At the end of the ninth grade of secondary school, students are asked to write a statement as part of the final exam. Often, for such assignments, texts are selected on various current topics, for example, about how the idea of individualism is cultivated in society. Without sufficient knowledge on this issue, completing this work can be much more difficult than if you prepare in advance to write it. This article can be used as additional material for studying the topic before taking the exam.
Individualism is one of the characteristics that can be inherent both in the human community as a whole and in individual individuals. The question of its essence and role in people’s lives has been studied for several years within the framework of a number of disciplines, which are collectively called behavioral. These include such branches of knowledge as psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, sociology and many others.
First mentions
Typically, two terms - individualism and collectivism - are opposed to each other. If you look at the earliest scientific works in which these phenomena were mentioned, you will notice that their authors, as a rule, gave an unambiguous assessment of these characteristics.
In ancient philosophy and in medieval treatises, most often there was no hint of considering personality from the point of view of its relationship to the norms of public morality, foundations and traditions of society.
The British scientist Adam Smith (see the illustration above for the portrait) and the Frenchman Alexis Tocqueville were the first creators of individual scientific works devoted to this topic. They were of the opinion that individualism is the only social and personal worldview that leads to progress.
Speaking about this, they cited the example of prehistoric societies that existed under the so-called communal system. In these societies, the collectivist form of consciousness dominated.
“Don’t break away from the team!”: why individualists were labeled as egoists
Often at school, children have to hear from the teacher: “We will go on an excursion with the whole class!” or “The whole class will participate in a school theater production!” And there seems to be nothing wrong, but what happens if a child wants to separate from the team? Become an individualist? Our blogger Ksenia Sostina discusses this.
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Individualism is the belief in the primacy of individual interests over collective ones. This is Ozhegov.
Individualism is a moral, political and social worldview that emphasizes individual freedom, the primacy of the individual, and personal independence within the framework of the constitutional legal order. This is Wikipedia.
Individualism is a philosophical trend that believes that the goal and content of the historical process is the comprehensive development of the individual personality and its liberation from forced social ties. This is Ushakov's dictionary.
Individualism is a type of worldview that absolutizes the importance of the individual in its opposition to human communities. This is a short dictionary of philosophical terms.
It seems that there is nothing frightening in these definitions, but in everyday consciousness the word “individualist” increasingly carries a negative connotation. Just remember your favorite sayings flashing on the Internet: about the “society of individualists” (read: egoists), about the good old team and mutual assistance, about imposed ideology.
It is obvious that those who condemn individualism put into this concept the worst that is possible, and even a little extra
It turns out to be such a frightening and outrageous diagnosis. Label and insult. A reason to grieve or be indignant. Could be so. What if we imagine individualism as the ability to choose one’s own path? A path that is as free as possible from socially imposed frameworks and dogmas? Of course, to what extent everyone (we are talking about individualism?) will succeed. I don't see anything scary, selfish or scary here. Quite the opposite.
Example: an ordinary entrance to a ten-story panel building. Boxes full of vague advertising materials and the floor strewn with them. Why? Because “it’s already lying around, mine won’t make it any dirtier, everyone throws it away - why should I be embarrassed.” This is the same vaunted collectivism. When one for all and all for one. Together we litter in the entrance, justifying our actions by the actions of those around us. And there are “vile individualists” who do not throw pieces of paper on the floor. Moreover, from time to time they collect other people’s and throw them away.
I know such people. I’m not wearing a white coat, but in order not to be completely unfounded, I have to admit: I do this myself. It’s just that this is my entrance, I live here, and I like a clean floor. I also wash the walls in the elevator periodically and decorate my floor for the New Year. And in the next entrance, people brought flowers out onto the site, caring for them, watering them. True, also only on your own floor, because individualists: all the beauty on the landing is for themselves and for their family. But if everyone thinks about themselves and their loved ones in such a “selfish way,” won’t the world become simply cleaner? But since “living in society and being free from it is a no-no!”, we will wait for society to “give the go-ahead” for cleanliness. In the meantime, we litter “like everyone else.” Right?
Joint confrontation with the forces of nature
Ancient people, who did not understand the laws of the structure of the surrounding world and did not know more effective ways of obtaining food and building housing except those that required the participation of a large number of people, accordingly could not even think about contrasting their individuality with the collective.
Separation from society, expulsion from its ranks meant inevitable death. In this sense, circumstances changed little in antiquity and even during the Middle Ages. Moreover, in those days, only a very limited circle of people knew about the latest achievements of science.
The role of personality in history
These ideas eventually formed into a doctrine called methodological individualism.
His followers believed that the role of various human communities in world history was greatly exaggerated.
Groups of people should not be studied according to the same principles that are used in the study of individuals. Ultimately, society is nothing more than a collection of people. Therefore, when studying various historical events, one must rely not on the psychology of the masses, but on information about individual characters and destinies. A presentation of the idea of individualism of this kind in its extreme form of manifestation may look like this.
All historical events, such as wars, revolutions, migrations of peoples, are the ideas of individual people, which were then picked up by the masses.
