Individualism:

 

Perhaps it is not the ultimate expression of personal self,

 perhaps it is not the goal of autonomy,

 perhaps it is not freedom to make your own choices in your own world…

no, perhaps individualism is a much misunderstood ideal, one that carries with it the burden of loneliness, alienation, and fragmentation.

The times I live in hail individualism, as the tool to reach the top, as the means to ‘stand out in the crowd’.  I have some questions: If the race to the top is a competitive race, will not only the first one to reach the summit count?  If there is one winner, what about the rest? After all, the rest is the vast majority. The hype about being one who ’stands out in the crowd’ also needs a justification. If you clearly are different from the majority, you may represent a counter-trend, a rebel, a protester, or you may be someone who does not fit in well in the social setting. On the other hand, you may be a leader. So, if you are a leader, whom do you lead?

I suppose the term ‘communism’ has too many connotations to political ideologies to have any communicative value, but in essence, I think any individual functions in relation, in community. We have a responsibility towards each other in all settings of life, with whomever we meet. The level of involvement is different from person to person, or even from time to time, but we function constructively in community.

“Love the Lord your God with all you might, with all your strength and all you heart. And love your neighbour as yourself.”

In these words we have the essence of individuality and community, individualism and communism (in a non-Marxist/Leninist usage). For any one person, the relationship to God, a love-based relationship is the necessary starting point for relating to others and to self. This essential relationship confirms the individual being, and it does it in such a way that it is not rooted in and depended on the individual itself. There is a fundamental freedom in this.

            Love your fellow human being, as you love yourself. Again, the main core is a relationship between people, the I and the other. I am not defined in relations to myself, and not by what I do, but by who I am to the other. It is not the utility of my being, what I can do for the other, or what I can produce in society, which gives me worth – it is the simple fact that I love and receive love which sustains me.

            And what is love? In this context I admit that doing good things is in the picture. But if I have no love, then I am nothing. If I present great stuff, but have no love, I am nothing.

I do not believe in individualism. I believe in God, whose very nature is triune relational and yet one. I am an individual, but always in relations, with God and with my fellows.