Individualism, particularly in its modern forms, is a toxic plague to the Western world. It has produced generation after generation of persons raised to believe they could behave as they wished with little to no consequences. Persons who saw themselves as the locus of their social circles and their own achievements as having prime importance. These tendencies may seem harmless enough, but on a societal scale they produce an unsustainable set of cultural values. If people believe they are totally independent of one another, they will not care for one another. This idea can be broadly termed apathetic individualism since it is the individual who has no interest in their fellow citizens thoughts, ideas or behaviors and the value that this is the way society should be.
Apathetic Individualism is what I call a micro-worldview, because people hold it in isolation to other ideas and ideologies, which do not appear to cohere together. For instance, clearly no one believes that we shouldn't care what our family members think or how our friends feel. This principle is meant to be applied to strangers and society at large. Even still, this idea has extremely unsettling implications. These include; the complete deconstruction of community, the elimination of humility as a virtue and the decoherence of personal rights and liberties.
Destruction of Community;
Broadly speaking a community is a group of people attached by common experience, identity, interests, goals etc. By definition then, a community cannot exist where each individual sees their own experience, identity, interests and goals as set a part from and against all other individuals. This belief is not only toxic to communities, it's absolutely lethal.
Granted, there is the qualification noted above that this micro-worldview is not universally applicable. However, even though there are the exceptions of friends and family, these exceptions appear completely arbitrary. This is because the reasoning used to establish the claim that we shouldn't care what other people think is generally the power others have over us if we do care what they think.
To unpack this reasoning a bit more, suppose that someone is in an argument with their significant other. Suppose further that this someone yells at their partner that they are worthless, ugly and unlovable. A reasonable reaction of this someone's partner would be to deny having any emotional investment in said someone's opinion. In other words, denying that she cared what he thought. To admit we care about one another's opinion of us then, is to give them power over us. However, the people closest to us then have the most power over us since we, by definition, care more about what they think. So if this reasoning is to be applied anywhere, it should be applied to our family and friends.
Moreover, to suggest that we should not care what others think of us because we cannot afford to allow them to have any power or influence over us, is to suggest that others having power over us is bad. Thus, hidden in this idea is the assumption that we should be completely free of the influence of others. In other words, to be a completely self-empowered individual.
The Elimination of Humility;
Supposing the ethic that we should be a completely self-empowered individual is true, it seems also to follow that we should believe our individuality and self-expression is of the upmost importance. This is incompatible with the traditional view that humility is to be valued. Humility, if it is to be defined with any meaning, must carry with it the notion that we ought not to think of ourselves too much, nor think too much of ourselves.
Humility then, requires a right and proportional view of oneself in contrast and with respect to one's community and society at large. However, if we ought not to care what others think of us, then we must see our selves only in relation to ourselves. In other words, we are self-defining and self-empowered. Self-expression, no matter how belligerent or inconsiderate, must be seen as appropriate and even encouraged.
The Decoherence of Human rights and liberties;
To say someone has a right is to say that they deserve an object or service. Conversely, to say someone has a liberty is to say they deserve to be allowed to perform an action, provide a service or possess an object. Simultaneously, to say someone deserves something is to say someone else owes them said thing.
Given these ideas, to say we shouldn't care what other people think creates a self-defeating view of human rights and liberties. This is because such views discourage and demonize virtually any action which gives one person power over another. So if I deserve money from another person, I need them to give me that amount of money. But supposing they fail to do so I am left vulnerable. Conversely, if I owe another person a certain amount of money, I am obligated to give them said amount of money and if I fail to do so, I can be punished or discredited as a member of the community.
Furthermore, if we shouldn't care what others think of us or what they think in general, it seems natural to dually suppose that we shouldn't care what they think they deserve from us. We should only care about what we deserve; self-expression and empowerment. But here's the rub; how can we care about what we deserve without also caring about what others think about what they owe us? Liberties and rights, then, do not make sense given the micro-worldview that we shouldn't bother ourselves about the thoughts and opinions of others.
With the decoherence of human rights and liberties, the elimination of humility and the deconstruction of communities, it is difficult to see how society could possibly function. Society, by definition, involves a group of people interacting with one another but if we fail to value the beliefs of others, then we fail to interact with them on any meaningful level. The conclusion of all of this is simply that if the micro-worldview described above is absolutized, it leads to the complete unraveling of society itself. This should, at the very least, lead us to question the validity of apathetic individualism.
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Additional clarifications and discussion;
It is clear that people don't hold to the worldview that we ought not care what others think in isolation. Many would argue that we should choose carefully who we care about and whose opinions we value. This position appears to make a great deal of sense, at least more sense than simply believing that others opinions don't matter. However, this also carries with it at least 2 main difficulties. Firstly that others opinions affect us whether we choose to value them or not and secondly that choosing whose opinions we value seems to assume that we already have the self-empowerment to choose whose opinions matter to us.
With regard to the first difficulty, it is a matter of fact that we cannot live in isolation. Other people's beliefs and opinions impact us on a day to day basis on every level of life. The president of the United States along with Congress can decide to implement a draft into the military in order to go to war. The way our neighbors and coworkers vote affects the laws which we must abide. The attitudes of drivers around us on our way to work, largely govern their behavior on the road and our reactions to them. We cannot simply announce that these people's opinions hold no value in our lives. The fact is, to function in society, we must value the opinions of others whether we recognize it or not.
This leads to the second difficulty, which is closely related to the first. To believe we can choose whose opinions we value is to assume that we have the power to choose who affects our lives or not. To value something is to give it significance and meaning. So to say you have the power to choose whose beliefs and opinions matter to you is to assume that you distribute meaning and significance to other people. When stated explicitly, this appears to be absurd and completely ridiculous because it is absurd and completely ridiculous.
If we do not have the power to choose who affects us and who does not, then we are forced to care about what others think about us and about everything and everyone we interact with on a daily basis. If we must care about what others think then we must reject apathetic individualism. Given this, we should also reject even the view that we should simply choose carefully whose opinion we value.
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A Better Viewpoint;
Given the conclusions above, it seems that we should care about everyone's opinion equally. Clearly this will not do, merely because it is not possible. We cannot value a stranger we are not even aware of in the same way we value our parents or siblings even though the actions and opinions of both can affect us a great deal. The better viewpoint then is to place a subjective sort of value on the opinions and values of certain people more than others, purely on the basis of our limitations, not our importance. I value the opinion of my father, not because I simply desire to bless him but because he brought me into this world and so he deserves my respect. I won't value the opinions of a total stranger as much because I have no connection to them and so have fewer obligations to them. I must value that which is actually most important to me, not what appeals to me the most. I do not matter in the grand scheme of things, I only matter in relation to those who value me.