INDIVIDUALISM
INDIVIDUALISM
French individua-lisme, from Lat. Individuum - indivisible), a type of worldview based on the absolutization of the position of the individual in his opposition to society as such, the world as a whole. I. manifests itself both in real life position, in actions, and in various. concepts - ethical, philosophical, ideological, political, etc. According to the principles of I., happiness is separate. personality, its freedom and unlimited development are considered as the highest. goal, and the functioning of social institutions and groups is the basis and means for achieving this goal. As a life position and state of mind, I. arises in conditions of isolation and alienation of people from each other. Social and ethical the views that embodied the ideal of I. were already expressed in Dr. Greece (starting with Democritus and the Sophists). As a mass phenomenon, religion spread during the Hellenistic era (for example, in the teachings of Epicurus, Stoics, and skeptics). With the establishment of capitalism. way of life I. most. clearly manifested itself in the bourgeoisie. a society that has demanded an independent, proactive personality, capable of decisively acting in order to pursue private interests (not taking into account the interests of other people or even conflicting with them). I. received substantiation in the teachings of J. Locke, A. Smith, C. A. Helvetius, B. Franklin, and I. Bentham as an ideology opposed to feudal absolutism and class corporatism. The practice of commodity-money relations, in which the principle of benefit dominated, corresponded to the proclamation of human freedom from social conditions and the orientation of the individual towards achieving his own. successes, which led to the transformation of I. into one of its typical forms - egoism. I. is often criticized for this extreme form of its manifestation. At the same time, it is not taken into account that I. preaches the need for a person’s personal activity, his reliance on his own. strength, asserts a sense of responsibility, moral dignity. In accordance with this understanding, I. finds expression in altruism, moral guidelines for improvement and honest performance of duty. With the development of corporations, India is experiencing a crisis. On the one hand, it degenerates into authoritarianism, corporatism, conformism, and on the other, it turns into extremism, which denies diversity. state forms and societies. control. At the same time, strengthening the role of the state and corporations in the life of capitalism. society in the 2nd half. 20th century sparked a civil movement. rights and freedom, and awareness of the danger of nuclear war led to the understanding that self-preservation and full development of the individual is possible only with the preservation of humanity as a whole, and contributed to the expansion of the general struggle for peace.
In the theory of socialism, which proclaimed the priority of the general interest over the interests of the individual, it was assumed that a new organization of societies. life will create the best conditions for satisfying both social and individual needs. From these positions, I. was rejected as a worldview that contradicts the goals of Socialist development. society and the establishment of universal equality. However, in practice in the 30-70s. individual interests were essentially ignored. Against this background, I. manifested itself in various forms of “withdrawal”, skepticism, nihilism. East. experience proves that contradictions between societies. and individual interests disappear in such socio-economics. conditions under which society is satisfied. interests are achieved by people in the process of their activities aimed at realizing individual interests. In polit. sphere of balance between societies. and individual interests are carried out through the recognition of citizens. freedoms of the individual, and in the moral sense - his moral dignity and responsibility. R. G. Apresyan. '
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Source: Russian Pedagogical Encyclopedia
Another point of view
In contrast to this theory, there is another, which at different times was expressed by supporters of such teachings as holism and historicism. These thinkers argued that an individual cannot play any significant role on the scale of world civilization.
All processes occurring in the sphere of politics and economics, as a rule, follow the same scenarios. The same can be said about the fate of individual peoples and states. Each of these social formations goes through the stages of origin, development, flourishing, extinction and death. According to some historians, most major highly developed civilizations have existed for about 2000 years. There are some exceptions (India, China), but they, as is commonly believed, only confirm the rule.
Collectivism and socialism
Proponents of individualistic theories in historical science in the 19th century were subject to numerous attacks by socialists. According to the latter, those researchers who are inclined to consider human societies only as collections of individual people are like fools who, seeing many trees, refuse to call them a forest.
Karl Marx also rejected the idea of methodological individualism. He argued that regardless of the actions and desires of individuals, all civilizations go from the primitive communal system to capitalism, the collapse of which leads to socialism.
Thus, for historical and sociological science, individualism is the doctrine according to which individual people have the greatest influence on global processes. The opposite of this theory are concepts such as holism, historicism and some others.
Personality types with an individual's worldview
The general orientation of the philosophy is expressed in the epithets “dissident, nonconformist, independent, original, freethinker.” In 19th-century Germany, individualism was closely associated with the aspirations of Romanticism, in England with utilitarianism and economics, and in America with the basic political and social values of democracy and capitalism.
For many Indian schools, and especially for Buddhists and Jains, spiritual purification and eventual union with the Absolute depend solely on the individual's personal efforts.
In China, Confucianism holds that although people are born with equal abilities, only a few achieve high positions because a person's moral qualities depend on practice and education.
Photo: fortnightly.com
According to Socrates' "know thyself", virtue and other forms of knowledge cannot be taught or transmitted directly from one person to another. Rather, each person must discover for himself what is true for himself.
Christianity introduced the doctrines of free will and personal salvation, which added a new dimension to human individuality.
Muslim teaching held that man, not God, is responsible for sin. In the same way, the Koran gives the idea of personal salvation, which is much more vital and carnal than the Christian one.
