The Long March of Individualism Comes To A Juddering Halt
by Niall McCrae, Human Events:
The world is seeing a realignment towards collectivist ideals.
Individualism has gone global, but the trend may not hold.
According to a recent study of 78 countries by Santos, Varnum, and Grossmann, individualism has never been more widespread. Measuring variables such as household size, solitary living, divorce rate, favoring of friends over family, and emphasis on independence and self-expression, the authors attributed this trend to a burgeoning middle class in developing nations.
As education and earning opportunities widen, people eschew traditional religious and cultural strictures in pursuit of meritocratic and materialistic reward. Secularization and social liberalism are features of modern society, but is individualism reaching its peak?
[…] Yet populism, which means the will of the people to its supporters, and uninformed mob rule to its detractors, is gaining momentum. The survival of mainstream parties is not guaranteed: French and Italian centrists have been decimated by the surge of anti-establishment parties. While populist parties differ, common interests are a revival of nationhood and resentment of the identity politics of gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity.
National populism is one of three forces driving society from individualism to collectivism. It may be the least important, due to demographic destiny. Brexit and Trump were an electoral success for a declining sector of the populace: white, older and lower-class folk.
Indeed, the second and more potent force is mass immigration, which is transforming Western culture. The intelligentsia continue to assume the demise of religion, despite the steady growth of Islam and African Christianity resulting from the influx and high birth rates of Pakistani, Somali and Nigerian diaspora. Countries like Britain are becoming more religious, not less.
While Protestant Europe privatized faith, and the Church of England has emptying pews, collective worship thrives in communities of African and Asian background. For Muslims, Allah is all-knowing and all-powerful, while the Book of Revelation prophesizes that God will destroy the corrupt authorities that turned people away from him. Obviously not all black and Asian-origin people are devoutly religious, but their cultures are more collectively-orientated, with faith as a firm foundation.
The third force for collectivism is the insecurity of the hyper-connected younger generations. Online social media is a tremendous asset for communication, but research shows correlation with mental health problems in adolescents.
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