Time, Progress, Growth and Technology by Filipe Duarte Santos

Author:Filipe Duarte Santos
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030553340
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

6.5 The Emergence of Individualism and Egoism

Individualism–collectivism is an important psychological, philosophical, sociological, political, ethical, and cultural dimension that affects values, norms, and practices in all domains of human activity. It is therefore important to identify the current tendencies in the movements along that dimension and their origins. Individualism is a broad concept cutting across the above-mentioned areas. It describes the tendency to privilege the rights, interests, practices, and values of the individual relative to those of the group. It promotes a view of the self as self-directed and autonomous, while collectivism promotes a view of the self as overlapping with others so that one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are embedded in social contexts (Santos et al. 2017).

Collectivism also refers to the principle of centralization of social and economic power in the people collectively, and more specifically to the political or socio-economic theories or practices that encourage communal or state ownership of the means of production and distribution. A wide variety of models have been proposed to construct collectivist organizations, and political systems of government have included collectivism with varying degrees of expression since the 19th century, in such movements as socialism, communism, and fascism.

A recent study that examined 51 years of data on individualistic practices and values across 78 countries concluded that individualism is rising in most of the society’s analysed (Santos et al. 2017). It also found that socio-economic development emerged as the most important factor in the move towards individualism, explaining 35% of the 58% variance in change in individualism over time. Furthermore, they found that socio-economic development preceded increases in individualism, thereby suggesting a causal relationship between them. Ecological factors, such as the frequency of natural disasters and climatic stress had a less clear effect on individualism.

However, the correlation between socio-economic development and increasing individualism was not found for all countries. Armenia, China, Croatia, Ukraine, and Uruguay showed a non-negligible decline in individualistic values, which indicates that the individualism–collectivism dimension is multifaceted, involving many diverse factors, such as history, politics, and culture. China is a particularly interesting case since it showed no increase in individualistic values, in spite of the strong economic growth of recent decades. Although further research is required, the result may mean that individualism is not a strong cultural value in China and is probably not viewed and felt as a better stance to maintain growth and improve well-being.

There is a close connection between the modern concepts of individualism and egoism. Both refer to the same goal of acting in self-interest and devaluing the interests of social groups, whatever they may be, but while individualism is a stance, egoism may be a moral and ethical belief. Besides individualism has branched out into applications in many domains, while egoism has been more centered on psychology and philosophy. Curiously, both words are fairly recent inventions. They were first used after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and initially had a pejorative meaning. A long transformative process has occurred up to the present operative social time,

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