Tagged: individualism
Are household duties ruining your relationship? The solution: Do more than your partner!
Two persons move together. Love is in the air. But in addition to all the romantic cuddling on the couch, this means that from now on, they are sharing the household duties. No problem, they are a modern couple and decide to share them equally. Both hate doing them, so this way of distributing them makes sure that both individuals suffer equally under the strain of the dish pile. Fair enough.
Naturally, there is the all to human tendency to procrastinate (and perhaps the unconscious hope that the other will take care of the matter meanwhile). Given it and the fact that we tend to exaggerate our own good deeds and underestimate those of others, it will require careful balancing to really make sure that the household duties are distributed equally. Frictions in this balancing can easily flame into hot-headed arguments…
Meanwhile, two other persons move together. Love is in the air. But in addition to all the romantic cuddling in the garden, this means that from now on, they are sharing the household duties. But what is special about this couple is that both of them take delight in helping the other. Both of them hate household duties, but knowing that, they also know how much they can cheer up the other by doing something extra. Psychology has shown that giving to others is one of the most robust ways to increase one’s own well-being and this couple has taken this lesson to their heart. Accordingly, they try to do their share, but when they have the energy, they even find themselves doing a bit more than that. Just to make the other happy. Balance is not so important because whether you do more or less than the other, either way you win!
So we have two couples. One of them believes in a transactional theory of human interaction: You give some, you get some. They see themselves as independent individuals. The other couple believes in a more interdependent view of human selfhood. Accordingly, their happiness resides almost as much in the other as it does in themselves.
Now, I don’t know which couple has the more realistic view of human beings. But it is not hard to predict which of the relationships is more happy.
Two persons move together. Love is in the air. But in addition to all the romantic cuddling on the couch, this means that from now on, they are sharing the household duties. No problem, they are a modern couple and decide to share them equally. Both hate doing them, so this way of distributing them makes sure that both individuals suffer equally under the strain of the dish pile. Fair enough.
Naturally, there is the all to human tendency to procrastinate (and perhaps the unconscious hope that the other will take care of the matter meanwhile). Given it and the fact that we tend to exaggerate our own good deeds and underestimate those of others, it will require careful balancing to really make sure that the household duties are distributed equally. Frictions in this balancing can easily flame into hot-headed arguments…
Meanwhile, two other persons move together. Love is in the air. But in addition to all the romantic cuddling in the garden, this means that from now on, they are sharing the household duties. But what is special about this couple is that both of them take delight in helping the other. Both of them hate household duties, but knowing that, they also know how much they can cheer up the other by doing something extra. Psychology has shown that giving to others is one of the most robust ways to increase one’s own well-being and this couple has taken this lesson to their heart. Accordingly, they try to do their share, but when they have the energy, they even find themselves doing a bit more than that. Just to make the other happy. Balance is not so important because whether you do more or less than the other, either way you win!
So we have two couples. One of them believes in a transactional theory of human interaction: You give some, you get some. They see themselves as independent individuals. The other couple believes in a more interdependent view of human selfhood. Accordingly, their happiness resides almost as much in the other as it does in themselves.
Now, I don’t know which couple has the more realistic view of human beings. But it is not hard to predict which of the relationships is more happy.
Being individualistic and altruistic at the same time. The story of Jack Casey the firefighter.
Have you ever swam through icy waters fully clothed and without a life jacket to drag to the shore an unconscious woman who you never met before? Jack Casey has. In the course of two years he responded as a volunteer to more than five hundred emergency calls ending up saving people from burning buildings or risking his personal safety by entering situations where persons were stabbed by their own family members. Ever since high school volunteering has been a big part of Jack Casey’s life. In addition to being a member of the rescue squad he spends three hours a week teaching a Red Cross course in first aid and takes people backpacking through an outdoor program he initiated a few years before. Jack Casey is truly a selfless american hero who wants to be there for the others.
At the same time Jack Casey describes himself as a person ”who likes to be relatively independent of other people.” He refuses to be dependent on anyone and prides himself for being a rugged individualist who does what he wants, when he wants, disregarding anyone’s opinion. Freedom to do what one wants has been said to be the number one American value. At least for Jack Casey it is his guiding principle.
Jack Casey represents what Robert Wuthnow calls an American paradox. On the one hand he is more individualistic and less dependent on others than most of us. On the other hand he cares for others much more than the average person. What is he then, an individualist or an altruist?
