Individualism Essay -- essays papers

Individualism 1) An individualist is considered to be someone with personality and character, someone who is not easily intimidated by social pressure or customs, someone with a personal opinion and a singular view of the world. Because modern society finds it important that people think independently, decide autonomously and take personal initiatives, the concept of individualism has acquired a positive connotation. However, individualism is also linked with the tendency to withdraw from social life and turn in towards oneself. 2) Which drives people to withdraw into a small, enclosed world consisting of their family and a few select friends, leaving the rest of society to its own devices. 3) Courageous individualism refers to the dedication shown by people who have independently chosen for something or someone and work energetically for its sake in spite of opposition from family or society; indifferent individualism refers to people who have either lost all hope in their fellow human beings or are no longer interested in initiatives of a social nature, with the result that they are prepared to withdraw from society at all costs. 4) people who have received less education and who find themselves in a precarious economic situation are more quickly inclined to believe that it is 'everyone for himself' in our society: on this view, politicians pay no attention to the needs of the people, society develops in a chaotic and unpredictable manner, the welfare we once enjoyed belongs definitively to the past, life has little meaning, and there are no longer any people or associations to which one can make an appeal. 5)On the other hand, whoever considers work not only as one's own achievement but also as an opportunity provided by the community, and whoever sees it as one's duty as a citizen to ensure opportunities for fellow citizens by contributing to unemployment benefits, medical care, child care, public libraries, education, etc., will also continue to favor the solidarity model and argue for the fairness of high taxes. 6)No one is better placed to speak about the process of individualism than Robert Bellah. Even before the rise of the debate between liberals and communitarians, Bellah and his colleagues had pointed to the problem by asking whether a society whose members believe that they are responsible only to themselves can see any nee... ...whole above our own concerns. A people who will not sacrifice for the common good cannot expect to have any common good. 16) There are fewer and fewer things that get people out of their houses to deal with other people outside of their work context. There are fewer communities that give them support. 17) Have we become merely a collection of individuals rather then a community? 18) The tendency of people to withdraw into their own small circle of life, leaving at large to itself. 19) Americans don't realize because they value their individuality so much, that the ind. they treasure, their dignity, their autonomy, their sense of the ability to make moral choices to train their children in what's right, depends profoundly on the health and the effective functioning of the institutions that shape them. 20) Individualism in this sense becomes something closer to isolationism, the desire to be entirely self-sufficient as a country and ignore events elsewhere in the world. 21) The answer is to work on making our institutions better. 22) Religion is integral comprehensive vision of ourselves in relation to what we recognize as the basic conditions of our existence.