relda,

You make good points. Were Rudyard Kipling alive today, he would see serious attempts of the “twain,” East and West, meeting under the banner of globalisation.

Major contributions are evident in the literature, which categorise
societal axioms, build scales and identify cultural antecedents. Hofstede did the same (HERMES Project). The thing is, the process of categorisation itself, is of Western tradition. When the models are constructed, these models are built from the perspective of an individualist, liberal and historically androcentric society. There is little room for “fuzzy”.

East Asian cultures are good and “fuzzy”, because their world-view is on interconnectiveness, rather than hyper-qualification of the parts.

Regarding any theist “trinity,” I would posit an Eastern society would not look for examples of the subject and object. Alternatively, in the West, qualifying the objects is significant.

In the West, denominational schisms occur over the qualification of the objects. I quote Wells (1937);

“… Christendom retained at least the formal tradition of the general unity of the spirit until 1054, when the Latin-speaking Western church and the main and the original Greek speaking church, the Orthodox church severed themselves from the one another, ostensibly upon the question of adding two words to the creed. The older creed had declared ‘the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father’. The Latins wanted to add, and did add ‘Filique' (=and from the son), and placed the Greeks out of their communion because they would not follow this lead.”

When evaluating trans-society cultural transfers, anthropologists note; new technologies transfer very readily, societal idioms change slowly (eating habits), and ideology is entrenched.

"You suggest that Australian culture is less varied than that of an Asian country.. " No. I thought I was suggesting the opposite Pericles so indeed, the rest does become word soup.

Very few models are perfect Bugsy... the original biological Darwinian model was well and truly tweaked and I'd expect the current one to also evolve.

relda:"Paradoxically, the more individualistic a people, the less varied its culture."

"Australians are described as horizontal (low power distance) individualists, i.e. they are highly autonomous and remain independent from their group with their own ambition taking precedence over any group ambition – behaviour is guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’. As a counterpoint, Asians are classified as collectivistic, with high power distance – they have an emphasis on interdependence, group goals, obligations and duties."

Pericles: "You suggest that Australian culture is less varied than that of an Asian country.. "

relda:"No. I thought I was suggesting the opposite...."

I don't think I have learnt anything here, except that I should have stuck with the original plan and not bothered engaging with you at all.

I bet you lament the lack of logic in others arguments don't you?

I’ll try to put it a little more simply. Collectivism or communitarianism is defined as roughly the moral and political priority the collective need has over that of the individual, as found generally within Asian culture. Individualism is opposed to collectivism, where communal, group, societal or national ambition etc. should take priority over the individual. There is also an opposition to tradition or any form of external moral standard being used to limit an individual's choice of actions. At its most extreme or rampant, individualism is therefore the exact antithesis of culture. Australia, currently, does not exercise such extreme individualism. We probably tend toward the Kantian doctrine, where the individual has a right to the fullest measure of freedom that is compatible with the equal freedom of other individuals – our “behaviour is guided by ‘rights’ and ‘contracts’”, as stated.

Extreme individualists oppose not only public enterprises and state institutions, but also restrictive measures such as factory regulations, laws governing the hours of labour; they discourage all associations - whether capitalist or labourer (union). In short, they regard any form of state intervention as an anathema. However, the reality is, state intervention, regulation or state ownership of certain utilities etc. becomes entirely a question of expediency for the public welfare - it is merely a fallacy to oppose such intervention on purely ideological grounds. There is no a priori principle, whether political, ethical, economic, or religious, by which it can be decided.

So yes, we are currently more varied than many of the restrictive monocultures surrounding us. Where, however, we lose our own heritage and tradition through rampant individualism, we lose also our freedom and ‘variety’ – that is the paradox. I’ll agree fully with Sells in this instance saying therefore, “The individual, ontologically, can be said not to exist”.

Individualism has two meanings in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

1. The interests of the individual are or ought to be paramount in determination of conduct.
2. The only value of a community or society lies in furthering the interests of the individuals composing it.

These are very different definitions. The first describes behaviour based on selfishness as opposed to altruism. A society based on selfishness is a society in which even those who have a great deal of wealth are not at peace, and a sense of security is lacking. That individualism is not one that I think good.

The other definition is opposed to collectivism. The first concern of all in Plato's Republic was the state. For example, the doctor has "no right to attend to a man who cannot carry out his ordinary duties; for such a man is useless to himself and to the state". That says we are of no use at all as individuals. Our only function is to serve the community. Just as a society in which everyone thought of nobody's interests but his own would be an uncaring society, a society that denies our worth or value except where it serves the group is also an uncaring society. Plato confused the two definitions of individualism. He equated individualism which is selfishness with the individualism that encourages us to be autonomous.

The collectivism of the Nazi and Soviet states destroyed millions of human lives. Human lives were secondary to the needs of the state. It was far worse than the individualism of economic rationalism. Should we oppose individualism to collectivism the way Mani opposed good to evil? We can all work together to build up the sides of the river bank to prevent the water from overflowing. To make a personal decision or get close to a person of the opposite sex we don't need a group. Rather than setting up individualism and collectivism as antitheses it seems more reasonable to do the things best done together in a group and those things best done alone by oneself.

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Some organisations combine the individualism which is egotism with collectivism. Two examples are the corporation and the army. Both expect members of their organisations to put their needs second to the demands of the group. The army may make the ultimate demand of life. At the same time they encourage an intense competition for promotion which is individualism according to definition 1 in a collective setting. One of the toasts in the English officers mess is, "Here's to a long and bloody war". Those who survive get to be generals.

In my previous life I designed equipment for computers. I got an assignment to design a servomechanism. I was interested in how my work connected with the work of other people. I went to my boss, a former naval officer and asked him about it. He said, "What is your need to know?" In the military you generally are told no more than is necessary to perform your assigned duties. You cannot give out information if you don't have it. My need to know was that I am a human being who would get more joy from his work if he knew better where it fitted in.

I would prefer to live in a society where people rejected the individualism of everyone for himself or herself but accepted the individualism of wanting to develop oneself as much as possible and wanting society to care for that desire. Altruism means we care for society, and the second meaning of individualism means that society cares for us.

A Jewish sage over 2,000 years ago compressed all the above:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when? - Hillel