The answer is: he is both. Being individualistic and caring about others don’t cancel each others out. They are like apples and oranges. First there is the issue of who controls our lives? Are we able to make independent choices or are we so weak and dependent on others that we let them run our lives? This is the question of individualism. It is thus a question about are we in charge of our own lives.
Second we have the issue of who do we care about? Are we egoistic persons for whom only our own benefits count? Or are we more altruistic persons who find satisfaction in helping others? This is the question of altruism. An individualistic person who makes his or her own life decisions can make a totally independent choice of whether to help only oneself or help also those in need. As long as the choice is one’s own, one is an individualist. Thus it is perfectly possible to be an altruistic individualist.
The paradox is that in our times individualistic people are actually more altruistic than less individualistic people. Wuthnow found in her survey that those people who placed a high emphasis on self-oriented values such as realizing one’s talent were actually slightly more likely to be involved in charitable activities than other citizens.
The reason for this is found in the fact that we are constantly bombarded with propaganda that says that everyone should take care of only their own business. There is a norm in our society that tells that either be self-interested or be a fool. And no one wants to be the fool. Thus many people suppress their more altruistic instincts in order to live up to the selfish norms of our times. They don’t dare to be unselfish as they fear that people would mock them for not being able to take care of their own interests. It actually takes courage to admit that one did something for others without any self-interest in mind.
We live in paradoxical times: It is the weak who believe that you should only care about yourself. It takes some balls to be out there and admit that one cares about others and is willing to make sacrifices for them. So be a true individualist and dare to care about others!
What brand of individualism are you wearing? The original noble individualism, the watered down consumer individualism or the new alternative: compassionate individualism?
Modern western societies have been characterized by individualism. It is said that no other time or place has seen such a strong form of cultural individualism than what we are experiencing right now. But what does this individualism mean? And have we actually forsaken the liberating promises that this individualism originally held for us?
Modern individualism started as a battle cry against the constraints of a collectivistic culture where your position and possibilities in life and society were by and large determined by the time you were born. In medieval times you were given a role from the outside and then you were your role: as a farmer, father, woman, citizen and so forth certain behaviors were expected from you. And you didn’t have much saying against this.
As the cities got bigger and new bourgeois class got stronger in the 19th century the possibilities to determine one’s faith in life increased. This development was accompanied by philosophers who preached that man should not take the values of the society for granted but rather oneself craft one’s own values. This noble individualism was preached for example by Ralph Waldo Emerson in America and by Friedrich Nietzsche in Europe. Man has a right to carve his own way of living. And this quest for claiming one’s own life into one’s own hands starts with searching from within the values that one is willing to commit oneself to.
Then something went wrong and this noble individualism was watered down. Some claim that the horrors of First World War are to blame. Too many stubborn gentlemen followed their ’duty’ to senseless deaths. Others see that nazi propaganda stole the concept and transformed personal moral strength into mass obedience to a sociopath. As Roy Baumeister puts it: ”When it comes to bad PR, there’s nothing quite like a personal endorsement from Adolf Hitler.” Still others claim that the new consumer society and advertising industry with the slogan ’you are what you buy’ transformed inner moral convictions into outer displays of identity.
In any case, what we seem to have now is quite far removed from the noble origins of individualism. The right to define yourself through finding your own values has been transformed into a right to define yourself through wearing certain brands. I have desires and I have a right to fulfill them all. That’s what modern consumer individualism is about. This attitude was displayed most naked in recent riots in London. Instead of demanding some political changes the disillusioned protesters just broke into luxury shops to steal the products they couldn’t afford in normal life. As criminologist and youth culture expert Professor John Pitts commented on Guardian:
”Where we used to be defined by what we did, now we are defined by what we buy … A generation bred on a diet of excessive consumerism and bombarded by advertising had been unleashed.”
So how to fight this watered down version of individualism where the cultural norm seems to be that everyone should maximize their hedonistic pleasures in life? I don’t believe that the noble individualism is an answer. First of all, writers proposing that everyone should create their own values vastly overestimated the capacity of us human beings – including themselves – to transform our basic values just like that. On the other hand, too much nobleness easily leads one to overlook those fellow citizens that are not so noble. A self-proclaimed Übermensch can have a hard time tolerating that he or she has to spend time with us normal human beings.
