This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

So, one winter, five to ten years ago, I found myself at a communal breakfast table of the youth hostel where I was staying in Washington, D.C.. Generally, I’m not a fan of big groups of people I don’t know, so I tend to keep quiet, and just listen and observe the dynamics in these situations, kind of like the meat world equivalent of lurking in an online community. On this particular morning, I noticed a conversation between two women at the other end of my table – an American and a woman from South America. The latter had been reminded of and was recalling her experience at a group breakfast at an international conference she had attended a few years before. I think the breakfast she described had been a serve-yourself type of set-up and this woman had immediately taken on the unrequested and unnecessary role of dishing out food or coffee to all the attendees. Apparently, a Scottish woman had come up to her and told her that she didn’t need to do that and that it wasn’t women’s responsibility to take on serving roles at this conference. The South American woman had become quietly offended, and I think she had bridled at what she had correctly seen as a feminist attempt to invite her to join the group and eat some breakfast instead of missing out and serving. The South American explained to the American that in her culture, it is normal to volunteer to serve the group selflessly, and it had nothing to do with male domination. No way! Couldn’t possibly! But did she bolster her argument by adding that the males at the conference had also immediately jumped in to serve and clean up? No! Of course not! Because they hadn’t and they never do, and yes, this IS due to male domination. Culture is the very definition of all the ways in which women are subordinated to and by males in a particular time and place. The American listening to this story immediately did what all good little white Western women are supposed to do. She bowed her head in self-deprecation and shame, and lamented that her culture was soooo individualistic and selfish. None of this was about patriarchy, but about how Americans only think of themselves and their aggressive pursuit of fulfilling wants and needs at the expense of others. Fuck other people! I’m actually surprised that the American didn’t shit on the Scottish woman for imposing her feminist opinion on the situation. I can’t remember whether I had decided that breakfast was over at that point and I ended up missing the attack on feminism. Regardless, the whole thing was pathetic to listen to and frankly, incredibly reductionist, as all discussions of culture tend to be. But years later, I still remember this little scene so well, as I’ve always had a bone to pick with the whole over-simplified, high school debate topic – Which is morally superior: individualist or collectivist societies?

So, today, commune- and island-dwelling sisters, I is for Individualism.

I was still living in China when I witnessed this conversation, so I had been doing a lot of thinking on this topic, China being the so-called collectivist culture that it is. And I’ll say one thing right off the bat. I think if you’ve never spent significant time living in both individualist and collectivist cultures, you really aren’t qualified to make comparisons or draw conclusions about which one is better. It makes me think of another set of morally infused opposites: capitalism and communism or socialism, and how so many Americans seem to have really strong and judgey opinions about the latter without really knowing anything tangible about what it is.

The second thing I’ll say is that I don’t really prefer either type of society, and that some of the things we are told are present in one, are actually equally or more present in the other. I want to discuss a few points about both models of culture and then I’ll conclude with a note on patriarchy and what that means for women.

The Family as Individual

One thing I noticed after nearly a decade in a collectivist culture is that individualism is actually the undercurrent, but the unit is different. The individual is not the person, but the family. It really clicked for me when a student of mine was telling me about some Western soap operas she was watching. She said they were very different than Chinese shows. The characters in Western shows each had their own story line in addition to whatever was going on within a family. In China, all the story lines involve the family as a group. The members are not individuals living their own lives within the context of a family. I also, in the role of unofficial therapist for so many of my students, listened to countless horror stories of young people being horribly abused by parents while accepting the fact that they would never, ever leave and would even financially support their abusers for their entire lives. They believed and accepted that there was no escape. Individual suffering is meaningless in light of the well-being of the family. So, in collectivist cultures, you are not separate from your family. Everything you do affects its status and reputation – you function as a unit, an individual, essentially. So I consider collectivism to be almost a subtype of individualism, but incorrectly painted as morally superior. In reality, it can be colder, more dishonest and more open to abuse than any true individualistic society ever could be.

