The Threat of Excessive Individualism
The cult of excessive individualism threatens the survival of our species
“The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” — (Gleanings from the writings of Baha’u’llah CXXXI)
A few years ago I wrote an article on the The fetish of exaggerated individualism and the danger it poses to the survival of our species.
Yet since then the issues I discussed only have seemed to become even more pronounced with the recent turn against global cooperation, the rise of rabid nationalism and the growth of fear and outright terror of any sort of international cooperation. These are tightly coupled to the explosion of conspiracy theories which have infected the minds of a sizable and growing population. The advent of COVID and our collective response has only highlighted this problem in a stark manner. The fact that wearing a mask to help slow the spread of this disease is in some sections of our culture, considered a gross infringement of individual liberty and step towards tyranny illustrates just how deep and problematic these attitudes are. This problem has reach such levels that the head of the World Health Organization in a recent and emotional speech, identified the lack of unity as a bigger threat than the Coronavirus.
In the Midst of the Anthropocene
I have been watching in terror as reports from those who study our world’s land based and ocean ecosystems, have grown increasingly dire in their warnings. Yet the world seems to blithely go on its way in a fossil fuel drunken haze. This situation was summed up in a CNN presentation from several years ago:
The natural and unnatural problems which seem to be coming to a head are traceable to the manifest truth of Baha’u’llah’s call for unity made over 150 years ago. Only now I am afraid it’s not just the “peace and security” that is at stake, it’s our very survival as species. According to the current rate of environmental degradation it would seem that human beings have about 10–20 years to address this before it is too late. In all our deliberations about climate change, and the rapid wholesale destruction of the habitat for our very existence, what seems neglected is the fact that all these issues require very complex and collective action of all humans on this planet to resolve. Relying on periodically negotiated international agreements while a good thing, is just not sufficient.
The cult of individualism
The cult of individualism might actually be leading to a collective sort of schizophrenia where no authority or rationality is trusted, as discussed in this recent analysis of the QAnon phenomena:
Thus people engage in a constant quest to decipher disconnected patterns from the growing mass of data funneled towards them.
We in the United States are in the vanguard for this type of atomization of humanity. We see this embodied in our overly compartmentalized suburban living spaces, social life and automobile centric transportation systems. This is also expressed in our growing rejection of all privileged viewpoints. So for example, conclusions drawn from a large scientific consensus are rejected as ‘elitist’ conspiracies upon which outright lies and quackery are permitted to cast doubt.
The ideal of ‘rugged’ individualism resonates deeply in the American psyche. The notion of the self-sufficient homesteader, the iconoclast who challenges the establishment is part of how Americana is defined. It is part of what has driven American antipathy towards internationalism, from George Washington’s famous admonition against foreign entanglements to the rejection of the League of Nations and post World War I isolationism.
We only acceded to internationalism during and after World War II, as a justified crusade against what was seen as the threat of exaggerated communalism embodied in Fascism and later Communist internationalism. The end of the cold war brought the ideal of American exceptionalism, we wanted the rule of law for other nations but not ourselves. This manifested itself in the visions of a Pax-Americana given by the Project for a New American Century. The upshot of course, easily predictable, was that none of the other great world powers saw fit to abide by the rule of law either, thus destabilizing global affairs.
However time is running out very fast. The earth cannot sustain humanity’s protracted adolescences any longer. We have to grow up and now or we are dead. Shoghi Effendi the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, presciently observed over a generation ago, “The anarchy inherent in state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life.” (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 202)
The fetish of absolute national sovereignty, in lieu of a global rule of law threatens humanity’s existence. There is the obvious problem of international anarchy and its ultimate fruit of war, which the unfettered autonomy of nation states bring. However in addition to this, is the problem of gross economic disparity and the distortion of natural resource utilization and pollution. So the fact of globalized movement of goods and capital without the globalized movement of labor or the rule of uniform labor and environmental laws has destroyed or stagnated the growth of the politically stabilizing middle class while permitting the growth of absurd amounts of wealth by a very small privileged global class.
It should be obvious that one of the important competitive advantages of the human species, is our ability for collective action and unity. On this basis successive stages of civilization have been built. However we are at a state of technology and population density that a single coherent global civilization with its attendant mechanisms for global governance are in dire need of being established. Otherwise our proliferating existence on this planet will operate more like an incoherent malignant virus or cancer which will ultimately kill its host and itself in the process.
Planet Earth as the Ark of Humanity
Our situation is analogous to a group of individuals living on a large boat. In the past due to the fewness of people and lack of ability we were limited in our capacity to do damage to the boat. However as both population and technological abilities have grown we are now quite capable of ‘sinking’ the boat. We can no longer tolerate any one doing as they please to damage the very thing keeping us alive. Laws and rules must be developed to control and channel our collective efforts for the benefit of all humanity.
What is needed is a kind of global governance articulated so clearly over 30 years ago in the Promise of World Peace statement, issued by the institution which itself was established by the pen of Baha’u’llah.
More recently, in commemoration of the U.N.’s 75th anniversary, the Baha’i International Community has issued a statement concerning path forward towards a just global order:
