On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Michael Dawson -PSU wrote:
> "Life chances" means an individual's chances
> to find a social role that suits his or her self, and to become a happy,
> contributing member of a society. If individualism is a harmful cult, how
> can it maximize life chances? Isn't it better to have eons of tradition
> tell you to hunt deer today and gather grubs tomorrow, then drink some beer
> and lay around the hut?
>
This kind of gross ethnocentrism is exactly why I'm skeptical of the glorification of individualism. Of course life in a hunting and gathering society sounds awful to you: you've been effectively socialized into an industrialized society with an individualist culture. Appreciate that many people in collectivist cultures just as fervently believe that their way of life is better than yours.
--A revelant example: arranged marriages. We hate them because they do not respect individual autonomy and freedom to "maximize our life chances". However, this has been a stable and effective basis for family life in human societies for thousands of years (even today, relationship satisfaction in long-term marriages is higher for arranged marriages than for love-based marriages!). I'm not arguing that arranged marriages (or collectivist values in general) are better in some universal sense; I'm just saying that people have lived happy lives in stable human societies without glorifying individuality the way we do.
Miles