Individualist

The individualist. 

What I do and who I am, has nothing to do with you.

What you do and who you are, have nothing to do with me. 

I drink coffee,  you drink tea. I eat fruit, you eat meat.

I’d like tea, but none is left. I’d like meat, but none is left.

What you do affects me. 

Do we only begin to care when what we want, belongs to someone else? The individualist.

The ideology of individualism thrives in the United States more than any other country in the world. We culturally identify with the ideas “it’s my body, its my life, it’s my house, it’s my land and it’s my choice.” When the opposite is actually true. Not many believe the world was not meant to live in an individualistic fashion, when it has for so long. America being founded in individualism has an even harder time operating in the necessary, opposite way.

This idea provokes thoughts like, “If you work hard, you will have success”. To define success in our western culture is typically wealth or financial gain. This prompts another thought that if you are not successful or wealthy, you must not be working hard enough. This way of thinking has no grounds in a world where our individual actions, and choices have an effect on the people around us. It becomes easier or harder for someone else to obtain the “success” we all are striving to achieve, when some have already achieved it.

Only so many can have the white picket fence, suburban home, new car etc, idea that fits the narrative of the American dream. Yet, we still hold beliefs that we all could have this dream and lifestyle if we all worked hard enough. Which is simply not true. Running out of resources like, jobs, money, land, food, water and educational opportunities, all factor in on the health and growth of a community. Eventually the community will hit a plateau if the following are not increased accordingly to the demand. If I were to get a white picket fence, someone else would go without. Supply and demand is necessary for economic growth and health of a community, but is not necessarily a conversational centerpoint when addressing lack of growth in communities. We typically see cuts funding the resources that the community has available to them to grow, whether it is public libraries, schools, hospitals or food markets.

The United States currently being an epicenter for the Covid 19 pandemic, gives a clear example of the toxicity of the individualist culture. This moral compass has only continued to point the country in the wrong direction. We hear a lot of people right now saying things like, “why do I need to wear a mask, if you are?” or “it should be my choice to wear a mask”, even with data proving with increased mask wearing the rate of the virus spreading, and the death rate decrease. During this time we have also seen a much louder more obvious uprising of the KKK, neo- nazism and white supremacism.

I believe white supremacy is one radical belief that is bad fruit from the “individualistic” ideology. White supremacy is not only “whiteness is superior”, but it’s roots are attached to the beliefs, “I should be able to live how I want, I have the freedom to act on what I believe, and what my life and choices are have nothing to do with you.” The extreme versions of freedom, create shackles and deprivation of freedom for the opposing sides. These ideas of freedom have been exalted above all else and it has allowed the worst parts of ourselves to be untamed and unmanaged.

If we as a society let drug users live life how they intended (abusing drugs) the drug addict would eventually die of drug abuse. Individualism, would say “that is their choice”, but I believe this to be very dangerous. Pedophiles desiring to live their lives as freely as they are able, too is dangerous. Murderers given permission to live as they intend to, is dangerous. So, why is it we regulate some things and not all things?

For freedom’s sake?

If the people in a country are not well, the country is not well. We have a duty as a society, to keep one another accountable on all forms of actions in life. The addict had the choice of using or to choose sobriety. But, people can get easily attached to something that is inherently bad for them, like drugs and superiority complexes. Drugs are easily addictive, extremely harmful to the body and can potentially kill the user even if not “abused”. If the community around the addict, let them live how they wanted and let them choose the path that leads to death, it would not just end there. The death of that person would have a ripple effect on everyone else around them knowingly or unknowingly. The addict now deceased most likely had a family, friends, job, bills, people they had relationships with etc. The ripple effect of this one person, living and taking advantage of an individualistic culture shows how intertwined we all really are. Everything we do, don’t do, allow and not allow will affect the world around us whether we want it to or not. We simply do not have the choice.

Right now, (August, 2020) we are still in the middle of a global pandemic. If the countries who imported to us decided they were going to start living for themselves and nobody else, America would quickly crumble to the ground. This is why we have an economy, the give and take pushes the economy this way, or that way effecting everything else around it. 

You may be thinking on larger scales it’s obvious that what a country does to another country, or a person’s death has an effect on the world or that community, but not the choices in your personal daily life. Lets say, at the grocery store there is a milk shortage. You, in search of milk realize the store has not a single gallon. You go back home, milkless and your evening of baking a pudding cake for your brothers graduation party is now spoiled. The milk shortage at the grocery store though small, has affected your plan, your day and your dissapointed relatives who just adore your pudding cake. You will have to make something that does not require milk, and all the other ingredients you bought for this pudding cake are now only money spent. On the way to this graduation party, with jello in the place of pudding, you realize there is a bake sale. A bake sale, with hundreds of pudding cakes out for display. Supply, and demand. You go without, while others swim in your desired pudding cake.

This is a very small and silly example, but the idea is still true. Everything we do affects someone else, somewhere else whether we realize it or not.

Wearing masks right now during the Covid-19 pandemic or choosing not to, is a larger more impactful example of this cycle we see in the example of a milk shortage, though many think it to be small. If one person out of twenty decides not to wear a mask, a group of one hundred people will be exposed to a maskless person five times. Risking each person five times more likely to catch the virus.

If something is affecting us personally, vs another person we are less likely to care. Individualism and empathy cannot coexist. “For the greater good” is nowhere to be found in individualism. If it is affecting us, we demand change while the others not effected do not care and will not stand with us. If white supremacy affected white people the way it did people of color, the entire world would be moved to dismantle the racist terrorist group instead of only part of the world. So many are unaffected emotionally, physically, spiritually, economically, or relationally by the countless murders of black and brown people, so they do not raise a fuss about it.

I believe the individualist ideology strips us of any compassion or consideration for other people, this is dangerous ground. If we are not compassionate towards one another we are less likely to love one another. A world with neighbors who do not love each other or have empathy towards one another, only will lead to chaotic self-preservation. Unfortunately, we see this unraveling before us now, in the racial climate with Black Lives Matter, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Donald Trump’s Republican representation in the last four years.

So now is the time to ask these questions before we vote this November. What is the cost of freedom? Is the idea of freedom we hold, actually true? What are the moral differences between democracy and communism, and why do they make every republican nervous or angry? Why can’t Black Lives Matter?

Individual expression, like a personality or personal preference is safe ground when it comes to tolerating and operating in individualism. Though, when it comes down to me vs them, or us vs them, we must begin to question what we really are fighting for, and who we are standing with. Because, it is seldom for freedom sake.