Much of modern social thought, drawing on thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and modern economics, sees human beings as fundamentally selfish. Children, Freud wrote, “are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.” Most of modern thought was written by men, and often a certain sort of alpha men,
Hyper-individualism leads to tribalism. People eventually rebel against the isolation and meaninglessness of hyper-individualism by joining a partisan tribe. This seems like relation but is actually its opposite. If a healthy community is based on mutual affection, the tribalist mentality is based on mutual distrust.
an, 1982). As could be seen during and after Hurricane Katrina in the United States (2010) and the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the grave problem with Friedman’s argument is that “real change” and “alternatives” are the very opportunity through which - as Naomi Klein argues - “think tanks and land developers started talking about ‘clean sheets’ and... See more
An individual who has become a person has staged a rebellion. She rebels against the individualistic ethos and all the systems of impersonalism. Society tells her to want independence, but she has declared her interdependence. Society says we live in a materialist reality, but she says we live in an enchanted reality. Society tells her to keep her
A hyper-individualist sees the individual as an self-sufficient unit. The relationalist says, A person a node in a network; a personality is a movement toward others.
The mindset of singularity takes away from the collective processes of healing and self/collective care which centre addressing systematic injustices. For example, instead of healing through a collective process of transformative justice, one is made to understand that justice - as a cornerstone for healing - can only be attained and understood... See more