Last week I shared a short post about how individualism is the society killer, in which I said this, “Individualism is the society killer. It is seed of death that sprouts into many other forms of death for a people. It must be rejected. We must overcome this scourge.” If you are very familiar with your science fiction you will know that I was riffing off the famous quote from Frank Herberts Dune, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.”[1] I wrote it this way, because individualism is as poisonous for society as fear is for the individual.
Of course,
not everyone agrees with this, particularly in the West, where individualism,
along with equality, and democracy are considered the highest possibly ideas.
And so my short post got some pushback,
“Individualism has bred this loneliness culture in the modern
West.” I totally and wholeheartedly disagree. Have you ever considered what the
opposite of individualism is? I’ll tell you; it’s totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is where the individual is subservient to the group.
Individualism is where the group supports and encourages the individual. It’s
got nothing to do with loneliness. So what causes loneliness? In general terms
it’s caused by the individual turning away from the group, turning away through
selfishness, narcissism or being outcast from the group. Whatever else, the
point I am trying to make here is that individualism is a good thing, both for
the individual and for society in general.”
I want to
respond to this in some more depth and expand on my post. I have written about
it in other contexts before, but I think it is helpful to explain why individualism
is so poisonous for society. But first I want to define a couple of terms.
Individualism
can be defined as, “the habit or principle of being independent and
self-reliant: "a culture that celebrates individualism and wealth",
or it could be defined as such, “a social theory favouring freedom of action
for individuals over collective or state control: "encouragement has been
given to individualism, free enterprise, and the pursuit of profit."[3]
I would define it simply as the emphasizing of the rights of the individual over
the collective.
What this
person has here called totalitarianism, I would refer to as collectivism. Collectivism
as this person has said is where “the individual is subservient to the group”
or as Bing defines it, “the practice or principle of giving a group priority
over each individual in it: "the Church has criticized the great emphasis
placed on individualism rather than collectivism."[4]
For the last
few decades, or a little more, individualism has been one of the core tenets of
the West, particularly the United States. As one media commentator I heard once
put it, “We must radically assert the rights of the individual, the individual
is supreme.” Some version of that statement has been declared often in Western
media and intellectual thought for some time. That same idea has been repeated
again and again as one of the reasons for the success of the West over the
collectivist East…and therein lies a clue to one of its core problems. Because
the West is no longer, according to many metrics, outpacing the East. And individualism
is one of the reasons this is happening.
Whatever
people’s current ideas about individualism are, the history of this push in
society is well documented. For instance, those who today assert the importance
of individualism likely are not aware that the push for “individuality” or what
we today call “individualism” was advanced by early socialists in their fight
against the family and the church. This kind of thinking can even be traced
back to seminal works such as Milton’s Paradise Lost,
“The totality of the serpent’s compliments and such words
from the narrator indicates, as C. A. Patrides points out, that Eve is
‘prejudiced toward Satan’s arguments’ and ‘partly fallen before she actually
ate the forbidden fruit’, being naturally disposed towards an inappropriate
longing for autonomy and self-apotheosis. Northrop Frye, the influential
scholar of literature, more sympathetically comments: ‘What he [Satan] says
thereby instills in her the notion of her own individuality, somebody in her
own right, herself and not merely an appendage to Adam or to God.’”[5]
Whether or
not Milton was speaking favourably of Eve’s attitude here is up for debate.
What is not debateable is that later socialists and egalitarian activists in
the 18th and 19th centuries saw in Eve the embodiment of
the oppressed individual who was seeking freedom from her oppressors; namely
God and her husband Adam. Individualism was seen as both a sword with which to
strike against the Church and the family, and also as a socialist ideal.
The 19th
century socialist magazine Lucifer[6],
dedicated itself to promoting individualism to inspire feminists to work for
autonomy, rather than to continue to rely on the provision of their husbands,
“… Lucifer’s work is mainly to preach the gospel of
discontent to women, to the mothers and prospective mothers of the human race.
As yet the great masses of women are not awake to the fact that they are
slaves—not conscious of their own degradation as individual human beings.”[7]
What the
socialists refer to here as slavery was actually what most people just called
marriage. Where a man and woman come together before God, to work together for
a common good, where the husband provides and the woman keeps the home.
