S U B V E R S E
Pull of the collective ……….David Brooks
Chengdu (China): The world can be divided in many ways rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.
This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts. When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. Theyre both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships.
You can create a global continuum with the most individualistic societies like the United States or Britain on one end, and the most collectivist societies like China or Japan on the other. The individualistic countries tend to put rights and privacy first. People in these societies tend to overvalue their own skills and overestimate their own importance to any group effort. People in collective societies tend to value harmony and duty. They tend to underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts.
Researchers argue about why certain cultures have become more individualistic than others. Some say that western cultures draw their values from ancient Greece, with its emphasis on individual heroism, while other cultures draw more on tribal philosophies. Either way, individualistic societies have tended to do better economically. We in the West have a narrative that involves the development of individual reason and conscience during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and then the subsequent flourishing of capitalism.
According to this narrative, societies get more individualistic as they develop.
But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops. The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of Chinas assertion that development doesnt come only through western, liberal means, but also through eastern and collective ones.
The ceremony drew from Chinas long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. Weve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of Chinas miraculous growth.
If Asias success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism, which seemed closed after the Cold War, then its unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge. For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.
The rise of China isnt only an economic event. Its a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream. Its certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats. NYTNS