To Thine Own Self Be True?
The tension between individual autonomy and collective identity
One of the defining features of modern culture is the assumption that each of us should be free to pursue our own version of truth, beauty, and goodness—to be our best and most “authentic” self. There are upsides to this belief, particularly to the extent that it increases freedom and minimizes coercion. But there are also costs—to collective action, to shared identity, and to notions of community.
In the News
A few weeks ago, I shared about my recent visit to Kenya and a lecture I presented at Daystar University. My university hosts opened the lecture time by playing three anthems: the Kenyan National Anthem, the East African Community Anthem, and the Daystar University Anthem. It was, to be sure, a long time to stand. But it was also a tangible reminder of the value of solidarity and collective identity.
Last month, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson painted a stark contrast to the communal focus I witnessed in Kenya playing out in the United States:
Someone once told me that the best definition of community is “where people keep showing up.” Well, where is that now, exactly? Certainly not church; each successive generation is attending less than their parents’. Not community centers, or youth sports fields. Even the dubious community-building power of the office, arguably the last community standing for many, is weakening with the popularity of hybrid and remote work. America is suffering a kind of ritual recession, with fewer community-based routines and more entertainment for, and empowerment of, individuals and the aloneness that they choose.
Thompson’s diagnosis is echoed elsewhere. In 2023, Richard Weissbourd and Senator Chris Murphy coauthored an essay in TIME titled “We Have Put Individualism Ahead of the Common Good for Too Long.” Weissbourd and Murphy cited Alexis de Tocqueville’s concern of “whether a society could hold together when existence becomes atomized and individual success crowds out the common good.” They added:
Tocqueville’s warning was not wrong. It no longer feels like America can hold together when we all exist in silos, with little concern for collective health. Our country’s survival may rest on our ability to restore the prior balance between individualism and the common good.
For Weissbourd and Murphy, “the question of how we restore in Americans a stronger sense of responsibility for others and their communities is one of the central cultural and civic concerns of the moment.”
The two continue to share their message, including at a talk last week at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, where they critiqued the “hyperindividualism that has overtaken the country.”
In My Head
Weissbourd and Murphy’s assessment called to mind an Air Force National Guard recruiting video I came across a few years ago. The video is titled “Serve Your Way”:
It ends with a four-line stanza:
Become the best you
Serve your state
Serve your nation
Serve your way
Part of the video’s recruiting strategy is commendable. In recent times, the military has rightly paid closer attention to quality of life and mental health among its ranks. And it seems like a core message of the video was that enlisting in the Reserves allows people to serve their country while staying close to home. These are all good things.
Nevertheless, I was a bit startled by the individuality of the commercial’s core themes of “becoming the best you” and “serving your way.” That’s not how the military works. In fact, one of the strengths of the armed forces is its thick sense of institutional and collective identity.
Few experiences have inculcated a deeper sense of identity and belonging as my officer training in Air Force ROTC, especially our 30-day Field Training the summer after my sophomore year of college. Field Training was an immersive experience into the life and culture of the Air Force. We focused on the collective rather than the individual: shared leadership challenges, regimented physical training, liturgies and cadences, and lots of marching. There was no “me time.” Everyone woke up and went to bed at the sound of a bugle, we ate whatever food they served us in whatever time they gave us (usually seven minutes per meal), and we went exactly where people told us.
These shared experiences and collective deprivations were incredibly effective in instilling a sense of common identity. During my time in Field Training, an Air Force pilot was shot down behind enemy lines during a combat operation over Bosnia and Herzegovina. He spent a week evading enemy forces as the United States launched a search and rescue mission. When he was safely recovered, our trainers announced the successful rescue. And we celebrated as if this guy had been our closest friend. Here we were, a few hundred college sophomores marching around in San Antonio. But this was our Air Force and our guy had been rescued. This wasn’t about becoming the best you; it was being the best us.
In the World
My friend Steve Smith has a remarkable book touching on the tensions between individualism and common identity, The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity. Smith’s central thesis is that conscience in Western jurisprudence and political theory has shifted from being rooted in a right understanding of God to an internal compass linked solely to the self. Smith uses three central figures to represent various eras: Thomas More (liberty of conscience only makes sense when rightly ordered to God); James Madison (liberty of conscience properly extends to wrong beliefs about God), and William Brennan (conscience is what you believe).
At the end of the book, Smith questions how—and even whether—it is even possible for us to “choose our own self” or “define our own universe.” He observes:
Modern culture and discourse seem to offer few solid answers to these kinds of questions. The culture places great normative emphasis on “the person,” “the individual,” “the self.” But it provides precious little insight into what the person or the self is, exactly. Instead, the discourse seems to hop around opportunistically. For one purpose the self is given—by what is not exactly clear. For another purpose the self is chosen, though it is not exactly clear who or what is doing the choosing.
This elusive source of self indeed seems to be a core challenge of the modern dilemma. Smith doesn’t tell us how to get out of it—he’s not sure we can. But The Disintegrating Conscience provides a convincing account of how we got here. And its thesis is consistent with the shift toward individualism reflected in the Air Force’s recruiting video.
I'd suggest that there is a fourth stage after Brennan's "What you believe": "What you feel". What we feel, of course, is variable and subject to our own shifting moods and inclinations, and more importantly to external persuasion - sometimes itself motivated by sincere conviction, sometimes by cynical deception and emotional manipulation.
And the tactic of "flooding the zone" with contradictory, confusing, and outrage-inducing claims does dual duty: not only does it try to sway those whose moral compass is already run by their in-the-moment sympathies, but it also fosters suspicion about principled belief itself, tailoring fictional or distorted narratives precisely at the fault lines of sincerely held convictions in attempt to undermine not only a specific conviction, but the legitimacy of holding conviction.