preview

Essay on Individualism

Good Essays

Individualism 1) An individualist is considered to be someone with personality and character, someone who is not easily intimidated by social pressure or customs, someone with a personal opinion and a singular view of the world. Because modern society finds it important that people think independently, decide autonomously and take personal initiatives, the concept of individualism has acquired a positive connotation. However, individualism is also linked with the tendency to withdraw from social life and turn in towards oneself.

2) Which drives people to withdraw into a small, enclosed world consisting of their family and a few select friends, leaving the rest of society to its own devices.

3) Courageous individualism refers to …show more content…

9)"Habits of the Heart holds up a mirror to American values, makes us examine ourselves, and dares us to question where our society is going. [It] will make you question your own habits and look into your own heart. Not many books possess that ability."

10) This book is about the inevitable conflict between American Individualism and the fact that humans are by nature social. We hunger for relationship yet we want it only on our terms. Bellah and his team of reseachers take on the enormous task of interviewing people from all over the country and the results of these interviews are presented factually and then analyzed. Whether one agrees with the book's conclusions or not, the interviewees speak for themselves, and they speak for a majority of Americans today who are often torn by conflicting authoritative messages and motives from without and within. This book is a marvelous and sometimes unsettling mirror into contemporary American society.

11) Which examined America's conflict between individualism and social commitment) with one that focuses on institutions. After acknowledging that we all live in and through both private and public institutions (families, schools, corporations, the nation, etc.), Bellah and his colleagues argue that we as an American

Get Access