Individualization

“ The problem of individualization. How far is individualism compatible with social cohesion? What forms of individualism may be considered socially useful or socially harmful? What forms of individualism may be useful in an organization based on a conscious coöperation in view of a common aim? ”

“ I should not be surprised if further investigation should reveal to us that the very mode of the individualization was somehow pre-determined either for or by the monad himself, with a view to preparation for whatever portion of the great work he is to undertake in the future. There will come a time when we shall be part of the great Heavenly Man — not in the least as a myth or a poetic symbol, but as a vivid and actual fact, which we ourselves have seen. ”

“ But after greater individualization on one hand, and a broader community of interest on the other have come into existence, it is a matter of deliberate effort to sustain and extend them. ”

“ Individualism, on the other hand, means the personal schematization of life,—making one’s own definitions of the situation and determining one’s own behavior norms. Actually there never has been and never will be anything like complete individualization, because no one lives or can live without regard to a public. ”

“ Translated into the language of social life, it means the individualization of the mass, the finding of a higher level, the climbing over the fences that shut out life. Everywhere you see this reaching out. The process is individual and social at the same time, for the species lives in the individual as much as the individual persists in the species. ”

“ This progressive development consists on one side in a richer and subtler individual activity, in increased individualization, in wider and freer functions of life; on the other it consists in increase in number of those persons whose ideal is a 'common good', or who have membership in the same moral community ”

“ The principle of individualization refers to giving individuality a reasonable chance for growth. As society grows more complex, institutions more ossified, and life more standardized, the average individual is increasingly in danger of being crushed; at least, his opportunities for self-expression grow more slim. There is need of constant vigilance in education in allowing for individual differences, in industry for safeguarding the laborer in expressing his personality in his work, in government in permitting free discussion. ”

“ The progress 139of social organization has produced a corresponding degree of individualization, which has reached at last even to women,—even to the lowest grade of unskilled labor. This higher degree of individualization means a sharp personal consciousness of the evils of a situation hitherto little felt. With this higher growth of individual consciousness, and forming a part of it, comes the commensurate growth of social consciousness. We have grown to care for one another. ”

“ For example, at the beginning of the seventh round of the moon-chain a certain group of beings were at the point of individualization, and were drawn towards it by their association with some of the perfected inhabitants whom we call the Lords of the Moon. ”

“ The direction in which this impulse is believed to press is towards fuller individualization and completer association. Each is driven to express his own individuality more completely, but he equally feels impelled to associate others more closely with him. There is a tendency towards the balancing between individualization and association, till the individuals become more and more free and perfect individuals, but only as they become more and more closely united in harmonious association. ”

“ When the way in which a man is good or cheerful or avaricious is differentiated for us from the way in which another man is good or cheerful or avaricious, he is so far individualized. Class characterization, c3, may be found along with individualization. ”

“ I wish to see individuality strengthened, not crushed, to encourage men to develop the widest possible diversity of tastes, talents, and pursuits, and to attain unity of opinion, not by a calm assumption that this or that creed is true, but by encouraging the sharpest and freest collision of opinions. The equality of which I speak is that which would result, if the distinction into organs were not of such a nature as to make one class more favourable than another to the full development of whatever character and talents a man may possess. ”

“ However, in its general sense of experience, being underlies the ideas of individuality and perfection. And these, at least so far, must be positive.
2. And, in the second place, each of them is positively determined by what it excludes. The aspect of diversity belongs to the essence of the individual, and is affirmatively contained in it. The unity excludes what is diverse, so far only as that attempts to be anything by itself, and to maintain isolation. And the individual is the return of this apparent opposite with all its wealth into a richer whole. ”

“ President and brothers, I owe you an apology for detaining you so long with this unsubstantial matter, this unwritten poetry of the profession. I am inclined to believe, however that the actual intellectual and moral tone of a given period, as well as the social status, has no truer index than its current anecdotes. Every new and formative community is marked with distinctive individualities. In the onward sweep of development and civilization, and in the largeness of population, individuality becomes fused [228] in the general mass, and loses its salient characteristics. ”

“ Neither Individualism nor Collectivism.—Individualism and collectivism are the great antitheses, the two contradictory solutions of an eternal problem. The history of this autonomy is in reality the history of human thought. ”

“ So far as I can see, it is the only medium through which we can discuss the great majority of the problems which are being raised in such bristling multitude by our contemporary social development. Nearly every one of those problems has at its core a psychological problem, and not merely a psychological problem, but one in which the idea of individuality is an essential factor. Dealing with most of these questions by a rule or a generalisation is like putting a cordon round a jungle full of the most diversified sort of game. ”

