Op-Ed: The people claiming to be 'freethinkers' in the pandemic might actually be sheep (via latimesopinion)
Now two years into the pandemic, we continue to hear constant fights about the fundamental antagonism between being an independent individual and being a good group member. You must be either a “freethinker” or a “sheep”!
Yet even in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” noted an apparent paradox in the American way of life: an unprecedented individualism was combined with mass involvement in “voluntary associations.” Far more than citizens in his native France, Americans were joiners, belonging to “associations of a thousand … kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.
In other words, it was identification with their nation — intersecting with the nation’s social norms — that determined individualism. This counterintuitive pattern might appear surprising. But it occurs because the more individualized and specialized our roles, the more dependent we become on other people to function effectively.
Evidence suggests that countries with norms that place greater value on independence, like the U.S.,
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