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Author Topic: What is even an "individualistic society"?  (Read 4485 times)

Sefiru

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What is even an "individualistic society"?
« on: November 17, 2016, 07:07:13 pm »
This is going to be a bit rambly, but here goes. A while back, I read a post here (can't find it now) that mentioned "an individualistic society" as a reason why people wouldn't form religious groups. That thread went in another direction, but ever since then I've pondered, off and on:

What does the phrase "individualistic society" even mean? It would be pretty hard to have a society composed entirely of loners, so how would one distinguish an individualistic society from a non-individualistic society?

How would you define an "individualistic" society?
Do you live in one?
If you don't, what is your culture like?
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MeadowRae

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2016, 08:46:51 pm »
Quote from: Sefiru;199175
This is going to be a bit rambly, but here goes. A while back, I read a post here (can't find it now) that mentioned "an individualistic society" as a reason why people wouldn't form religious groups. That thread went in another direction, but ever since then I've pondered, off and on:

What does the phrase "individualistic society" even mean? It would be pretty hard to have a society composed entirely of loners, so how would one distinguish an individualistic society from a non-individualistic society?

How would you define an "individualistic" society?
Do you live in one?
If you don't, what is your culture like?

 
I feel like I straddle the line between communal and individualistic. Where I live,  my generation is grappling with that.  For my parents generation and before,  their society was largely communal. The burdens and problems of one family were the burdens and problemsof the entire community. As an example, my grandparents lost a barn in a storm, and their neighbors helped them rebuild it. No insurance company was called. No money exchanged.

The benefits of living in a community like this was that your external needs are always met. No one paid for childcare, you didn't have to worry about your car breaking down (you could borrow one or carpool), and generally benefitted from the skillset of the community. I had an uncle who fixed cars, an Aunt that made wedding cakes, an uncle who was an electrician, etc.

The downside of that is that you must conform. Show up at every holiday, pretend to believe the same as we do, make sure to pay your respects to the elders, dress right, act right, do right. As a little girl I was told that I was "to be seen, not heard." I have aunts and female cousins who literally just vote for who their husband/father tells them to.

The price of individualism is high. My responsibilities became my own out of choice in my early twenties. Stuff is expensive. Insurance, rent, daycare, etc. That's what we pay as individuals who don't "know someone. "

Sorry that was really long. I didn't realize I'd thought about this a lot, too
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Faemon

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2016, 10:40:19 pm »
Quote from: Sefiru;199175
What does the phrase "individualistic society" even mean?

I don't know, but I'm going to stab it anyway.

Quote
It would be pretty hard to have a society composed entirely of loners

And human society isn't what I imagine the collective psychology of, say, insect colonies to be, just with media representations of a "hive mind" as perfectly harmonized and synchronic, in contrast to the humans of the story: so, just offering that as another pole.

Quote
so how would one distinguish an individualistic society from a non-individualistic society?

I think it depends on the individual you ask, what the word means to each of them, especially whoever consolidated or disseminated the term.

Or, the definition really relies on the most unanimous agreement to which aspects of the definition. That's another approach too!

:p

Quote
How would you define an "individualistic" society? Do you live in one? If you don't, what is your culture like?

I suppose individualism depends on honoring the personal agency and standpoint of another, with the goodwill that they'd extend the same to you, and step three is all celebratory diversity. Thing is, I don't think anybody lives in one, really, if the extreme of that is "a society composed entirely of loners"; funny thing, I caught a documentary channel featurette about Himalayan hermits, which announced the estimated hermit population there to be around 200 people or something. And I was like, what? The hermit population is always 1 person. That's the point of being a hermit person. They must have measured it wrong.

On the one hand, yeah, I can recognize that each person I meet has a different life experience and reasoning than I do, and they are different from one another. I believe it can also have something to do with individuation, though, so we can say all we want that everybody is unique like everybody else, but...there are people who are going to always accommodate for absolutely everybody else, and that might be a developmental thing that's common to humans as a species at a certain phase of life, or there's a personal process that's individually paced so it's not just like: "You are thirteen years old to the day according to this calendar, so: At this moment, you should have magically awakened all the knowledge of what value system you're committed to, the levels of reasoning that you prioritize, your lifelong convictions, and be able to form an opinion that will be seriously considered by society not that you even care because you're so emotionally secure." Swearing under spoiler tag.
Spoiler:  
(That isn't like an asshole, in that everyone has an opinion, like everyone has an asshole, but some are full of shit.)


