The Webbed Self: Deconstructing Individualism

Abstract

By now one thing should be totally clear: individualism is a theoretically untenable and socially destructive doctrine. It might well be called the social disease of modernity, completely mangling any capacity to understand the process by which society produces and nurtures individuals into adulthood. At its best, it is a well-meaning but failed attempt to shore up the value of individuality by asserting its ontological irreducibility, seeking to guarantee its success in advance by claiming that the individual’s unique personal traits were there from the start. At its worst, it is a disintegrative attack on the pedagogical value and emotional sustenance of every collectivity, denying personal and collective moral responsibility for the quality of life of its members. It thus serves as a justification for a narrow self-seeking (often profit-maximizing) egoism.

I am because we are.

(Kenyan proverb)

The hardest disease to cure is the one that is caused by the medicine you’re taking.¹