Gathering - Individualism and Community

One of my favorite topics, the interplay between our desire for individualism and our desire for connection. This Sunday we will have a discussion on these two influences, and look at what we ourselves want in our lives.

At the bottom of this email is an excerpt from a book I am reading called "American Ways", a book intended to help foreigners coming to the US the unique differences in American culture that they need to be prepared for. It has stirred my thoughts a lot as I have prepared for a trip to Portland, Oregon, in my own personal quest for community. I hope you can make this gathering.

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Freeheart Gatherings are a place where people gather who are seeking a
richer physical, emotional, and spiritual life. Unless otherwise
announced, events take place in Vienna from 7 - 9:30 PM on Sunday
nights. Gatherings are free, and donations for expenses are also
welcome. Bring snacks or drink to share. Topics are usually announced
a few days before the event.

For more information on this and other events, go to
http://freeheart.net/events .

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Excerpt from "American Ways" by Gary Althen

Individualism

The most important thing to understand about Americans is probably
their devotion to individualism. They are trained from very early in
their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals who are
responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies.
They are not trained to see themselves as members of a close-knit,
interdependent family, religious group, tribe, nation, or any other
collectivity.

You can see it in the way Americans treat their children. One day I
was at a local shopping mall, waiting in line to buy an Orange Julius.
(An Orange Julius is a cool drink made in a blender with orange juice,
ice, and some other ingredients.) Behind me in the line was a woman
with two children, a boy who was about three years old and a girl who
was about five. The boy had his hand in a pocket of his blue jeans,
and I could hear that he had some coins in there.

The boy asked his mother, "Can I get an Orange Julius?" "No," she said
to him. "You don't have enough money left for an Orange Julius.
Remember you bought that cookie a while ago. You do have enough money
for a hot dog. So you could get a hot dog now if you want to. Or, you
could save your money, and sometime later when you have enough money,
we could come back here and you could get an Orange Julius."

When I tell this story to people from other countries, they usually
react with disbelief. The idea that a child so young would even have
his own money to spend, let alone be expected to decide how to spend
it, seems beyond their comprehension. Here is a young child whose own
mother is forcing him to make a decision that affects not just his
situation at the moment-whether or not to get a hot dog-but that will
affect him at some unspecified time in the future, when he will have
more money...

This particular mother mayor may not have owned a copy of Dr. Benjamin
Spock's famous book, Dr. Spock's Health and Child Care, to which
millions of American parents have long turned for information and
advice on raising their children. The most recent version of the book
makes this observation:

In the United States ... very few children are raised to believe that
their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country, or
their God [as is the practice in some other countries]. Generally
children [in the United States] are given the feeling that they can
set their own aims and occupation in life, according to their
inclinations. We are raising them to be rugged individualists ....
(1998, 7)

While it has become more acceptable in light of changing economic
circumstances (especially higher housing costs) for young adults to
live in their parents' house, the ideal of independence after high
school graduation remains. If it is economically feasible for them to
do so, young adult Americans are expected to live apart from their
parents, either on their own or in college, or risk being viewed as
immature, "tied to their mother's apron strings," or otherwise unable
to lead a normal, independent life.

Research by social scientists indicates that the culture of the United
States is the most individualistic (or second most, after Australia)
in the world. American individualism was perhaps epitomized by a
"Walkman dance" at a major university. Students assembled in a large
room, where they all danced alone to whatever music they were playing
on their own Walkman.

Americans are trained to conceive of themselves as separate
individuals, and they assume everyone else in the world is too. When
they encounter a person from abroad who seems to them excessively
concerned with the opinions of parents, with following traditions, or
with fulfilling obligations to others, they assume that the person
feels trapped or is weak, indecisive, or "overly dependent." They
assume all people must resent being in situations where they are not
"free to make up their own minds." They assume, furthermore, that
after living for a time in the United States, people will come to feel
"Liberated" from constraints arising from outside themselves and will
be grateful for the opportunity to "do their own thing" and "have it
their own way." As indeed, many are.

It is this concept of themselves as individual decision makers that
blinds at least some Americans to the fact that they share a culture
with each other. They often have the idea, as mentioned above, that
they have independently made up their own minds about the values and
assumptions they hold. The notion that social factors outside
themselves have made them "just like everyone else" in important ways
offends their sense of dignity.

Americans, then, consider the ideal person to be an individualistic,
self-reliant, independent person. They assume, incorrectly, that
people from elsewhere share this value and this self-concept. In the
degree to which they glorify "the individual" who stands alone and
makes his or her own decisions, Americans are quite distinctive.