“ But this itself reveals to us, in the genesis of the individual, a haunting of the social form, as if the individual could develop only on the condition that its substance should be split up into elements having themselves an appearance of individuality and united among themselves by an appearance of sociality. There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an individual. ”

“ Let social life be decomposed into individual units, let men's sympathies be narrowed into the sphere of self, in a word, let the group be individualised, and we shall find that men's imagination is impaired, that it ceases to pass spontaneously beyond self, that it too becomes individualised. ”

“ For as the tendency of the age is toward class specialization and interdependent subdivision of all branches of knowledge and all practical application of that knowledge, the development of the individuality of every integer of a community would seem to me to unfit the unit to form a close part of any specialized class. In brief, I doubt, or rather I wish to doubt, that the development of individuality is a lofty or desirable tendency. Much of what is called personality and individuality is intensely repellent, and makes the principal misery of Occidental life. ”

“ How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?
“Each will receives its proper share, if each has that which more particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests society.” ”

“ The existing system contributes to the increase of individuality only in case individuality is deprived of all serious moral and intellectual meaning. In order to sustain their assertion they must define individuality, not as a living ideal, but as the psychological condition produced by any individual action. ”

“ In one word, to fix the human personality, to give to each human being an identity, an individuality that can be depended upon with certainty, lasting, unchangeable, always recognisable and easily adduced, this appears to be in the largest sense the aim of the new method. ”

“ The pull of their individual desires is not the same, the influence of the various social interests is not in the same proportion. The situation is complicated by hereditary tendencies, and by physical and social environment. Consequently every human being possesses his own distinctive individuality or personality. ”

“ The race having been leveled to a common plane, there has been a gradual dying out of individuality. The inevitable curtailment of individual aims, individual struggle, individual ambitions, has naturally resulted in producing a featureless type of character, common to all. ”

“ One might object that the individuality and diffuse nature of this population would make it difficult to generalize, but the indisputable commonality they share seems to be a focus on self-development and celebrating individual differences. ”

“ It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress. ”

“ The matter that it bears along with it, and in the interstices of which it inserts itself, alone can divide it into distinct individualities. On flows the current, running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. ”

“ In the realization of individuality there is found also the needed realization of some community of persons [why not individuals?] of which the individual is a member; and conversely, the agent who duly satisfies the community in which he shares, by that same conduct satisfies himself. ”

“ More than anything else they show the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate and appropriate its acquirements.
There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. ”

“ The crushing predominance of what is collective should make us realise what peculiar care and attention must be given to the delicate plant "individuality," if it is to develop.
Human beings have a capacity which is of the utmost use for purposes of collectivism and most prejudicial to individuation, and that is the capacity to imitate. ”

“ You have admitted an apparently capricious element of individuality: a power on the part of the half-breeds of differing from one another to an extent quite impossible in the two original homogeneous societies. In one word, you have made possible the future existence of diversity in character. ”

“ Yet their further development, upon this p. 102 four-fold view of civic evolution, though in principle the same for each and all, has always been, and let us hope may always be, in large measure an individual (because regional) one. For if each human individuality be unique, how much more must that of every city? ”

“ SIMILAR EXPERIENCES BEGET SIMILAR IDEAS. The average of the experiences of a community, or a class, a nation, or a race begets the central idea of that community, or class, or nation, or race; therefore, in attempting to explain the tendency of any such community, class, nation, or race to gyrate about some central idea, or concertedly move towards some definite goal, we must discover those similarities of experience which furnish the common ground for similarity of thought and unity of action. ”

“ We have still to ask how in particular we can most truly conceive the systematic unity which is formed by the whole multiplicity of apparently more or less independent subjects of experience, what degree of permanence and individuality, so far as we can judge, belongs to ourselves as members of that system, and what light is thrown by our ethical, religious, and æsthetic aspirations and ideals on the concrete character of the whole system and on our own place in it. ”

“ The class life stands for analysis and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption and the stagnation to [p.164] which specialism and its formal establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. ”

“ That some measure of independence is essential to our notion of individuality will hardly be questioned.” [152] The phrase “have some individuality” means, in part at least, that one make his actions the expression of his own true self. ”

“ On the other hand, there is an extreme individualism, which emphasizes individual separateness, which posits as a datum the individuality which we have seen to be a social product, and thinks of the objective social realm as a mere mechanical, mathematical summing up of individual factors, or as a something which individuals have consciously made, by contract or agreement, or what not. ”