In modern society, the characteristics of the term are often associated with men and urban lifestyles.
Generalized geographic clusters of individualism can be found in English-speaking countries, Germanic Europe, and northern Europe. Regions for collectivism are located in Arab countries, Latin America, Confucian Asia, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Bio
Joshua Rosenthal, founder of the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, now the largest nutrition school in the world, coined the term “bioindividuality” several years ago. In simple terms, it all comes down to the fact that we are all unique and inimitable. There is no “one size fits all” in life just because we are all special. We all have our likes, dislikes, loves, allergies, illnesses, and preferences. Let's think about body composition, dietary needs, mental characteristics, passions and more.
Photo: twitter.com
In relation to lifestyle, 3 principles of bioindividuality for healthy eating are popular:
- No diet or lifestyle works equally well for everyone.
- Needs change over time.
- One man's food is another man's poison.
Not everyone benefits from vegetarianism. If you can easily do without meat, do not persistently try to convert those around you: what is good for a Russian is death for a German.
In biology, the whole organism is considered as a unit of natural selection. When considering evolutionary processes, units are also considered to be individual groups of genes or colonies of creatures.
Decadents
At the end of the 19th century, decadence emerged in Western Europe as an artistic and literary movement that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.
The trend was characterized by self-loathing, a painful perception of reality, general skepticism, and glorification of perversions. He is characterized by crude humor and a belief in the superiority of creativity over logic.
Photo: pinterest.ru
The decadent movement reached Russia mainly through the influence of the works of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. The earliest Russian adherents lacked ideology. They focused on themes such as the erosion of morality, disregard for personal health, and a life of blasphemy and sensual pleasure. The basis of the creative individualism of Russian writers was the painful aspects of decline and fascination with death.
Dmitry Merezhkovsky is believed to have been the first to explicitly promote Russian decadence. The first Russian writers of this formation were Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub, Valery Bryusov and Zinaida Gippius.
As the Russian movement developed, no longer imitating Baudelaire and Verlaine, most of these authors approached symbolism.
A number of artists followed the late decadent Baju movement's approach to sexuality as an act of pleasure, placing it within the context of material luxury. They also deliberately shocked society. Among the brawlers were Konstantin Somov, Nikolai Kalmakov and Nikolai Feofilaktov.
Anarchists
Philosophical anarchism is a school that argues that the state lacks moral legitimacy. Unlike revolutionary anarchism, the theory does not involve violent revolution, but peaceful evolution. Without calling for the destruction of the apparatus, its supporters believe that they are not obliged to obey the state.
Photo: mdig.com.br
This worldview is part of a vibrant individualist anarchism.
Decadent, aristocrat, writer Oscar Wilde, an anarchist by conviction, in his famous article “The Human Soul under Socialism” stated that “Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. This is its great value. He seeks to destroy monotony, the slavery of custom, the tyranny of habit and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.”
Thus, the word individualism was used to denote a personality with a strong desire for self-expression and experimentation, in contrast to traditional patterns of behavior.
Individualism in Economics
This concept also exists in economics. Within the framework of this discipline, it is interpreted as follows: individualism is a way of doing business in which small businesses and small enterprises managed by one person predominate.
According to the same Karl Marx, this method of organizing production and carrying out agriculture began to become obsolete by the 19th century, although it was relevant at the birth of capitalism.
The works of this scientist say that small-scale entrepreneurship should be replaced by large collective forms of economic organization. The Bolsheviks began to adhere to this concept in order to lead the country out of the economic crisis that arose as a result of the First World War and the Civil War.
Such an economic policy in the first years of Soviet power turned out to be extremely effective. As a result of the creation of large industrial enterprises in large settlements and collective farms in villages and villages, thousands of people got jobs, and the products produced were of adequate quality, thanks to the widespread introduction of innovative technologies.
However, subsequently significant mistakes were made during the transition to this method of farming in some Asian republics of the Soviet Union. Thus, collectivization in Kazakhstan had numerous negative consequences, which took many years to overcome. In connection with the creation of collective farms, people who had previously been involved in camel breeding found themselves tied to a certain territory. This circumstance deprived the animals of the opportunity to move to another place when the green vegetation was depleted. Thus, one of the traditional livestock industries of Kazakhstan was almost completely destroyed.
Individualism as a personality quality
It is in this vein that psychology views this phenomenon. Therefore, we can say that individualism is the desire for independence or the least dependence on society. It, in turn, can be interpreted as the ability to think and act outside existing patterns (traditions, customs, public opinion, and so on). All great scientists, artists and other people with a pronounced creative beginning possessed this quality. This property can otherwise be called nonconformism.
In the literature on psychology, this term is often given another definition, namely: individualism is a person’s concentration solely on the search for personal benefits. Such people are not capable of showing mutual assistance, compassion, and so on. This spiritual quality can be differently designated by the word “egoism.”
This personality characteristic most often evokes a sharply negative attitude, while free critical thinking, a healthy desire to act outside the mold, and to find new paths are, without a doubt, a positive characteristic of a person.
Instilling such qualities in the younger generation is one of the goals of modern school education, spelled out in the new educational standard.
