[PGalt]

To quote David Dvorkin once again: “If Western civilization has made one single important contribution to the world, it is the concept of individuality: the idea that a man is what he chooses to be, not what his community ordains him to be; that each of us represents only himself and is not a mere cell in some familial or ethnic organism.

from “Why I am not a Muslim..” here...

http://www.islam-watch.org/Tariq/Why-I-Am-Not-Muslim-Bold-Brilliant-Blasphemous.htm

[Sherman Logan]

If Western civilization has made one single important contribution to the world, it is the concept of individuality: ... that each of us represents only himself and is not a mere cell in some familial or ethnic organism.

I (partially) disagree with this, if carried to its logical conclusion.

I am an individual, but I am also a member of my family and country. I choose to put the welfare of these entities above my own in certain circumstances.

Any society in which all members viewed themselves only as individuals could not survice for long, as none of those individuals would be willing to fight and die for the society, and it would be conquered by a society with less extreme individualist views.