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Articles

Is The Age Of Individualism Coming To An End?

Michael Foley says that perhaps we are all becoming more sociable.

The revelation came in the popcorn queue of a multiplex. Looking around at the posters, it suddenly occurred to me that movie heroes used to be singular – the lone private eye walking down those mean streets, or the lone stranger riding down those main streets – but now the lone hero has been largely replaced by the buddy pair or the team. Even those ultimate individuals, the superheroes, now prefer to fight evil in groups. This idea connected in my mind with many other cultural developments to suggest that the age of individualism, which seemed so permanent, may instead be temporary, an overreaction against constraint and repression that is now correcting itself.

Individualism, the idea that individual freedom and rights are paramount, has become so culturally entrenched that it seems like a universal, absolute and eternal truth.

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