Part of Something Bigger

searchwarp.com ^ | Dan Cross

[DBCJR]

Western Individualism is most pronounced in America, and especially the part of the country where I grew up and now live, Texas and Oklahoma. Yet that attitude resounds in the early pages of our nation’s history, from a Tea Party in Boston Harbor to those shots fired at Fort Sumter replying what they could do with their tariffs on cotton.

Often that undercurrent cuts against identity with a group. "I am an individual." Echoing in that statement are the words of Patrick Henry emblazed in our psyche, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Identity with a group somehow seems to tie one down and limit one's freedoms and choices. Contemporary expressions of that sentiment in America include declining trends in marriage, political party affiliation, and church membership. Yet the fall of communism in the late U.S.S.R. provides evidence this desire for freedom and choice extends beyond the borders of the U.S.A. to wherever mankind exists.

[DBCJR]

Go to http://searchwarp.com/swa232762.htm and read the rest of the article. Please for for this entry to help win the contest. Thanks!

[alloysteel]

Identity with a group is definitely an imported idea. The culture of early America had no room for groupthink or grouplife. Certainly, some of the early settlers may have arrived with the cultural bias toward doing things as an “organized” troop, but that notion got knocked out pretty quickly when the realities of dealing with problems one-on-one with nobody at your back became apparent, often with fierce and sudden onslaught. You either got really self-reliant, or you got dead, very quickly.

Only when the frontier was made secure, did the timid groupthink subspecies come creeping out and re-entering this country.

Now look. The groupthink is on the way to becoming a dominant characteristic of our society, and we are only saved from their further depredations on our liberties because they have sometimes mutually antagonistic cultural positions. Thus they end up fighting each other.

[DBCJR]

Being apart of something bigger means first establishing one's individuality and freedom of choice. In so doing, one freely chooses to express one's individuality in the service of a larger cause, sometimes against the tide of current sentiment because the original ideal has been abandoned.
In my article http://searchwarp.com/swa232762.htm I address this concept in more detail.