Collectivism By Design

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Imagine if we could run an experiment where we could adjust a bunch of knobs on various social systems, and see how they all fare over time. For example, comparing authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, theocracies vs. purely secular states, and so on. Over time, various indicators of successful societies would emerge, based on the traits of those that observed long-term prosperity. While we obviously can't run this experiment exactly, a shallow proxy is already implemented in nature through natural selection. And observing some of the negative trends in our modern world suggest some indicators of how not to run a society.

Every once in a while, when I visit my parents at home, we all attend a traditional Indian gathering with a bunch of other families that live nearby. And every time, I feel a massive culture shock. Namely, everyone is open. People you have never met are smiling at you and inviting you to a conversation. Notably, people are eagerly discussing ways to help each other out or work together. It turns out this collectivisim is deeply rooted in Indian culture. By default, neighbors are your friends. Instead of worrying about who has the bigger house or the flashier car, the focus seems to be more on sharing experiences and ideas. India happens to be one of the longest-standing continuous civilizations in the world. Could this collective mindset be part of the reason why?

Reconsidering that initial thought experiment: let's imagine a single case where we had an individualist society and a collectivist society, with all other variables held constant. What would happen if both faced some powerful natural threat, much more challenging than what one person could tackle? Which society would survive: the one where everyone united for a common cause, or the one where it was every man for themselves? Such a situation is actually more likely than not. Over the course of our history, we faced many dreadful threats, like predators and natural disasters. If you were out in a forest surrounded by tigers and decided to try living a life on your own, your individualism would get you killed. Community was necessary for survival, and this is not unique to our species. Nature encourages collectivism by design. The populations that cooperate the most also survive more often (and thus reproduce and pass along their genes at a higher rate).

So what happens when there's no longer an immediate survival risk -- as is the case for many of us in the modern world -- but we still deviate from collectivism? The natural selection manifests in other ways: higher suicide rates, higher depression rates, lack of fulfillment, and a decline in overall happiness and optimism, all of which are clearly present in Western society. The most striking to me is the rapidly declining birth rate. People aren't even forming families anymore! Clearly something must be horribly wrong.

In my personal experience, I've seen the adverse effects of individualism very closely. I bought into the individualist game at one point, and for better or worse, I won at it. When I was in college, I got the fancy internship, the great physique, and the social status, but after attaining all of this I resented myself more than I did at the beginning. If anything, boasting all of these individual accolades gave me more of a reason to feel pessimistic, because if even after acquiring all of this my life felt like shit, how shitty must life have been by default? It wasn't until many years later that I realized this hyper-individualism had significantly hindered my ability to form meaningful relationships with others. It wasn't that I felt like shit in spite of all the time I had spent "focusing on myself", but rather because of it. I am glad I learned this lesson early, but I fear many others that get trapped in this game never end up doing the same.

The negative effects I felt in my own experience seem to be indicative of how individualism is hurting Western society more broadly. What happens when not just one person, but most people, lose the ability to form meaningful connections with each other? Ignoring the practical issue of birth rates collapsing, could such a society even function, much less prosper? So far, it seems like the answer is no. And when I observe the difference between attending those Indian family gatherings to my typical life in America, I can understand why. Of course, there is still a large sense of ambition in Indian culture, but the emphasis on winning together instead of competing individually makes it a lot healthier. Achieving big individual goals is nice, but it is essentially impossible to enjoy any part of it if you severed the roots of your humanity along the way. It seems like nowadays we either ignore this fact, or we learn it much too late.

Now, more than ever, I see discourse on the meaning of life. My take is that the meaning has been in front of us all along. It is found in human connection. I really like Adlerian psychology's perspective on this, in that our entire life is effectively defined by others. If we were to spend life entirely alone, we would experience absolutely nothing, because the emotions we do feel now are always in reference to how we view others. Without human connection, there is no happiness, sadness, excitement, sorrow, joy, grief, comfort, or pain. Sure, you could turn into an individualist to avoid risking exposure to any of the negativity and in principle "live for yourself", but life only comes in one unseparable package. If you avoid relationships to shield yourself from heartbreak, you will also devoid yourself of the opportunity to feel love. And in all of your attempts to come off as nonchalant, you will forget what it means to feel excitement. Nature offered us a good deal, but sadly it seems like many people are conditioned to reject the good half out of fear of the bad half. We are so desperate in this search for meaning precisely because we have systemically drained ourselves of it.