That doesn't happen so simply, but then again if it did then individuation would be a collective norm, and it wouldn't be individualistic?

So, to my mind, it's conceptually complicated. I liked this link about how radical self-reliance is psychologically damaging, and this blog entry about bodies of consent, and this webcomic about personal sovereignty intersecting with systemic oppression/stereotyping as applies to Western women who wear makeup.

And in my own life, as in whether I live in an individualistic culture, uhh, hrmm...I grew up around Southeast Asia, in the places that don't exactly have a prominent influence of old Empire, and when it comes to having very rare representation reflected back at me...it's personally easy for me to shake off because I've lived here and know it's not like that, that we're Other and therefore Vaguely All The Same to more hegemonically powerful cultures. I see diversity in my community, because Southeast Asia gets a demographic mix, but I also sense the tribalism and stereotyping. Individually, I have a friend who gets downright outraged about it, like forty minutes of ranting, which I personally can't manage, and even though we look so much alike that my own mother didn't notice I was missing when this friend borrowed my jacket and went to breakfast with my family while I overslept and I've been accidentally almost-caressed intimately by this friend's partner...we're very different people temperamentally, and I feel that our society recognizes that much about us.

At the same time, I got more than a bit of what's probably culture shock when being taught by Western teachers and having Western classmates, with regards to what I perceived to be their general relationship with personal space, authority figures, common courtesies, roles, rights, and responsibilities in society. I had a sentence in mind to describe the general differences I'd perceived, but I write in run-ons so long that I forgot what the beginning of this sentence was supposed to be. Sorry, it's probably not coming back. In any case, my standpoint's probably also influenced by having at least a handful of nascent mental illness(es?), gender and romantic orientation that I've found a challenge to explain but very easy to be if no one asks, complexities of postcolonial relative personhood, and just an upbringing so traumatically peculiar that even I'm flabbergasted sometimes at how any of those unmentionable peculiarities were ever necessary.

I'm working through them with a therapist. Ask again in another decade or so and maybe-hopefully I'll be in a good enough place to be working through them with a socioanthropologist-philosopher. Or we'd all find something clarifying in this thread, yay for forums.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2016, 10:41:48 pm by Faemon »
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Sefiru

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2016, 06:14:24 pm »
Quote from: MeadowRae;199182
I feel like I straddle the line between communal and individualistic. Where I live,  my generation is grappling with that.  

 
I found this really interesting because a lot of the time the US is presented as a kind of poster child of individualism; I suppose, like everything, that the differences are more regional.

I am also having thinky thoughts about the costs of individualism vs conformity, but they are nonverbal at the moment, alas.
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Sefiru

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #4 on: November 23, 2016, 06:56:39 pm »
Quote from: Faemon;199185

At the same time, I got more than a bit of what's probably culture shock when being taught by Western teachers and having Western classmates, with regards to what I perceived to be their general relationship with personal space, authority figures, common courtesies, roles, rights, and responsibilities in society. I had a sentence in mind to describe the general differences I'd perceived, but I write in run-ons so long that I forgot what the beginning of this sentence was supposed to be.


Quoting this bit in the hope of shaking something loose. :)

I think part of the problem with discussing this is that any given person usually only lives in one society, and thus it's difficult to notice differences in things like this.

I'm going to cherry-pick a few things you said:

Quote

I suppose individualism depends on honoring the personal agency and standpoint of another, with the goodwill that they'd extend the same to you, and step three is all celebratory diversity.

I can recognize that each person I meet has a different life experience and reasoning than I do, and they are different from one another.  

we're very different people temperamentally, and I feel that our society recognizes that much about us.


What I find interesting about these statements is that you're describing individualism in a culture in terms of awareness of people's uniqueness, whereas I would have described it in terms of performance of one's uniqueness. That is, on how likely people are to act in non-conforming ways, and how far.

That's the sort of thing I was hoping to turn up in this thread. Unless I'm totally misreading you, of course.

