The Case for Others in an Individual
Within mainstream culture and social media, these days, being labeled “normal” comes with a negative connotation. Weirdness and difference are seen more positively now than probably any time in the past. I attribute this to the fundamental individualism that dominates Western thought and the United States. However, this trend in thought has come to culminate in toxic individualism, examples of which are seen all around: indifference to human suffering and vulnerability, decreased societal empathy and compassion, competition valued over interpersonal relationships, increased reliance on one’s ability to the point of detriment, etc. While toxic individualism can be examined by many different angles, I will examine it through the lens of social psychology. Specifically, I argue extreme, one-sided individualism is fundamentally contrary to our cognitive perception of reality.
Let’s say for example that you are walking down a sidewalk in your neighborhood and then suddenly an alien spaceship appears in the middle of the road, 100 feet in the air. Naturally, you freak out and run to the closest house. After frantically ringing the doorbell, telling your neighbor what happened, and bringing them outside, they look around wondering what you are talking about. You ask them, “You don’t see that alien spaceship?” They respond in the negative, return to their house shaking their heads, and wonder what’s going on with you. You ask other neighbors; you Facetime everyone is your recent calls list; but, everyone doesn’t see what you are talking about. You try all other ways of testing such as climbing up to it with a ladder and throwing something at it but some weird alien field blocks all these attempts. So, all you are left with is asking people if they see it or not. Eventually, you’ve asked everyone, all of whom have said no, and you start wondering if you are growing crazy, if you are hallucinating. Is this alien ship even real?
What this example leads us to wonder about is how we define reality. Personally, I have come to the following definition: reality is the physical, social, psychological validation of multiple measurement systems or perspectives (aka us) on a system. Breaking down this definition, on each level of reality is a collective agreement of multiple systems. For example, neurobiologically, the integration of different sensory modalities in our nervous system is the basis of reality construction. Showing that reality is constructed through overlapping senses, the condition of visual agnosia is when an individual can recognize all the features of an object (color, shape, height, etc) but can not name it since their integration area for visual stimuli is disrupted. Furthermore, moving into the realm of society, we depend on others for our physical reality. If you need an example, I recommend youtubing “pretending to step over something in front of a car”. Even on the level of knowledge, reproducibility is ingrained in science, because one person’s experiment isn’t enough to be trusted as our reality. In social science as well, public sentiment is not based on one person’s response but the entire population.
Thus, human reality can be defined as the collective agreed state of things by the majority of humans. This means if in the future everyone believes that the moon is just a giant spotlight, then the moon ceases to be real. Although physical examples of this reasoning are “trippy”, examples are easier seen in social or psychological realms. If we all decide Taylor Swift isn’t popular anymore, Taylor ceases to be popular. If we decide higher-order animals are sentient, eating meat becomes wrong. This definition of reality gives us a framework for understanding differing points of views, ethics and morals. On the group level, the reason why Christians and Muslims, vegans and meat-eaters, or healthcare professionals and anti-vaxxers disagree is because their viewpoints literally perceive reality differently.
Looking at the individual and reality, individualism is incompatible with one’s natural perception of the world as loosening one’s ties of the expectations and thoughts of others is distancing oneself from reality. Underlying this assertion is that objective truths do not exist since we are subjective observers with an index of uncertainty in every thought; thus, the strongest way to build reality is through consensus.
Let’s say you grew up and you thought people with purple hair were super attractive. But somewhere along the line, you realize that hair color holds no value in love and decide to get rid of this attraction. You do this but you realize that everyone around you also likes purple hair. Whenever someone else is analyzing the looks of a person, the assumption that purple hair is attractive is there. You find it hard to separate from this belief due to the reinforcement of it from all around you.
But, let’s say you do. Whenever you listen to someone else, your internal or external disagreement causes you to feel distanced from that individual. Even though overvaluing purple hair in our actual world is agreed upon, this example helps highlight how an individual belief that contrasts with the collective majority leads to difficulty/distancing, because it conflicts with our natural way of reality perception.
As another example, the partially religious look at the life of monks or nuns in awe, wondering how they could dedicate their lives like that. This is because subconsciously the partially religious do not want divorce from their current lives, relationships, and thus reality. But, when they have a reawakening and their relationship with God becomes their one and only, they become more open to the monk/nun life, because the one that really matters is God. Of note, someone who goes through this is consciously choosing the path of enlightenment/spirituality (which is a choice of individualism), loosening one’s ties on thoughts of others (by not caring if they leave their current life behind), and strengthening their connection on the expectation of God (which becomes their new reality). (Although I use monks/nuns here, this can be applied to anyone who experiences such intense religious fervor to where their lives differ drastically from modern normative life.)
Thus, by overvaluing one’s thoughts and devaluing others, individualism divorces the person from their physical and social reality, leaving us with a sticky mess. But, this problem can be boiled down to the following question: why do people feel the need to be individualistic? Simply, enlightenment and self-actualization.
