had the disconnect of a fairly perceptive analysis that recognizes--correctly, I think--that public performance, social posturing for "likes"--is a big part of the growth rampant and unconstrained individualism, and in the middle of it you have what amounts to a blatant appeal for "likes" and acceptance for saying the "right" thing.
I read your article and I found it both thought-provoking and timely. Your analysis of the balance between individualism and the need for robust institutions is a crucial discussion in today's society. I particularly appreciated your insights into how our national identity and social institutions shape individual freedoms and responsibilities. Your call for a rediscovery of communal values and a re-emphasis on formative institutions resonates deeply.
Thank you for your compelling arguments and for shedding light on such an important issue.
Individualism is not selfishness; to the contrary, it's the least selfish ideology there is.
Individualism respects the rights of every individual, even those we dislike, whereas alternatives squash the rights of others (especially the disliked) in the name of claimed "greater goods". Invariably, the "greater goods" are self-serving, which means that their advocates are elevating themselves above others in ways that individualists do not.
We do ourselves a great disservice by conflating individualism with selfishness.
Individualism and social atomism in their libertarian senses are completely compatible with all desirable aspects of collectivism, communitarianism, and altruism (but there is no room for so-called “democracy”). It is unconstrained collectivism that is the problem. And that is what this article is in effect advocating.
https://jclester.substack.com/p/liberty-in-itself-a-libertarian-viewpoint?utm_source=publication-search
https://jclester.substack.com/p/social-atomism-and-libertarianism?utm_source=publication-search
https://jclester.substack.com/p/collectivism-and-libertarianism?utm_source=publication-search
https://jclester.substack.com/p/community-communitarianism-and-libertarianism?utm_source=publication-search
https://jclester.substack.com/p/democracy-a-libertarian-viewpoint?utm_source=publication-search
You write: " A Yougov poll in February of this year found that only 16% of Americans would volunteer for military service if “a new world war broke out and the U.S. was under imminent threat of invasion.” This finding is profoundly discouraging, but perhaps it should come as no surprise."
Why is it "profoundly discouraging" that more than 40 million Americans would volunteer to defend the US in war? When there are currently less than 3 million people in the US military?
I enjoyed the article on what I consider to be a serious societal problem in the United States: runaway individualism.
I made a note a few years ago while thinking about this subject; I believe it has some relevance here.. 'The trait of individualism within the white race is admirable when it produces great advancements in science, engineering, math, art, architecture, medicine and quality of life...making Western Civilization the greatest. But when individualism facilitates white self-hate, it is pathetic.'
The concept of white race itself is collectivistic. It's a departure from individualism.
"The concept of white race itself is collectivistic. It's a departure from individualism."
So is the concept of black, female/male, European/Asian, human/non-human, etc.
What's your point???
I don't think unconstrained individualism is the problem. I think it is moral relativism that is shredding the fabric of a stable and thriving society. This is not limited to the individual but manifests everywhere including institutions. Great article though!
I just read today an aside in de Tocqueville. Let me paraphrase it. "Morality requires faith."
There's something in that because common morality needs an external authority to legitimize it. This is where a deity comes in. And if the tenets of the faith are shared by many, they're therefore constrained by this shared morality.
And sects that share similar tenets are similarly compatible, in terms of a moral code.
Then you have areligious folks like me, who have made up our own codes. Mine are almost identical to most mainstream Christian sects, but derived independently because I had no religious instruction, at all.
But other people like me, areligious or irreligous people, may not come to the same moral conclusions I did, and so you can have moral relativism at its worst.
I think if someone is not religious, the commandments 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 align with our natural conscience; we instinctively know they are just and would not want others to violate them against us. Those are values I believe healthy parents would want to teach their children.
We forgot the “rugged” part of American individualism, meaning an individualism that is not coddled or subsidized by the rest of society. What we have today is facile individualism.
That is the constraint. People left alone own must form communal ties *out of necessity.* This in turn limits the extent of individualism because at the end of the day, people need each other.
"What we have today is facile individualism."
Yes. This type requires external sustenance--a surfeit of resources--to allow it to make repeated anti-social mistakes and not suffer catastrophic consequences.
This can only happen in a polity that has super-abundant surpluses of almost everything, such that no conformance or compromise is needed to obtain subsistence.
America is suffering from a lack of individualism not too much. Descending into collectivistic concepts You now have an anti racist, anti religious and anti national state. Consensuses in bureaucracies rule, not the hearts of Americans. We do not love our neighbour but use the cold, stealing, state apparatus to do it for us.
This is why the ultimate individualist is some genial Christian entrepneur that employs 200 people and gives generously to charity. While the ultimate collectivist is some unpleasant spendthrift marxist professor that lives begging donations off his family and friends for his gambling addiction or lifestyle creep.
You are making the point that today's "unconstrained individualism" is not a commitment but a show for public approval.
And if so, I think you are right.
The concept of a Christian entrepreneur itself is collectivistic. It's a departure from individualism.