The Individual and the Community

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings on this page.

1. The Individual against the Group.
Society is not an adequate term for the group, since it is a loose term that includes both the individual and the community. Opposing the individual to the community suits my purpose: this opposition is the opposition between separateness and unity, between divergence and sameness.

2. Social change as a dialectical process.
I use the term ‘dialectics ’ in the Hegelian sense. It represents a movement of thought through three stages. First there is the opening idea, the thesis ; then thought switches to the opposite conception, the antithesis. Finally both stages are blended together in the third stage, the synthesis.

In moral ideas, if the thesis is a concept of goodness then the antithesis is a concept of badness. If the thesis represents some badness, the antithesis is that of some goodness. The synthesis is the resolution of the conflict.

The ideas that are important to society produce both good and bad effects. First the good effects are usually seen, and then later the bad effects become visible. Eventually a compromise is reached, and the modified ideas are synthesised into a new harmony; they have become absorbed into the common stock of values. They have become absorbed into tradition ; they have ‘melted’ into the background of social values and are then taken for granted. Overall, this process is a dialectical one.  [¹]

Society evolves through the ideas that are important to it. So the evolution of society is a dialectical process too. Society goes through times which are ‘good’, and then through times which are ‘bad’, in an endless spiral of dialectical activity leading in the direction of its teleological destiny.[²]. When society is exploring several important ideas simultaneously, then each idea produces its own good and bad times, and its own particular rate of social absorption and evolution. These effects from each idea are superimposed together, resulting in an apparent chaotic social reality.

History is a dialectical oscillation between unity and separation, between sameness and divergence. There are overlapping levels of dialectical change: between individual and community, between national government and region, between empire and colony. A community arises, formulates some universal moral rules (as the basis of the unity of the community) which are applied to every member, and then eventually collapses into a mere aggregate of separate individuals. An empire arises, establishes some universal principles in order to generate unity, and then eventually splits into quarrelling regions of separateness. After a time a new community is established, or a new empire arises, and so dialectical change moves on.

Identities Evolve

In the polar opposition between the individual and the community, both the poles have good and bad attributes. Each person is a mixture of these extremes : he can be focused on his sense of individuality and so have an individual identity, or he can focus on being socially-orientated and hence have a social identity. Each person decides which identity is most important at any particular time. [³]

In a community the sense of social identity can be maximised ; emotional longings can be fulfilled. Yet the community usually denigrates both intellectual exploration of its traditions and values, and any expressions of desires that seem inimical to it. But times change. Eventually the community exhausts its contemporary usefulness and becomes fossilised as it ceases to cater for the new needs that have developed: it becomes a hindrance to further evolution. Then sooner or later the community breaks up as the individual explodes out of its chains.

A new era of individual identity and freedom begins. Bonds are destroyed and new intellectual and creative achievements are possible. When society, which has mainly become an aggregate of individuals, has reached its maximum possible degree of separateness then the dialectical pendulum moves on – a contracting process becomes dominant. The loneliness, isolation and lack of social companionship of the individual outweigh his desire for freedom. So a new sense of community will be established.

History does not repeat itself exactly, which means that the individual of one era is different from the individual of any previous era. Any community is different from former ones.

Concepts of community and of individuality both evolve. The individual of modern times did not exist during the eras of ancient Greece and Rome. By this statement I mean that if  I take the modern concept of individuality and examine ancient Greece and Rome it is unlikely that I will find any historical persons who could fit such a concept. Nevertheless, the concept of individuality existed then, but what it meant to be an individual at that time probably has little relevance to modern times.

In the Middle Ages, the age of faith and of community, the classical expression of individuality was the knight-errant, the knight of chivalry. Renaissance Italy had still another way of expressing individuality. The differences in the manifestation of individuality arose because the communities were different from each other. In other words, the concept of individuality takes its point of departure from the concept of community. Hence as community changes so does the sense of individuality.

Two Foci of Change

Dialectical change has two focal points of emotion, those of love-hate and of jealousy-narcissism. The jealousy-narcissism binary revolves around concepts of power.[4]. The love-hate binary centres on concepts of identity.[5]. Perhaps the art of living an harmonious life is to know intuitively which focus to anchor oneself on at any particular time.

Community bonds people together. The cement of this bonding is jealousy. Individuality centres on narcissism. Therefore :

Society coheres through jealousy,
but evolves through narcissism.

Consider present-day society. Society changes as morality changes. As I write these notes in the late 1990s, society is slowly following a path that leads to self-consciousness ; this means that the person is automatically being pushed in the direction of becoming an individual, of increasing the intensity of narcissism and decreasing that of jealousy.

This push comes from the twin impulses of free-market economics and modern relationship issues. Both these impulses generate high levels of anxiety which need to be resolved. This need implies that mankind will become increasingly pre-occupied with mind and self-awareness in the coming years. Hence the nature of society will undergo profound changes. It will become more flexible, more adaptable, even amorphous, rather than retaining the rigid stratifications of present-day society, the rigidity of which is due to jealousy.

The sense of duty and obligation in a community arises from jealousy, and so does the ‘ought ’ factor in ethical statements. As society is switching away from jealousy, so it is following a path that needs to go beyond past limitations of moral imperatives. When this movement eventually comes to a halt, and a new community is created, its values will be very different from past values. Nothing is achieved by attempting a return to the past. Future community will have future values, not past ones. If the millennium is to produce a New Age community then we need to open ourselves to new ideas and explore new values.