The individual that Americans idealize prefers an atmosphere of
freedom, where neither the government nor any other external force or
agency dictates what the individual does. For Americans, the idea of
individual freedom has strong, positive connotations.

By contrast, people from many other cultures regard some of the
behavior Americans legitimize by the label "individual freedom" to be
self-centered and lacking in consideration for others. Mr. Wilson (see
pages xx-xxii) and his mother are good American individualists, living
their own lives and interfering as little as possible with others.
Tariq Nassar found their behavior almost immoral.

Foreign visitors who understand the degree to which Americans are
imbued with the notion that the free, self-reliant individual is the
ideal kind of human being will be able to understand many aspects of
American behavior and thinking that otherwise might not make sense. A
very few of many possible examples:

· Americans see as heroes those individuals who "stand out from the
crowd" by doing something first, longest, most often, or otherwise
"best." Real-life examples are aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amelia
Earhart, golfer Tiger Woods, and basketball player Michael Jordan.
Perhaps the best example from the world of fiction is the American
cowboy as portrayed by such motion-picture actors as John Wayne and
Clint Eastwood.

· Americans admire people who have overcome adverse circumstances (for
example, poverty or a physical handicap) and "succeeded" in life.
Booker 1. Washington, a famous nineteenth-century African American
educator, is one example; the blind and deaf author and lecturer,
Helen Keller, is another.

· Many Americans do not display the degree of respect for their
parents that people in more traditional or family-oriented societies
commonly do. From their point of view, being born to particular
parents was a sort of historical or biological accident. The parents
fulfill their responsibilities to the children while the children are
young, but when the children have reached "the age of independence,"
the close child-parent tie is loosened, occasionally even broken.

· It is not unusual for Americans who are beyond the age of about
twenty-two (and sometimes younger) and who are still living with their
parents to pay their parents for room and board. Elderly parents
living with their grown children may do likewise. Paying for room and
board is a way of showing independence, self-reliance, and
responsibility for oneself.

· Certain phrases one commonly hears among Americans capture their
devotion to individualism:

"You'll have to decide that for yourself." "If you don't look out for
yourself, no one else will." "Look out for number one." "Be your own
best friend."

In the late 1900s, social scientists who studied cultural differences
published extensively about differences between individualistic and
collectivistic societies. Some of their articles offered observations
that can be quite helpful to collectivists and others trying to
understand American culture. Two examples follow; both mention ideas
that are addressed elsewhere in this book.

In the late 1900s, social scientists who studied cultural differences
published extensively about differences between individualistic and
collectivistic societies. Some of their articles offered observations
that can be quite helpful to collectivists and others trying to
understand American culture.

To transcend the distance between self and others, people in
individualistic societies have to develop a certain set of social
skills. These include public speaking meeting others quickly and
putting them at ease ... , making a good first impression, and being
well mannered, cordial, and verbally fluent during initial encounters
with others. These skills are not as necessary for collectivists. When
it comes time for a person to meet unknown others in the larger
society, members of the collective act as go-betweens and make
introductions, describe the person's accomplishments and abilities,
and so forth .... In short, individualists have to rely on themselves
and to develop skills that allow them to branch out in society.
Collectivists have a supportive group that assists in this same goal.
(Brislin 1990, 21-22)

Collectivists will want to understand that individualists are,
according to Harry Triandis, Richard Brislin, and C. H. Hui, likely to

· pay relatively little attention to groups (including families) they
belong to,

· be proud of their accomplishments and expect others to feel proud of
their own accomplishments,

· be more involved with their peers and less involved with people who
are older or more senior in an organization, and be more comfortable
in social relationships with those who are their equals and less
comfortable in relationships with people of higher or lower status
than themselves,

· act competitively,

· define status in terms of accomplishments (what they have achieved
through their own efforts) rather than relationships or affiliations
(the family or other group to which they belong),

· seem relatively unconcerned about being cooperative or having smooth
interpersonal relations,

· seem satisfied with relationships that seem superficial and short-term,

· be ready to "do business" very soon after meeting, without much time
spent on preliminary gettingacquainted conversation,

· place great importance on written rules, procedures, and deadlines,
such as leases, contracts, and appointments,

· be suspicious of, rather than automatically respectful toward,
people in authority, and

· assume that people in general need to be alone some of the time and
prefer to take care of problems by themselves. (1988,271)