How Individualism Breaks Down Community

By Travis Jones

Everywhere in these days men have ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 346

When I turned 18, I was ready to go off and make a life for myself. I took a job that moved me across the country from all my family. I was excited to see where else it could take me. I remember being so excited to see new places and build my own life. I loved my family and certainly missed being away from many of them, but I was ready to become my own person.

When you have made important decisions in life, like what to do for a job, where to live, who to marry, etc., what things did you take into consideration in making those decisions? Did you consider what your preferences were? How different possibilities might turn out in the future for you? What would please God? Maybe even how it might affect your significant other and other close family?

For myself, I first consider what God’s will is, and then how it will affect my wife. It is good that we consider what God’s will is when making decisions and seek to honor him; it is also good that we consider our family in those decision making processes. But ultimately for myself, my decisions are often made with little regard to those outside of my immediate family, and I am often quite unaware of how my decisions and actions affect others around me who I don’t even know.

Individualism is the air I grew up breathing in the United States. It is the constant focus and emphasis on oneself as an individual separate from the community one is a part of. This individualism influences how I think, make decisions, and in many ways, live my life. This is not all bad necessarily; it is important that we recognize our uniqueness and that we are an individual person. But for me, it almost always leads to self-centered decision making, which leads to a self-centered lifestyle.

Individualism often repeats the old question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Individualism tells us that we need to go out and make a life for ourselves, but it is often to the detriment of our communal relationships. It breeds a competitive spirit that says we need to get ours and not worry about if others are taken care of. It often causes us to turn a blind eye to injustice and blame it on individual, personal problems that we can do little to change.

This month, we are considering how an unhealthy individualism leads to a breakdown in our communities. Through the lens of Scripture and God’s love, we will try to understand how we can live in a way that does not dismiss our individuality, but also includes that individuality in the collective whole of our communities, and recognizes that, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”¹ While we never want to lose sight of the individuals in our communities, we also don’t want to lose sight of our communities for the individuals.

¹Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”.