It’s Time to Move from Me to We
Individualism has failed. Time for a new narrative of unity.
Whenever I feel depressed about the degree to which people are disconnected from each other these days, I watch videos of flash mobs on the Internet. There is something magical about watching dozens of people in a busy place seemingly going about their every day individual lives suddenly disrupting the illusion of separation and coming together as one cohesive, cooperative unit. The look of pure delight on the faces of bystanders who happened to be in the right place at the right time has an essence of unadulterated joy that we seldom see on strangers. We have become so accustomed to being separate individuals with our own hopes, dreams, goals, and experiences, that when we witness a collective experience that wasn’t expected, it is something truly special and unusual.
Since Thatcherism in the UK, Reaganomics in the US, New Zealand’s equivalent Rogernomics, Australia’s economic rationalism, and other neoliberal economic shifts of the 1980’s, there has been a broad scale move in many Western nations towards a deep-seated cultural narrative of individualism. Thatcher famously went as far as to say “There is no such thing as society. There are individuals, and there are families.” It has struck a particular chord in the United States, where the narrative of the…
