Individualism - a tragedy of the commons?

Our Loops of learning conversations in March and April have been focussed around understanding the causes and impacts of individualism.

The reasons to choose individualism as a conversation starter, is that it gives us a vantage point in to our social, economic, political, legal, environmental and technological systems that leads to insights about their interconnectedness.

Individualism itself is a societal philosophy that emphasizes the importance of individual liberty, self-reliance and personal responsibility. Its roots can be traced back to the Enlightenment era of the 18th century, which valued reason, logic, and critical thinking.

Thinkers such as John Locke and Mary Wollstonecraft emphasised the important of the individual (in Mary's case women) and their rights. These ideas, among others, influenced the development of modern democracy and individual rights.

It is this movement of individualism, where individuals are free to pursue their own economic interests and benefit from their own labour that has become the bedrock of Western Capitalism.

There are, of course, pros and cons to the focus on individual rights, but it's been a trend that continues to have a profound impact on the development of modern society and Western political systems.

Our current newsfeeds are full of examples where individualism has clearly created significant challenges for any management of common good. The right to bear arms is a dramatic playing out of individualism in the United States. As at the writing of this article there have been more than 131 mass shootings this year alone (source: abc.news.com) in America.

The debate for individual rights to carry guns, over the common good of reducing deaths due to guns is raging and continues to veer in favour of individuals.

In our Loops of Learning articles and conversations we will consider the impacts of individualism, including the role it plays in shaping societial systems. It's not an 'anti-individualism' stance, just a curious exploration.

Our conversations search for leverage points that offer opportunities to balance individual rights with collective social welfare or environmental good.

In many of our Loops of Learning conversations there has been a sense of inevitable catastrophy as we continue down the current path of human behaviour. The sense is that we need to shift things quickly if we want to avoid tragedy.

From a Systems Thinking lens, it's about considering the Tragedy of the Commons and understanding how we might influence society to uphold individual rights while protecting our education systems, health systems and environmental systems.

Systems Thinking and Loops of Learning

Last month (19th February) Loops of Learning conversations for 2023 kicked off. These conversations happen once a month on a Sunday morning and the sessions are freely available to anyone wishing to attend.

It's been a couple of years journey to get to where I am in understanding and clarifying what Loops of Learning is and what it hopes to achieve and I started this new year with a sense of clarity.

If you've followed the journey thus far, you'll understand that I have a keen interest in Systems Thinking and Systems Leadship Theory, and aIso have strong desire to create positive change in the world.

The past two years have explored quite a number of conversations and styles of faciliation, but this year I plan to be a lot more focussed on using Systems Thinking / Dynamics tools and methods to help people see the interconnections of our society. This includes the systems in which we live and how they connect and intersect.

Our February session was honed individualism. I have a hypothesis that over the past fifty to one hundred years there has been a rise in individualism which has increased polarisation in politics (see the rise of the far-right and far-left) and is making it increasingly difficult to deal with the complex societal problems that involve agreements over common-ground (ie, think about our inability to agree to reactions to climate change globally).

After an hour or so of conversation discussing what individualism is, and how it plays out, as well as considering the positives and negatives of individualism we discussed the factors that have influenced the move in the West towards a much more individualistic society.

The factors we considered were:

• Banking changes that have encouraged a rise in debt, making it easier to compete and 'buy' things that focus us on our own wealth and status.

• Shifts in our information feeds, particularly through social media. This has made it harder to access unbiased information and has increased comfirmation bias towards a consumerist, capitalist model of individual wealth. Advertising also plays an important part here as we are heavily influenced by marketing that encourages us to buy more stuff!

• Shift in Post industrial education models - which on a positive note has encourage increased self-confidence and self-worth, but has also diminished the connection to community and family as a unit of 'we'. The focus has become 'I' rather than 'we'.

• Technological advancements such as personal computers, mobile phones and social media have made it much easier to be independent and self-orientated. This also connects back to social media and advertising.

• Neoliberialism and the policies of 1980's America and the UK have encouraged a corporate and community culture that's driven by free enterprise, freedom of individual action and the pursuit of profit. This 'people before profits' approach isn't new, but has proliferated through corporate Western cultures and favours individual gain.

• Rise in atheism has increased the 'worship of self' and decreased the connection to a collective religious identity.

• Changes in psychological practices and growth in neuroscientific knowledge has shifted mental health treatments and diagnosis to be more self-focussed. The rise in motivational, psychological methods that promote the idea that we are all in control of our own destiny and can 'succeed' if only we throw off our self-made shackles, reinforce individualism. There has also been a marked shift away from 'truth' and scientific 'fact' towards a post-modern concept of truth in context. We've moved towards using language like 'I feel that...' when talking about issues or concerns and away from terms like 'I think that....'. The past few years has seen shifts in language to present stories as 'My Truth...' rather than an objective absolute truth that may exist as something factually correct. This ultimately promotes that the reality of the indivdual is stronger than the reality of the collective.

Having unpacked these key factors in conversation, I introduced a new tool to the group which is often used in Community Based Systems Dynamics workshops, Graphs Over Time.

Each person at the workshop created a graph of a story related to the above factors impacting individualism and I built a story of individualism over time, from the perspectives of those present.

The graphs we created, will become the starting talking points for our next session. You don't need to have been involved in the creation to engage in community conversations around these objects. Come along for the ride... and hopefully pick up some new tips and tricks along the social change journey!