>>7817Individualism, in the modern sense of the word, does not simply mean prioritizing oneself at the expense of the group. Regardless of any similarities, "the individual" as we know it today is a construction of European modernity. It is tied to specific concepts, ideas, behaviors, economic conditions, and sensibilities and, while it has been more or less globalized, cannot be seen as something timeless or universal. Individualism isn't a value or a principal for organizing societies, but a set of moral ideas that structures our lives and shapes our sense of selfhood. The command to find our true identity, to explore ourselves etc. are specific. These are new ideas, not timeless ones. I get the feeling that many religious people equate individualism with 'good' and are keen to show that their tradition leaves room for the individual, but this forgets that individualism is something that should be questioned. Modernity is not all good.
>individualism tends to eschew applying such rules universally while being more reticent in regards to what others doThe feeling here is that individualism is an abstract and neutral principal that describes how a society is organized. Instead, I'd say that, rather than eschewing universal rules, liberal individualism is in fact yet another belief system and collection of ideas whose proponents see it, in contrast to religion or Marxism, as objective, scientific, and universally true. True enough to fight and kill others in its name. The point I want to make, is that liberal society isn't (as right wingers claim) amoral and unprincipaled, but has its own value system, beliefs, and mythologies. The moral systems of religious communities have to compete with a hegemonic and domineering rival set of moral values that often undermines religious claims. The Confuciuan principal of serving your parents is undermined by the liberal principal of being a self-defining free spirit unshackled by social obligations that are non-voluntary. Since this liberal ideal is enshrined in law and culturally dominant, it makes it hard to sustain an ethical culture that takes 'serve your parents' seriously as something to live by. The liberal aversion to rules is rooted in a particular moral worldview of its own. This worldview, from a religious perspective, is clearly flawed and obscurantist but we must somehow
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