The Individual and the Universal

It would seem that most of us have two 'tendencies' within us, with which we have a sort of uneasy relationship, and which may be called the individualising and the universalising. The first is to be observed in our drive towards self-affirmation, and in the process of the construction of self-identity. By entering into various kinds of social relationships with others around us, we seek to establish our-'selves' as in-dividuals with an impregnable core untouched/untouchable by the 'external world'. In this manner, we seek to develop a self-image that will be unique to our-selves, that will express our characteristic styles of thinking and behaving, and that will, we hope, be accorded a recognisable status in the social millieu. In short, somewhat paradoxically, the more we try to establish ourselves as individuals, the more dependent we become on people around us : we wish (and often, even demand) that others see us as a unique being with distinctive patterns of thought and behaviour.

The second tendency expresses itself in our urge to flow along with the 'social stream of humanity'. Instead of seeking to separate ourselves from others around us, we rather wish, under its influence, to lose ourselves in some greater collectivity. So we willingly give ourselves up to various forms of 'totalitarianisms', whether these are of a racial, social, intellectual, academic, economic, or political nature. In this manner, we almost attempt to reverse the process of individuation which is activated by the first tendency, and are driven by a desire to obliterate the distinctiveness that is intimate to ourselves. So to give a specific example, a software engineer working in a multinational company is on the one hand, being led by the individualising tendency to seek to rise higher and higher in the echelons of power in his company, while being urged, on the other hand, by the universalising tendency to accept, with a calm resignation, the fact that he is but a mere anonymous cog in a gigantic set of machinery. On the one hand, then, there is the attempt to vigorously establish the distinctive boundaries of one's subjectivity, and on the other, the desire to be liberated from the seemingly oppressive weight of such a subjectivity by immersing oneself in a ceaseless sequence of activities.