Creating community in an age of individualism

In order to live as individuals, we need to be part of something bigger.

There is no shortage of analysis and commentary on the multiple and significant challenges facing the UK right now. From the climate and nature crises to the rising cost of living through to deeply entrenched social inequities, they are innately connected in their causes and effects. Some causes are easier to identify than others, as Buller and Lawrence argue in ‘Owning the future’:

“The crises we face today are both overlapping and unevenly felt, and running through each of them is an essential thread: the organizing force of ownership. The pandemic set alight the mass of dry tinder piled up over decades in which the rights of property have been prioritized over collective wellbeing.”

Yet despite this turmoil, few people with power seem to have new solutions. Instead, we either get a constant analysis of the present or a rehash of old ideas. Different sides argue for more austerity or trickle-down economics or more public ownership. New questions but the same answers. We’ve had long enough to think about it. As a retired ex-banker said to me:

“All the problems we knew about years ago and put off for a future generation to deal with, have come crunching together. We are now that generation that has to deal with them.”

Why then, do we find it so difficult to move on? To devise and implement new solutions? This article explores how we got to this point. And why those with power seem unable to find adequate solutions. Why, as the filmmaker Adam Curtis argues, we are facing a block not just in society, but also inside our own heads, that stops us imagining anything else than this.

The paradox of individualism

I believe one way out of this is to change how we think about ourselves. Many of us want to believe we are unique, and of course, in many respects, we are. Your voice, eyes and fingerprints are all unique, so why not your ideas and personality? There are a whole range of feedback loops to reinforce this latter idea — from neoclassical economic theory to curated TikTok feeds, from integrating lived experience into service design to online debates about identity politics. There is a lot happening to support the notion we are all individuals, and this is the reality many of us have internalized. But it is not the reality we all?actually?experience. And I think it is this tension that is contributing to the deterioration of that reality, and why we’re unable to articulate answers to the new questions we face.

This is the paradox of individualism. In order to live as individuals, we need to be part of something bigger. We need social support structures around us. This goes way beyond the examples inferred above, although mechanisms to find like-minded people are no doubt important. We also need a good education system and opportunities to create work or find it. A tolerant culture that enables us to pursue our true selves, and legal protections for our individual rights. So it is impossible to be completely autonomous, as our autonomy is dependent on socialized structures to enable it.

Furthermore, for these social structures to emerge, there needs to be some sort of glue that binds us together and enables us to cooperate. Something to facilitate the tolerant culture referenced above. Traditionally this was the role played by cultural traditions and folk rituals, religions and shared history, as championed by conservative thinkers from Burke to Hayek. As the latter put it:

The norms, rules and practices we inherit represent the cumulative wisdom and experience of our ancestors. But an obsession with ‘the individual’ implies we all somehow exist outside of history, place and culture. “All that is solid melts into air, and all that is holy is profaned” as Marx and Engels argued. Anything is possible in a world without precedence. We can all become billionaires.

But even in a world without these binding agents, there remains the ideal of a?shared humanity, which is as implicit in arguments for supporting individualism as in those for collectivism. And if we acknowledge this, then we have to accept that this shared humanity is stronger than all the things that divide us. And if we do this, we increase our tolerance for individual differences. It effectively facilitates pervasive diversity within a united society.

It is here where contemporary conservatism falls short. It is not so much that it disregards inherited rules and institutions, as so much focuses on the wrong ones for the context within which we all live?now. It fetishes empire, monarchy and individualism and denigrates diversity, democracy and community. In doing so it undermines the ideal of a shared humanity. It is why we keep getting the wrong answers to the new questions we encounter.

In rejecting this ideal — as is so frequently done via our immigration policy and the ongoing culture war for example — it is difficult to see how conservatives can happily coexist with others different from themselves. And so, they effectively infringe on the liberty of individuals they do not tolerate. This is the ultimate paradox — we can’t all be individuals unless we compromise. Otherwise, full autonomy limits the autonomy of others. Thus a change is needed in how we think of ourselves. We?can?all be individuals, but together.

The weight of dead generations

There is something else that needs to change alongside this. In his film?Can’t Get You Out of My?Head, Adam Curtis alludes to how humans have a tendency to conjure up illusions, things which don’t exist in nature, but provide us with meaning and value. Nations, religion, even money. They provide a sense of purpose and meaning to the material world. These illusions help us climb the hierarchy of needs away from our mortal condition, and affirm our significance in the universe. For a conservative thinker like Hayek, the illusions we inherit are the ones that need protecting. They are the foundation of civilization, and what distinguish humans from animal.

There is a risk however of believing these illusions are concrete and have material form that impose their will on us, not the other way round. For example, the way many political commentators talk about economic crises is closer to mimicry than critical analysis. There is little interest in investigating and tackling the root causes of our collective malaise, so instead we get the same messages repeated over and over again. We’re told belts will need tightening and tough choices will have to be made, as if we are dealing with the laws of physics. Yet most of the time we are dealing with rules we made up ourselves, but act as if they are handed down from on high. “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” as Marx argued. This is the block inside our heads that stops us imagining anything else than this.

Getting out of our heads, together

Politics clearly needs to evolve if we are to escape the polycrisis of the early 21st century and build a more optimistic and abundant future. The multiple challenges we face are connected in their causes, effects and solutions. They are not technical problems to solve individually.

It is here where I believe the social economy has an important role to play too. The work of cooperatives, community businesses and social enterprises can be an important tool to help create this better future, with the potential to create inclusive economies which work for everyone.

The social economy takes what is best about entrepreneurship and imbues it with shared humanity. It prices in externalities and integrates diversity, democracy and community. In doing so, it allows us all to be active participants in shaping our world rather than passive consumers; it shifts away from an economic model of efficiency at scale towards one which cares about both the individual and community. A model where all people matter, and are not just a number or an isolated unit.

As?Geoff Mulgan?argues, the ideas and innovations developed within the social economy can be “harbingers of future in the present.” From community-led housing to reinserting care into social care, from the transition to net zero to who owns your data, there are many actually existing examples of what a more optimistic and abundant future could look like happening right now. Developing and nurturing these more will allows us all to define who we want to be, rather than what dead generations thought we should do. It enables us to think differently. To live as individuals?and?be part of something bigger. To get out of our heads.