What I propose instead is what could be called compassionate individualism. This brand of individualism puts less emphasis on what one looks like and more on what one really feels like. We all have the capacity to be compassionate and care for others. It is just often hidden beneath the cultural propaganda that shouts at us that we should only care about our own happiness. Compassionate individualism is about being able to ignore these messages and listen instead to oneself and what one’s own heart has to say. And this listening leads most of us to find more capacity for compassion than what we were mislead to believe by our dominating culture.
This explains the paradox revealed by research done in US that found that ”people who were the most individualistic were also the most likely to value doing things to help others.” People who were most individualistic were least influenced by the cultural propaganda and most able to follow their own way of living. As they followed their own path, they found that within them there was a heart that cared about others. And this lead them to live a life in which they put more emphasis into helping others than the weaker individuals around them.
Consumer individualism is reactive individualism. It is a feeble attempt to be individual by consuming the products that marketers say will make us individuals. Compassionate individualism is active individualism. In it the person truly listens to oneself to find from within the values one wants to follow in one’s life. The question is, what path do you want to follow?Modern western societies have been characterized by individualism. It is said that no other time or place has seen such a strong form of cultural individualism than what we are experiencing right now. But what does this individualism mean? And have we actually forsaken the liberating promises that this individualism originally held for us?
Modern individualism started as a battle cry against the constraints of a collectivistic culture where your position and possibilities in life and society were by and large determined by the time you were born. In medieval times you were given a role from the outside and then you were your role: as a farmer, father, woman, citizen and so forth certain behaviors were expected from you. And you didn’t have much saying against this.
As the cities got bigger and new bourgeois class got stronger in the 19th century the possibilities to determine one’s faith in life increased. This development was accompanied by philosophers who preached that man should not take the values of the society for granted but rather oneself craft one’s own values. This noble individualism was preached for example by Ralph Waldo Emerson in America and by Friedrich Nietzsche in Europe. Man has a right to carve his own way of living. And this quest for claiming one’s own life into one’s own hands starts with searching from within the values that one is willing to commit oneself to.
Then something went wrong and this noble individualism was watered down. Some claim that the horrors of First World War are to blame. Too many stubborn gentlemen followed their ’duty’ to senseless deaths. Others see that nazi propaganda stole the concept and transformed personal moral strength into mass obedience to a sociopath. As Roy Baumeister puts it: ”When it comes to bad PR, there’s nothing quite like a personal endorsement from Adolf Hitler.” Still others claim that the new consumer society and advertising industry with the slogan ’you are what you buy’ transformed inner moral convictions into outer displays of identity.
In any case, what we seem to have now is quite far removed from the noble origins of individualism. The right to define yourself through finding your own values has been transformed into a right to define yourself through wearing certain brands. I have desires and I have a right to fulfill them all. That’s what modern consumer individualism is about. This attitude was displayed most naked in recent riots in London. Instead of demanding some political changes the disillusioned protesters just broke into luxury shops to steal the products they couldn’t afford in normal life. As criminologist and youth culture expert Professor John Pitts commented on Guardian:
”Where we used to be defined by what we did, now we are defined by what we buy … A generation bred on a diet of excessive consumerism and bombarded by advertising had been unleashed.”
So how to fight this watered down version of individualism where the cultural norm seems to be that everyone should maximize their hedonistic pleasures in life? I don’t believe that the noble individualism is an answer. First of all, writers proposing that everyone should create their own values vastly overestimated the capacity of us human beings – including themselves – to transform our basic values just like that. On the other hand, too much nobleness easily leads one to overlook those fellow citizens that are not so noble. A self-proclaimed Übermensch can have a hard time tolerating that he or she has to spend time with us normal human beings.
What I propose instead is what could be called compassionate individualism. This brand of individualism puts less emphasis on what one looks like and more on what one really feels like. We all have the capacity to be compassionate and care for others. It is just often hidden beneath the cultural propaganda that shouts at us that we should only care about our own happiness. Compassionate individualism is about being able to ignore these messages and listen instead to oneself and what one’s own heart has to say. And this listening leads most of us to find more capacity for compassion than what we were mislead to believe by our dominating culture.
This explains the paradox revealed by research done in US that found that ”people who were the most individualistic were also the most likely to value doing things to help others.” People who were most individualistic were least influenced by the cultural propaganda and most able to follow their own way of living. As they followed their own path, they found that within them there was a heart that cared about others. And this lead them to live a life in which they put more emphasis into helping others than the weaker individuals around them.