Quote
Or we'd all find something clarifying in this thread, yay for forums.


:D:
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Darkhawk

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #5 on: November 23, 2016, 08:17:27 pm »
Quote from: Sefiru;199175
What does the phrase "individualistic society" even mean? It would be pretty hard to have a society composed entirely of loners, so how would one distinguish an individualistic society from a non-individualistic society?

 
This is actually a difficult subject and the question makes me wish I'd done the timeloop where I went back to college and got the sociology/anthropology formal studies I want done. :P

First of all: it's a spectrum, and beyond a spectrum, it's several of them.

For example, resource distribution: what level of disparity between the best-off and the worst-off does the society find tolerable?  Are there minimum standards that the community feels obligated to uphold for the good of all?

How involved is each member of the community in contributing to those things which are essential to the community as a whole?  Do events tend to affect some people and not others?

Where does the emphasis go on individual attainment vs. the contributors that supported the individual in remarkable achievment?  If a person becomes ill, disabled, or incapacitated is their survival treated as their individual problem or something for the entire community to solve?

How large is the circle upon which each person's well-being can depend?  Their immediate family?  Family and friends?  The neighborhood?  The larger region?  How broadly is the weight distributed?

I read a fascinating little book recently called Tribe, which is about... a bunch of things, including PTSD in veterans.  And the author noted that in many tribal societies, even non-combatants are participants in ongoing warfare, not just because they are at risk, but because the entire society must gear up and reshape itself in order to keep the warrior subset healthy, supplied, and cared for.  And then, when the war ended, the entire society shifted back to a peacetime footing, and everyone reintegrated together.  This is alien to me as someone who grew up in the US, and not in a military family.  All of that stuff is segregated off from my experience.

So: how much of the experience of running a society is segregated off from what fraction of its people?  How much of the experience of its defense, of the production of its food, of the maintenance of its infrastructure, the production of its laws, and so on, is just outside people's knowledge?  Not that people necessarily do those things themselves, but how much has specialisation produced separation?

These are the sorts of questions that are relevant.  I don't have answers, I just have piles of analysis notions.
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MeadowRae

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2016, 09:51:46 am »
Quote from: Sefiru;199347
I found this really interesting because a lot of the time the US is presented as a kind of poster child of individualism; I suppose, like everything, that the differences are more regional.

I am also having thinky thoughts about the costs of individualism vs conformity, but they are nonverbal at the moment, alas.

 
I think in parts of the US that get the most airtime (New York, DC, LA, etc) this is the case. For rural Areas, not so much. The area that people have dubbed the Bible Belt and Appalachia tend to have a different value system.

Also, the United States is freakin huge and biologically and demographically diverse. Regional differences abound. Is it like that in Canada?

On a side note, it has always fascinated me how many accents there are in the U.K. Like, the country looks so small, but no two British people I've met sound the same.
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MeadowRae

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2016, 10:05:52 am »
Quote from: Darkhawk;199356
 

I read a fascinating little book recently called Tribe, which is about... a bunch of things, including PTSD in veterans.  And the author noted that in many tribal societies, even non-combatants are participants in ongoing warfare, not just because they are at risk, but because the entire society must gear up and reshape itself in order to keep the warrior subset healthy, supplied, and cared for.  And then, when the war ended, the entire society shifted back to a peacetime footing, and everyone reintegrated together.  This is alien to me as someone who grew up in the US, and not in a military family.  All of that stuff is segregated off from my experience.

So: how much of the experience of running a society is segregated off from what fraction of its people?  How much of the experience of its defense, of the production of its food, of the maintenance of its infrastructure, the production of its laws, and so on, is just outside people's knowledge?  Not that people necessarily do those things themselves, but how much has specialisation produced separation?

These are the sorts of questions that are relevant.  I don't have answers, I just have piles of analysis notions.

 
I work with veterans often (though indirectly) and sometimes my job offers information pertaining to veterans so we can do our jobs better. We study suicide prevention and causes, mostly. (More US soldiers die from suicide than combat, so any help is welcomed.) Psychologists are now saying that the PTSD isn't the primary reason for suicide, that it's actually the isolation and loneliness of their experience. Basically, they come back and the comradery of their fellow veterans is replaced by coldness, and they find it difficult to relate to people.

