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> We tend to view collectivism as an inherently oppressive and dictatorial mode of social organization, a cruel enslavement and subjugation of the individual, w

by djur 12y ago

> We tend to view collectivism as an inherently oppressive and dictatorial mode of social organization, a cruel enslavement and subjugation of the individual, who is prohibited from doing anything but following the mandates of the collective handed down by some vast inhuman and opaque bureaucracy. The number of people I have met who actually 'tend to' believe anything of the sort is very small, and they are all big-L Libertarians. Americans as a whole are certainly more oriented towards individualism than Europeans, but there are plenty of collectivist endeavors that Americans love (see: football, megachurches, the military). > Another seperate factor is that natural resources in general are far more abundant in the US than Germany. Relative to the US, Germany is a tiny country with a huge population packed into a very small space. I think that is historically a much, much larger contributing factor to American attitudes on conservation than anything related to collectivism. The many early American communes were just as fervently devoted to expansion and industrious exploitation of the land as the cash-driven individualists.

pjlegato 12y ago
Sure, there are lots of US group activities, but they are not collectivist in the sense I was using the word. Churches and sports teams and even the US military today are free and voluntary associations. Nobody forces you to join if you don't want to. It's entirely your choice. If you choose to join the group, great -- it's nobody else's business unless you are harming someone else. It's not an intrinsic or automatic part of you, it's a choice you've made. What I mean by collectivism is the psychological self-perception that one is involuntarily, primarily, and inherently a member of a group (rather than foremost an individual who happens to choose to join some groups) and then considering all decisions in this context of "what effect will it have on this group that I have found myself in?" Of course these are broad generalizations and they do not describe everyone in either country, and this short summary is incomplete in some ways. Americans do indeed have a somewhat automatic collective identity as Americans, but it's different in character in that it expressly emphasizes individualism as a core value. I think nonetheless that these broad summaries are also not entirely inaccurate.

by djur 12y ago

pjlegato 12y ago

Sure, there are lots of US group activities, but they are not collectivist in the sense I was using the word. Churches and sports teams and even the US military today are free and voluntary associations. Nobody forces you to join if you don't want to. It's entirely your choice. If you choose to join the group, great -- it's nobody else's business unless you are harming someone else. It's not an intrinsic or automatic part of you, it's a choice you've made. What I mean by collectivism is the psychological self-perception that one is involuntarily, primarily, and inherently a member of a group (rather than foremost an individual who happens to choose to join some groups) and then considering all decisions in this context of "what effect will it have on this group that I have found myself in?" Of course these are broad generalizations and they do not describe everyone in either country, and this short summary is incomplete in some ways. Americans do indeed have a somewhat automatic collective identity as Americans, but it's different in character in that it expressly emphasizes individualism as a core value. I think nonetheless that these broad summaries are also not entirely inaccurate.