Socialists have and still do call this slavery. Their solution to this was to find
ways to allow the easy breaking up of the family.
Per Faxneld
in his book Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in
Nineteenth-Century Culture goes to great lengths in his PhD thesis turned
research book, to show how individual expression was a key component of the
socialist movements that inspired the suffragette’s and other early socialists
in their activism against the Church and the family in the West. I share this
here to show how powerfully the tool of individualism was used to break the
most important bonds of Western society, the Church and the family. Many conservatives
are not aware of this, because we live in the world that the socialist victors
created, and often today socialism is seen as synonymous with collectivism. This
was not always the case, and still today many socialists focus on advocating
for “individual rights”.
The truth is
that collectivism and individualism are two extremes which socialists have made
use of in history to bring great harm to society. Many conservatives see these
things as the only two options, as is noted above, “Have you ever considered
what the opposite of individualism is? I’ll tell you; it’s totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is where the individual is subservient to the group.
Individualism is where the group supports and encourages the individual.”
Notice here that this commentator has made a common assertion: there is a dichotomy,
individualism verses totalitarianism (collectivism), and therefore
individualism is good, because it is good verse bad. But not only are there not
just two choices, the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism is a bit
of a false choice.
A society
where all the bonds of relationships have been broken down, that is atomized,
which individualism achieves, is a society that is ripe for the authoritarian
to swoop in and take control over. Individualism places the emphasis on the individual
over any group. The poisonous nature of this ideology can be seen if you look
at it in the context of the family. Individualism says that the woman is more
important than the marriage, or the husband is more important than the family.
Therefore, the individual man or woman must have the right to leave the family
at any time that they determine that there is something better for them outside
of the family. This kind of thinking was anathema in the Christian West, but it
is absolute dogma in our individualistic world and it just happened to be the
individualists of the 19th century, the feminists and socialists,
who were responsible for this change of trajectory. So, however you want to
understand it today, this is how it was conceived of in its early beginnings. And
how it empowers the growth of the state to lord over the individual should be
obvious.
A society
where families fracture is one where disorder increases and the large hand of
the law must increase to compensate. The primary role of the state is order and
really only knows how to do this through force. The more children living out of
the wedlock, the more pressure there is from women voters for the government to
‘do something’, hence welfare increases, which increases the power of the state
in turn again. This cycle has been undermining individual liberty in the West
for well over a century, ironically in the name of individualism.
Great
thinkers in history have observed this before I came along. G.K. Chesterton,
who was not a socialist, observed how the destruction of the family led to
tyranny in his booklet The Superstition of Divorce,
The modern rulers, who are simply the rich men, are really
quite consistent in their attitude to the poor man. It is the same spirit
which takes away his children under the pretence of order, which takes away his
wife under the pretence of liberty. That which wishes, in the words of
the comic song, to break up the happy home, is primarily anxious not to break
up the much more unhappy factory. Capitalism, of course, is at war with the
family, for the same reason which has led to its being at war with the Trade
Union. This indeed is the only sense in which it is true that capitalism is
connected with individualism. Capitalism believes in collectivism for
itself and individualism for its enemies. It desires its victims to be
individuals, or (in other words) to be atoms. For the word atom, in its
clearest meaning (which is none too clear) might be translated as
"individual." If there be any bond, if there be any brotherhood, if
there be any class loyalty or domestic discipline, by which the poor can help
the poor, these emancipators will certainly strive to loosen that bond or lift
that discipline in the most liberal fashion. If there be such a brotherhood,
these individualists will redistribute it in the form of individuals; or in
other words smash it to atoms.