Our emotional intelligence as a society is pretty poor. Is that caused by individualism, too?
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Sefiru

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2016, 06:42:18 pm »
Quote from: Darkhawk;199356
This is actually a difficult subject and the question makes me wish I'd done the timeloop where I went back to college and got the sociology/anthropology formal studies I want done. :P


Quote
For example, resource distribution: what level of disparity between the best-off and the worst-off does the society find tolerable?  Are there minimum standards that the community feels obligated to uphold for the good of all?

How involved is each member of the community in contributing to those things which are essential to the community as a whole?  Do events tend to affect some people and not others?


I guess there's also the question of how resources are distributed (taxes? personal gifts? Communal property?, and how obligations are enforced (laws? Social pressure? Religious tenets?).
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Sefiru

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2016, 06:45:40 pm »
Quote from: MeadowRae;199390

Also, the United States is freakin huge and biologically and demographically diverse. Regional differences abound. Is it like that in Canada?


Probably; I've lived in basically the same region all my life, so I can't say from personal experience.
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Sefiru

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2016, 07:03:53 pm »
Quote from: MeadowRae;199391

Our emotional intelligence as a society is pretty poor. Is that caused by individualism, too?


I suspect they're linked, though it's difficult to say which way the causality goes.

Plus the mythology of the Independent Frontiersman plays into it, too. And the suspicion of Communism and anything that vaguely resembles it. (This is more than just "individualism"; this is a segment of American society that fears community, which is bound to have harmful consequences.)
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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #11 on: November 29, 2016, 09:58:59 am »
Quote from: Sefiru;199407
Plus the mythology of the Independent Frontiersman plays into it, too. And the suspicion of Communism and anything that vaguely resembles it. (This is more than just "individualism"; this is a segment of American society that fears community, which is bound to have harmful consequences.)

 
And levels of what community is.

Richard Beck is on this at the moment (Christian theologian whose blog I read).  I commend to your attention:  http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-fractured-republic-part-2.html
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Yei

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #12 on: November 29, 2016, 06:11:30 pm »
Quote from: Sefiru;199175
This is going to be a bit rambly, but here goes. A while back, I read a post here (can't find it now) that mentioned "an individualistic society" as a reason why people wouldn't form religious groups. That thread went in another direction, but ever since then I've pondered, off and on:

What does the phrase "individualistic society" even mean? It would be pretty hard to have a society composed entirely of loners, so how would one distinguish an individualistic society from a non-individualistic society?

How would you define an "individualistic" society?
Do you live in one?
If you don't, what is your culture like?

 
I think individualism is something dreamed up by corporate interest to get us to buy cigarettes, jeans, and other consumed objects.

Ok, that was a little facetious, but I do think that concepts of individualism do have a link to corporate consumerism, at least during the current-era. Which has a certain kind of irony, I think.

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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #13 on: November 29, 2016, 06:14:28 pm »
Quote from: Darkhawk;199509
And levels of what community is.

Richard Beck is on this at the moment (Christian theologian whose blog I read).  I commend to your attention:  http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-fractured-republic-part-2.html


A most illuminating article! Here's a link to Slacktivist discussing a similar topic.
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Re: What is even an "individualistic society"?
« Reply #14 on: November 30, 2016, 09:58:22 am »
Quote from: Yei;199522
I think individualism is something dreamed up by corporate interest to get us to buy cigarettes, jeans, and other consumed objects.

Ok, that was a little facetious, but I do think that concepts of individualism do have a link to corporate consumerism, at least during the current-era. Which has a certain kind of irony, I think.

 
I agree that corporations capitalized (ha, capitalism) on the individualism trend, but I see this as beginning more with the Romanticism in America. Transcendentalists, though I love them, contributed to this as well.

I think dualistic thinking also contributes. The "All or Nothing" "This OR That" approach. You are either an individual, or you have no identity at all. Each side has a perjorative for it. If you participate with the community you are a "sheep." If you carve and individualistic identity for yourself, you are called "a special snowflake." Of course, I'm describing the extremes on both ends, but I think the rhetoric exists in a minor way in most places. We've lost (or perhaps never had) our sense of balance.
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