The Selfishness, Ruthlessness and Hypocrisy of Collectivist Cultures

It’s funny, so much of what is criticized about individualistic cultures is actually more true of the collectivists. It is said that individual success is not worshipped like you see in individualistic cultures. This isn’t true. Individual heroes are often created as examples to be followed, and you are more likely to see the development of personality cults among leaders within collectivism. I think without a rallying point such as a successful person, people tend to stray off the accepted path in order to create their own purposes. As well, volunteerism, as in choosing to do volunteer work, instead of being forced into it is virtually non-existent in collectivist cultures, despite it being essentially a selfless, group-benefitting act. I remember a conversation with one of my closest friends, who is Chinese, about volunteer work. She is a really smart and considerate person, but she told me she couldn’t truly understand why one would ever do volunteer work and was quite awestruck with the many stories of volunteerism that the various Western travellers she has met had. She also couldn’t believe that many so-called individuals even plan their travel around volunteering. But it is a fundamental and even moral imperative in individualistic cultures, although moreso among women than men, as males tend to believe that they deserve compensation for any work that they do. The same moral approach exists towards charities and charitable donations. In the US, data show that poor people frequently donate money to charities – it really has nothing to do with wealth, unlike what people assume. It is a moral choice, not a financial choice. Charitable giving doesn’t really exist in places like China, even among the rich. There is no drive to help strangers that I have ever seen, despite the claim that it is the faceless masses that you don’t know that are more important than you as an individual. I remember back when the Philippines suffered devasting losses due to a typhoon about 10 years ago. China as a country donated less money to relief efforts than the company IKEA. And the Philippines is both their neighbour and poorer than China. It seemed to me that collectivism has some very well-understood, but unspoken limitations on who belonged to the collective. It is very ‘in group/out group’. And indeed, collectivist cultures tend to be very, very exclusive. You don’t help anyone outside your tribe, and for many, even outside your family – the individual. You also don’t share, you don’t allow migration into the group, and you erase those who try to leave. Collectivist cultures tend to be very racist, very sexist, very censorious and rule-bound, and very unforgiving and violent, despite the ‘for the good of all’ mantra that you tend to hear. These are not the shiny happy people that communists and collectivists claim they are.

When Individualism Creates Weakness Rather than Strength

If collectivists are about grinning and bearing it in the name of sacrifice to the group, then individualists are supposed to be about survival of the fittest, and I’m referring to Herbert Spencer’s essentialism here. Individualism has done some good things for society. It has inspired creativity, some progress in human rights, critical analysis of religion and more. But it has also moved a lot of people away from contributing to the well-being of society and legitimizing some really shameful and anti-social pursuits. And while introducing the idea of human rights, it has also created a lot of confusion over the differences between wants, needs, rights and privileges, often elevating a frivolous or delusional wish to the level of a matter of life and death. Instead of creating the type of strength that would come from being forced to adapt to frequent change or normal human societal challenges, in the way that Darwin saw evolution and progress, highly individualistic societies seem to have created a population dependent on validation and being rewarded for mediocrity and even failure. We now see division and strife that can put individualistic societies in precarious and unstable situations over relatively insignificant issues. And this serves to distract from more serious problems facing our world.

Conclusion

Well, I’ve managed to shit all over everything, eh? Actually, I like some aspects of both types of society. My problem is that no reasonable system can function the way it is supposed to if men run it or even exist in it. In a collectivist society, the male drive to control and conquer will override the sharing and altruistic goals that are supposed to flourish. Female altruism and empathy end up abused and devalued, and everyone ends up suspicious and cold. In an individualistic society, male greed will create horrors and suffering for those without power and resources, and who end up forced into desperate arrangements in the name of survival. I’d love to see and actual collectivist society that acknowledges some value of the individual. It would have to be a small-scale society with clear goals, and the key element – or rather, missing element – would be the interfering destructive sex that has tended to ruin everything it touches. You know who I’m talking about 😉 But for now, if you are going to criticize a culture, remember that is it not individualism or collectivism or capitalism or communism that are the root problems, it is patriarchy. And that should be the basis of your arguments.

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