I give an example. In the past, ethical writings and discussion often centred on the idea that humans are inferior beings and need to stand in awe of God and angels. The dialectical opposition to this idea has led to destructive exploitation of the Earth as we seek to prove that we are in control – hence really we must be superior beings. In general, whatever view we have of humanity will always generate an opposing view, given enough time.

This opposition between inferiority and superiority can be assimilated by exploring the concept that we are partners with God in the process of cosmic creation, and therefore can see ourselves as stewards of the Earth.

Elites and the Crowd

The ideas above have ignored one major source of conflict, which I now look at. The evolution of society has produced a problem that has existed at least since Plato’s time, the problem of the relationship between the elite and the crowd.

In past times, education and culture had always been the prerogative of an affluent minority within society. But this minority depended for its leisure on the existence of an uneducated, uncultured working sector of society, a sector which always formed the mass of that society. The educated minority was possessive of its privileges and power, and denied the uneducated majority any access to them.

This dichotomy generates a huge social problem. If, during times of democracy, the uneducated majority is allowed to share power, then by the very fact that it is uneducated and uncultured it does not know how to handle power wisely. So all values drop to the lowest common denominator, to the level that the majority are familiar with. This lowering of standards is what made Plato despise democracy, and made Nietzsche repudiate the idea of equality. The modern form that this problem takes is that media institutions are ‘dumbing-down’ cultural values as they pander to the crowd.

If, on the other hand, access to power is denied to the majority then that majority begins to be envious and resentful of the minority, and the minority begins to fear the crowd. An escalating cycle of fear and resentment begins. The minority passes authoritarian laws to control the crowd, and the crowd becomes revolutionary in response.

Education and Economics

There are two obvious ways out of this impasse, and both of them give rise to new problems. These two ways are those of education and of consumer-orientated economics.

To understand the new problems, consider the psychological effects of growing up within a repressive social morality. If the person seeks to eliminate his moral repressions by seeking counselling or psycho-analysis, then he will experience therapeutic abreaction. This will bring up into his consciousness everything that he was taught to be immoral and degrading. It will also bring up his latent internal violence, that is, the violence and conflict created in his mind by the repression of desires that are not socially-acceptable. So the first stage of becoming mature is to work through all the dregs in his subconscious mind, as they are experienced in catharsis and resentment. Hence the path to maturity lies through immaturity. [6]

This path also applies to any morally-conditioned sector of society that is suddenly given some freedom of expression and power that was previously denied to it.

Education
For an illustration, take the results of education in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. As literacy became widespread throughout the uneducated majority the effects were not what was expected. Instead of being enthusiastic over the opportunity to read the classical works of canonical literature, the masses desired only to read the Yellow Press – they preferred gossip, scandal and sultry romance to edifying tomes.

The appeal of such romance was in what it suggested ; the reader had to use his own imagination to flesh out the detail. This trend of irreverence carries on to the present day. What the crowd is doing is working its way through the immorality engendered by a morally-repressive system of custom and law. A mature appreciation of literature and art lies in the future. Malicious gossip and scandal is a mild way of releasing the internal violence created by social conditioning. Yet this mild level of individual violence, melded together in the mass, fuelled two world wars.

Economics
Now consider consumer-orientated economics. Such a system can give a person more control and power over his social environment, but at the cost of releasing his internal violence more destructively. The social chaos generated by rapid economic change puts the individual under a greater intensity of anxiety, and so his latent internal violence increases in intensity. This increased anxiety finds expression in the modern equivalent of last century’s Yellow Press: the cult of explicit sex and violence in films.

Now nothing is suggested ; suggestion is too old-fashioned. Everything must be shown in every detail. Again we see that such films are reducing values to the lowest common denominator. Now the crowd is working its way through the aspects of immorality within an overpowering liberal economic system. But this level of internal violence is much greater than that of the nineteenth century. Hence I expect that the international wars of the twenty-first century will dwarf into relative insignificance the world wars of the twentieth century.

( Probably most warfare will be over the control of oilfields as the world's oil begins running out. As capitalism goes into crisis, the emergence of social resentment will fuel the generation of a new cycle of fascism ; only this time fascism will be global instead of being restricted to a few European countries.)

A mature and harmonious society is dependent on all sectors of that society having access to education and culture. Therefore the problem for modern times is to allow immature sectors of society to work their way through their immorality till they reach maturity, without destroying society in the process.

The only way to prevent cataclysmic levels of violence and war in the twenty-first century is to ensure that psychological knowledge influences, or even regulates, social and political administration, and to provide cheap access to counselling when needed.

An understanding of psychology is the only way to keep phantasies of violence as phantasies and not as something to manifest as a social reality.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my other websites are on the Links page.

[¹]. The dialectical pattern of influence that an important idea has is described in the article Change and Conflict. [1]

[²]. See the article on Teleology. [2]

[³]. The idea of having two identities, a social identity and an individual identity, is introduced in the article Confusion.
It is examined in more detail in the article Two Identities on my website The Subconscious Mind. [3]

[4]. Power revolves around the narcissism - jealousy binary. See the article Social Approval, Inferiority Complex and Power.

My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion.  [4]

[5]. The creation of identity using love and hate is described in the article Two Identities, on my website The Subconscious Mind.
The unconscious idea that helps to create the emotion of love is "I am the same as everyone else"; the unconscious idea that helps to create the emotion of hate is "I am different from everyone else". See the first article on Emotion.  [5]

[6]. My analysis of catharsis and the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See home page. [6]

The articles in this section are :

Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
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