Sunday, 4 September 2011

Individualism and cultural crisis

Individualism tends to undermine and eventually destroy the fabric of society when a code of behaviour equally valid and binding  for all is replaced by the individual's demand for self determination. As a penalty for this freedom he has seized, the individual forfeits the security derived from adherence to the group and the eagerly sought privilege of personal decision may well become a burden, a frightening burden.In itsextreme consequences individualism can result in the uncertainty, the moral relativism, the anxious soul searching typicalof the Age of angst.The firm standards and absolute criteria of the past has been replaced by the characteristically vacillitating, evasive attitude: "It all depends...", but on what?

Once the external frame of reference , the concept of a fixed order is abandoned, man is driven to seek a point of certainty within himself.This is the position today when people are seeking for a principle of order established not in terms of the external world and an appeal to reason, but in terms of  the inner world and an appeal to the imagination.

This attitude of the individualists causes them to be rather rebellious to society and makes them perpetrate anarchy and dissension. The harm done to the cultural climate of a nation through indiscriminate individualism is to be seen in the terror driven society in which we now live.

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