Individualism,Collectivism and their pitfalls

Here’s a letter I wrote in response to a columnn by Trevor Hancock, a retired UVic prof.

Trevor Hancock’s Sunday column, “The cult of individualism is toxic,” takes a very selective view of individualism’s negative consequences, and of the needed antidote.

He blames rampant globalization of capital as the chief toxic result, causing, he claims, impoverishment in Western societies, near-enslavement in underdeveloped ones, and environmental destruction. This is very debatable, given that collectivized states such as Red China are leaders in environmental destruction and enslavement.

But my chief problem with Hancock’s column is his obliviousness to individualism’s dangerous direction here in Canada and the Western World. Here individualism is expressed in the excessive attention paid by political leaders and parties to individual angst over sexual preferences and the new cult of gender identity. The state, as well as powerful institutions such as banks and universities, have become the champion of the tiny minority belonging to this cult. The losers when individualism is championed by the state are the other social collectives Hancock has totally disregarded: faith groups and other private organizations, for example, but especially the family. A homeowner cannot cut down a tree in Victoria due to laws intended to protect the environment, but the same homeowners as parents can be kept in the dark when their minor daughter seeks an abortion or she or their minor son seeks chemical castration because of a (usually temporary) conviction their “gender” is different from their sex “assigned” at birth.

The public schools and the public school curriculum, along with the public university, and under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the organs of state themselves, have become purveyors of this harmful dismissal of the family, the church and of the ethnic culture. This is where individualism leads: the weakening of any sources of values distinct from, and often opposed to, the statist, politically correct values of the moment. Pluralism, freedom of speech, thought and religion are the losers. So are the individuals who lose the protection of their families