The masters of modern plutocracy know what they are
about. They are making no mistake; they can be cleared of the slander of
inconsistency. A very profound and precise instinct has let them to single out
the human household as the chief obstacle to their inhuman progress. Without
the family we are helpless before the State, which in our modern case is the
Servile State. To use a military metaphor, the family is the only
formation in which the charge of the rich can be repulsed. It is a force that
forms twos as soldiers form fours; and, in every peasant country, has stood in
the square house or the square plot of land as infantry have stood in squares
against cavalry. How this force operates this, and why, I will try to explain
in the last of these articles. But it is when it is most nearly ridden
down by the horsemen of pride and privilege, as in Poland or Ireland, when the
battle grows most desperate and the hope most dark, that men begin to
understand why that wild oath in its beginnings was flung beyond the bonds of
the world; and what would seem as passing as a vision is made permanent as a
vow.”[8]
What Chesterton
calls ‘capitalism’ in this passage here today we might call ‘corporatism’, that
is when wealthy oligarchs and business moguls use their inordinate wealth to
buy off the government law makers to pass laws which favour their particular
business or industry. In this case he was referring to how the wealthy classes
were using their money to influence divorce laws which would make divorce far
easier in England, and therefore, create more workers which they could exploit
in their factories. You can read the rest of his pamphlet if you wish to
understand his argument and context more deeply.
But what he
observes here is powerful for our purposes: the authoritarian state, which is
happy to align with the richest businessmen (today it would be big tech and
pharma) wants people to broken into atomized units, because atomized units are
easier to oppress under collectivist and totalitarian rules. Chesterton is observing
how individualism is often promoted by the powerful for cynical rather than noble
reasons. Individuals are weaker, than family units. Individuals have less
inherent strength than families and are therefore pushed around easier. Family,
however, is powerful, as Chesterton said,
“To use a military metaphor, the family is the only formation
in which the charge of the rich can be repulsed. It is a force that forms twos
as soldiers form fours; and, in every peasant country, has stood in the square
house or the square plot of land as infantry have stood in squares against
cavalry.”
Individualism
is not just the opposite of collectivism, it is also a stage towards collectivism.
Atomization leads to a weakened society that can be pushed around. Individualism
creates a weakened society which is much more prone to the attacks of collectivist
dictators. It is not an accident that the false promises of Karl Marx were most
attractive to the kinds of workers being exploited by the laws the Chesterton
was opposing. The families weakened and broken up by the attacks of corporations
taking over government and passing anti-family laws are the people who are most
likely to find solace in the promises of a big state that says it will fight
the “capitalists”.
This shows
that it is not a choice between individualism and collectivism, it is a choice
between family and two other very bad choices. Family is meant to be the basic
building block of society for a reason. God said it is not good for man to be
alone, because man was not created to live on his own, but with a helper (Gen.
2:18). Human beings are also not meant to find their identity in and of themselves,
but in relation to their God and their family. We are, those who believe at
least, sons and daughters of God, heirs of Christ. We all are in relation to
our family; sons or daughters, fathers or mothers, sisters or brothers, uncles
or aunties, etc, etc. Our identity is not something which is found in and of
itself, but in our relation to our creator and those whom he created us to live
with and amongst. A man is a man, and a woman, is a woman, but we have seen in
our society today that when being a man and a woman is disconnected from the
function of what a man and a woman is that is becomes corrupted and then redefined
as whatever the individual likes to make of it. Which is a grievous error and
terrible evil.
God designed
us to live in families for a reason. And for those who are not able to create
their own literal family he has provided the church, wherein we have spiritual
fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters etc. These twin bulwarks of the
family and the Church are intended to be the basic building blocks of society within
which the individual finds their most important expression and identity and in
which the twin evils of individualism and collectivism are opposed.
So, there is
not just two choices. And individualism is not the force for good that we have often
been told it is. And can you not see this in our society today? The fruit of
individualism is all around us, and the rising creep of totalitarian
collectivism is increasingly revealing itself. God warned us that it is not
good for man to be alone, to think he is self-reliant, that he can define
himself apart from family and the church community. We have not heeded this
warning in the West and many social ills are the result.
List of
References
[5] Faxneld,
Per. Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century
Culture (Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism) (p. 42). Oxford University
Press. Kindle Edition.
[6]
Yes, the magazine was named for the spiritual being the Bible calls Lucifer or
the Devil, but in socialist thought he was reframed as the light-bearer who
brought enlightenment to mankind. This was a direct subversion of the biblical
idea of lucifer being a deceiver.
[7] Faxneld,
Per. Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century
Culture (Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism) (p. 104). Oxford University
Press. Kindle Edition.
[8] Chesterton,
Gilbert Keith. The Superstition of Divorce (pp. 21-22). Jazzybee Verlag. Kindle
Edition.
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