The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care By Mari ...

origin. He defined individualism as a “reflective and peaceable sentiment” in which people choose to isolate themselves (p. 482). They create little societies for their own use; they withdraw from the masses and condense their concern to only family and friends; they willingly abandon society (de Tocqueville, 2001, p. 482). Society becomes a disconnected mass of independent citizens. The result of uninhibited individualism is that devotion to the community and the other become rare. Furthermore, there is a loss of connection, concern, and responsibility to the past or the future. Taken to its natural conclusion, unchecked individualism “threatens finally to confine him [the individual] wholly in the solitude of his own heart” (de Tocqueville, 2001, p. 482). Individualism separates one from everything but oneself; everything leads back to oneself.

As de Tocqueville warned so long ago, unchecked individualism poses serious consequences for democratic society then and today. We are seeing those consequences in this present historical moment. We now turn to Christopher Lasch and Robert Bellah to provide a view of the state of individualism in this present historical moment.

According to Lasch (1979), there is a tendency in Western culture for the interests of the self to dominate over the interests of others. People today live without a story or narrative to guide them; therefore, people are left simply with themselves to guide their actions. The most detrimental effect of this is that rarely do people find any meaning outside themselves and their individual feelings (Arnett, 1986). According to Lasch (1984), the minimal self relies on him or herself for guidance, is detached from others, and has no real connection to the community. Lasch described the minimal self as a person with selective apathy and emotional disengagement from others.

Much like the circumstance de Tocqueville described, the minimal self renounces the past and the future and is determined to live one day at a time (Lasch, 1984, pp.57–58). Lasch described the disconnect of minimal self: