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I’ve been learning about the virtues of American Individualism since my first English Lit class in high school—possibly earlier. Individualism seems to be a function of being an American. We fought for freedom—Independence is the name of our first War. It’s a big deal.
But what if it’s not as great as it sounds? Who’s in Charge?
I’m an Aaron Sorkin fan, although I’ve got lots of contentions with certain recurring tropes in his stories. One of the biggest is the Story of the Individual Leader. Now in the Sorkin-verse, this person isn’t always a straight, cis, male, but even when that leader is Jane Fonda, the character still functions within the patriarchal norm of The One Leader.
While dictatorships sound horrible (and are—think Mussolini and Hitler), we do like having a strong executive at the helm. Be this a President, an Executive Director, a CEO, a Head of Household—we want an individual to have the Last Word. Someone to take the blame if it all goes south and someone to look up to and follow. We like our Heroes.
Is something else possible?
Individuality, Patriarchy, and White Supremacy Together
Unfortunately, individualism is the place where patriarchy and white supremacy meet, join hands, and sing Kumbaya. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, an anti-racist group known for their Undoing Racism/Community Organizing workshop has a set of principles that guide their work. A common thread throughout these is decentering the individual along with all of the individual manifestations of racism. A part of becoming an “ally” (a problematic term in itself to be dissected another time) is learning to decentralize oneself so the story doesn’t become about the “good white person” or the “great white hope.”
Individualism relies on a harmful idea and ideal that we can make it on our own, akin to the “lift ourselves up from our bootstraps” mentality. It’s harmful because any analysis of the Man Box and patriarchy examines how much pressure is placed on men to be the strong ones, to not ask for help, the hold the vulnerability in (or dismiss it entirely), and to fix it.
It’s harmful because it’s so limiting. It disallows us to be fully whoever we truly are.
It leads to loneliness. It leads to disease. It leads to a preponderance of male suicide. It leads to death. It’s bound up with white supremacy, which tells us there is a norm—there is one way to be—and that is the norm of the colonizer, the conqueror, the usurper. This is the way things are done and if you want to join our society, then you’re going to shift your culture (which may be more communal-based) and become like us.
It’s another way of saying: nope, not as you are, but as we are. Once you try to assimilate, you also must suffer just as much as we do (but we just don’t always realize it.)
The Messiness of Communities
Committees and coalitions have a bad reputation. We all “know” how decisions get stuck in committee, how hard it is for anything to get done when you need to take in everyone’s voice. It’s why we reach for that One Leader to at least say “yes” or “no” to something.
In a culture of efficiency, bringing in more voices is not the quickest or most direct way of getting things done. When it comes to sexism, racism—indeed, our own lives!—we often feel an urgency to make a change, make a decision, do something new, do something different.
But that urgency is just as harmful as that pressure to be the One because it’s limiting and makes us move too fast.
There are models for getting things done effectively in communal settings that those of us entrenched in individualist models are not aware of. And they’re not that hard to find.
Looking to Science Fiction for Direction
The science fiction works of Octavia Butler are filled with examples of this and Adrienne Marie Brown —social justice facilitator, healer, and doula—authored the book Emergent Strategy using Butler as a way of looking at a more community-based way of social change. As she states [in all lower-case]:
all organizing is science fiction. we are bending the future, together, into something we have never experienced. a world where everyone experiences abundance, access, pleasure, human rights, dignity, freedom, transformative justice, peace. we long for this, we believe it is possible.
And it cannot be done alone.
It sounds exciting to me. And threatening. A world where we live with the idea of abundance and not a place where someone has to lose in order for someone else to win. That is contrary to the hallmark of individuality: the idea that there can only be one number one.
However, personally, the idea that I don’t have to be fully in charge, that I may be dependent at times, is scary. It’s destabilizing. It leaves me vulnerable. It feels weak.
That’s looking through my white, straight, cis, middle-class, corporate worldview that I’ve grown up into.
Just think about what awaits us if we work toward something different, something more, something with less pressure on the “I” and more comfort and solace in the “We”.
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What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
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