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| Re: Answer to the enitre worlds problems and trends: People simply hate people? (21829) | |||
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Re: Answer to the enitre worlds problems and trends: People simply hate people? |
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Posted by Mark Michalovic on Mon Mar 28 16:01:25 2005, in response to Re: Answer to the enitre worlds problems and trends: People simply hate people?, posted by brooklynQB on Mon Mar 28 15:41:22 2005. That's a very good question. This is a very individualistic culture, which can be a very good thing at times, and it can be a bad thing at other times. On the good side it makes people who are brave enough to take control of their own lives, and to think and act independently. It give us the courage to stand up for what we think is right when everyone else seems complacent. On the bad side, we sometimes get the idea that anyone can take care of his or her needs entirely on his or her own. We even go so far as to beleive that other people are merely a hindrance to be overcome rather than a resource to draw upon in time of need. This can inhibit us from forming the kind of community structures that people need to survive.For example, look at the Homestead Act. It allowed individual families to get land cheap from the government to start their own farms on the frontier, where it was assumed that they would prosper once they were free from the constraints of committments to other people that were holding them back. This act was a peice of social engineering that put farmers on isolated individual homestead farms far away from each other. (This was something new in history, because throughout history until then agriculture had almost always been carried out by communities, from the farming villages of medeival Europe to the farming-based cities of ancient Egypt.) But the Homestead Act made no provisions for community. Community was something that kept you down, so its framers must have thought. It's hard to figure out how to strike a balance, especially for me because I'm such an individualist. I probably wouldn't be happy in any other country than this one where individualism is so valued. But it is clear to me that people need community, and just how to create that in the framework of this individualistic culture is something I haven't really figured out. Mark |
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