contradiction: individualism

> claim: in western countries (my perspective is European-centric) individualism is accepted and promoted as _the_ way to progress through life

when you think about it, it's quite funny. we tell our kids "be like yourself" and "you can be anything in life". there is some truth to it, until social and cultural adjustment happens. to participate in western life, by that i mean go through some form of education, find a job, have family and some security across a longer lifespan and finally grow old and die; to participate in that an incredible amount of adaptation needs to happen.

we are trained to "behave" and "be good", to succumb to a guideline someone else dictates upon us. without following this we become local outcast, and at the extreme we're shunned and excluded.

why is being an individual a problem at all? as humans we are fully capable to align our interests and behaviour with that of a social group _if_ there's a common interest/goal/ground. this doesn't require a wide-scale social and cultural rule-set (which is fundamentally required to guarantee some form of structure to living), but it does exist nonetheless and goes completely overboard at that.

there is a ton of research on that matter and the reasons vary by aspect. so this explains the social and cultural construct to a degree. the promotion of individualism can maybe be seen as what to strive for, the wish for change, the vision to develop towards. is it really that hard to reach further than what the current standard on individualism allows? i don't think it is. it does require something special though. something that seems to be very hard for humans to do: letting others be! and i don't mean being accepting (this is what the post-modernist would like you to do), i mean tolerance. to tolerate means to endure something, case by case this can be freaking hard. but being able to tolerate and let go of the urge to judge, control and enact pressure on someone else to follow your ideas, it's a very liberating moment. and i'd argue it's worth it.