Consumer individualism is reactive individualism. It is a feeble attempt to be individual by consuming the products that marketers say will make us individuals. Compassionate individualism is active individualism. In it the person truly listens to oneself to find from within the values one wants to follow in one’s life. The question is, what path do you want to follow?
Birth of a child – or when you expand from an individual into a duovidual
I haven’t updated this blog for a while because I was fully absorbed in one of the greatest miracles of my own personal life: The birth of my first child! To keep up with the philosophical intentions of this blog I will resist the temptation to proclaim to everyone how wonderful event this was, how the child is the cutest ever and how great it is to be a father! Instead I will use this opportunity to reflect the deep-going changes in identity and worldview that this event gives rise to.
In west we have an atomized view of the individual: I am separated from all the others. I ought to be faithful to what is inside of me, to my unique personality. In the end of the day it is my own responsibility to make myself happy, to look for my own interests and make sure I am living the life I want to live. Accordingly, I should be primarily interested in the maximization of my own personal happiness only.
"The so-called Western view of the individual" is about "an independent, self-contained, autonomous entity" - Markus & Kitayama
Having a child challenges all this. The little fellow is not just another person who I can use to increase my own happiness. In terms of identity and motivation he is quite much inseparable from myself. My interests and the baby’s interests is the same; what is good for him is what is good for me; what I want is that the baby feels good. My happiness is embedded in him, his fortunes and misfortunes influence my mood at least as strongly as my own fortunes and misfortunes.
So we can say that I have deeply transformed through becoming a father. Or more accurately, what is ’I’ has expanded. The individual I was before no longer exists: I have become a duovidual. The newborn has become part of my identity, part of what I see as myself.
There is nothing mystical or unusual in this. When the sense of belongingness in some social relationship becomes deep enough it makes better sense to think of the relationship as the functional unit of what it means to be myself. In fact, a historical look reveals that most of our history we human beings have been so deeply embedded in our social relationships that it has made better sense to talk about ”an interdependent view of the self” instead of the modern ”independent view of the self.” In fact, the word individual as referring to a person didn’t exist before the 18th century.
We humans are social animals, deeply embedded in and defined by our close social relationships. Nothing brings this fact more at home for a western individual than having a child. A child is born, the individual is dead: Long live the duovidual!
I haven’t updated this blog for a while because I was fully absorbed in one of the greatest miracles of my own personal life: The birth of my first child! To keep up with the philosophical intentions of this blog I will resist the temptation to proclaim to everyone how wonderful event this was, how the child is the cutest ever and how great it is to be a father! Instead I will use this opportunity to reflect the deep-going changes in identity and worldview that this event gives rise to.
In west we have an atomized view of the individual: I am separated from all the others. I ought to be faithful to what is inside of me, to my unique personality. In the end of the day it is my own responsibility to make myself happy, to look for my own interests and make sure I am living the life I want to live. Accordingly, I should be primarily interested in the maximization of my own personal happiness only.
"The so-called Western view of the individual" is about "an independent, self-contained, autonomous entity" - Markus & Kitayama
Having a child challenges all this. The little fellow is not just another person who I can use to increase my own happiness. In terms of identity and motivation he is quite much inseparable from myself. My interests and the baby’s interests is the same; what is good for him is what is good for me; what I want is that the baby feels good. My happiness is embedded in him, his fortunes and misfortunes influence my mood at least as strongly as my own fortunes and misfortunes.
So we can say that I have deeply transformed through becoming a father. Or more accurately, what is ’I’ has expanded. The individual I was before no longer exists: I have become a duovidual. The newborn has become part of my identity, part of what I see as myself.
There is nothing mystical or unusual in this. When the sense of belongingness in some social relationship becomes deep enough it makes better sense to think of the relationship as the functional unit of what it means to be myself. In fact, a historical look reveals that most of our history we human beings have been so deeply embedded in our social relationships that it has made better sense to talk about ”an interdependent view of the self” instead of the modern ”independent view of the self.” In fact, the word individual as referring to a person didn’t exist before the 18th century.
We humans are social animals, deeply embedded in and defined by our close social relationships. Nothing brings this fact more at home for a western individual than having a child. A child is born, the individual is dead: Long live the duovidual!
Frank Martela 