240310 What I learned in my studies this morning 4

Today's Meditation(s):

How to Read Montaigne, Terence Cave, Introduction

In early human cultures, group identity — the hamlet or village, band or tribe — was paramount: as weak and vulnerable as humans are, together we can be a formidable force, facing dangers which might otherwise doom the group. Be it a pack of predators or a natural disaster, people working together can go farther and overcome so much more.

Individually, as a child we're fully self-involved. We don't know any better. As we grow, we learn to be cognizant of others, to realize that they have inner lives as rich and complex, and important, as our own. We learn to share, to help, to care, to empathize, sympathize, love, and respect. Our normal pattern is to surpass our innate solipsism and become social animals. 

As humanity has progressed, our knowledge and technology have come to defend against many of Nature's vicissitudes and even direct them toward our own ends. People are now more potent. Individuals are capable of handling situations and dangers which would have required the larger group in earlier times.

Is our Western focus on individualism a societal outgrowth of this technological trend? As we have come to dominate Nature more fully, is that what has allowed (forced? influenced? coaxed?) us to pivot toward exploring personal potential over our formerly essential mutual concern?*

Is this progress or regress on a civilization level?  Is individualism a social evolution due to freedom from more existential concerns?  Or a devolution toward a more infantile worldview reminiscenct of our earliest individual consciousness?

=====

* Obviously, it's not the only possible result: many current cultures still have a pronounced impulse toward collective mindfulness and responsibility.