This is the Sunday edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. My COVID coping strategy is stats. They are my feeble way of trying to control, or at least comprehend, the uncontrollable. If you follow me on Twitter, you know this. I cannot shut up about the numbers.
If you're coming to tell me that Sturgis is South Dakota, not North Dakota: thank you! I knew it in my head, but clearly didn't make its way to the page. It's been amended.
This is such an important read. The explanation you provide about collectivism vs individualism is key. I study the history of Victory Gardens in WWI and WWII, and in wartime mobilization, collectivism often won out. Thanks for this piece. Will share it.
I'm getting so much pressure from my family to come home, and it breaks my heart. I'm a frontline healthcare worker, and both my clients and my parents are from very vulnerable populations. I've had the conversation with my family, and they swear they get it, but then one week later it's like, "Well, if you really wanted to come home, you would make it work." It's just like, to do this remotely safely requires weeks of PTO I do not have, and even then it's still unsafe. My family just acts like I'm using the pandemic as an excuse to not see them, and I just have to be like, "That is wrong and cruel."
Really appreciate this analysis. I have some strong individualist voters in my family. Talking to them about politics is so disheartening precisely because the only things that matter to them are less taxes, preserving their status and lastly the idea of their descendants who they are argue will be better off if they continue supporting the GOP in lock step.
Did you see the extraordinary essay by George Prochnik on Lithub about his conversations with his son who is an EMT in NYC? I thought about a few people it might persuade. I believe it is a "Do not miss"
The collectivist approach is so often framed as antagonistic to an individual's interest. But more often than not, the collective interest is the individual's interest. Just about anyone you'll ever meet in a country with universal health insurance will tell you they would never choose the American system over their country's. They acknowledge that they pay a lot in taxes, and then they'll offer an example about the great healthcare they got for near free. Ultimately, it's a system that keeps them healthy, saves them money, and gives them peace of mind, more than making up for the taxes they pay.
The collectivist argument for fighting Covid, at least back when we could have contained it, is that if we all lockdown for maybe three weeks, we can go back to mostly normal lives after.
Knowing individualists, I understand why it's hard to reason with them this way. But the idea that what's good for the collective is good for the individual is one we need to start promoting, given that our society has been soaked with anti-collective propaganda for the last 40 years.
This is wonderful, Anne. I wrote something similar just before the election about how the time had come to actively start voting against our own interests...and choosing the interests of the collective good.
We all grew up knowing that was a bad thing, but I also see it turned to good effect all the time re: masking, not traveling, not going to work when your company refuses to implement effective safety measures, etc. We also call this "being a good example," but I kind of like the less moralistic and slightly more pushy, more regular-human-sounding "peer pressure."
Personal example: A bunch of my family thought a planned birthday gathering with folks from multiple states was a good idea back in August. A few of us flatly refused to make travel plans, and we were clear about why. That made other family members think twice, and conversations were had that would not have been. (We stopped trying to figure out it for ourselves, maybe, and considered a larger body of folks...) Eventually the number of holdouts was so low it would no longer have been "a gathering." It was cancelled.
Peer pressure might be strongest when you actually know and like the people you're "pressuring." But then again:
A personal/observed example: I walk around my neighborhood a lot. The other day, I saw 5 neighbors gathered on a street corner to chat. I masked up to pass them. Overcautious, totally. But I'm done feeling weird about that. I waved, they waved. One of them suddenly stepped back a few feet and put on her mask. Immediately the other 4 dug theirs out of their pockets. Sometimes we forget—or we see everyone else forgetting and we figure it's probably ok. Or we're just tired of all this. We're human; it's hard. One person can be the example that flips that forgetting, or that laziness, or that exhaustion, though. It's remarkably effective.
I appreciate your thoughtful writing about this subject. It's actually more complex than individualists vs collectivists. Other factors include agreement with our model of authority/consent (I should be ruled over) or not and historical awareness. For many people I know, it's not just "You're not the boss of me and I only care about my own wants." People are alarmed at loss of freedom and the threat of tyranny. Laws passed in response to 9-11 are still with us. Our dignity has not been returned. We should think long and hard before giving away more.
The media oversimplifies the dynamics here in a way that pits Americans against each other. Who benefits? Not the average citizen. I don't know anyone who thinks we shouldn't protect the vulnerable. There are many reasons to be very concerned. It's really not one monolithic agreed-upon path. The consensus is manufactured via censorship. People aren't the good educated collectivists who obey orders to show they care for others or the bad selfish ignorant individualists who don't care if people die. My neighbor is not my enemy, but my community. Our strength.
I'm glad that you're grappling with these questions, because I am too, both in general and in this particular moment when the divide between individualism and collectivism is having acutely deadly results. I often find myself trying to think about the origins of this predicament--I might be deluding myself into thinking that that will help direct us toward solutions, but what choice do we have, really? I can't help but think that some of this relates to the legacy of the communist bogeyman that can find a slippery slope to gulags in any talk of collectivism and therefore sends some people running quickly in the opposite direction. Yet we also know that the individualist/collectivist breakdown doesn't find a hard line between the right and the left. There's another part of me that thinks it's due to an overall decline in civic-mindedness due to the social atomization arising from consumerism, but I think the jury is still out on whether there's been an actual decline in civic-mindedness. What I do think can't really be disputed, though, is the decline in institutions through which people can easily develop that collective feeling and channel that civic-mindedness. (I suppose this is the whole Bowling Alone argument.) There's more to it than this, of course, and I'm not meaning to hearken back to an imagined past that was in fact filled with real and symbolic violence, but I guess I wonder how we can take this beyond those absolutely vital individual conversations, or rather, how we can (re)build that cultural mesh that supports overall feelings of collective/civic care, that creates an environment that allows for those one-on-one kinds of conversations to be had, and reinforces a sense of broadly shared social reality. I'm unfortunately skeptical that we can actually do that work when so many forces are aligned against it, but I suppose almost-certain failure is a hallmark of any project like this, even the successful ones.
Probably worth noting that every flu pandemic for the last 250 years had a second wave, roughly 6 months after the first and almost always worse. So, people may not have been doing the right things and it is worse, but it is also true that this tends to happen.
If you're coming to tell me that Sturgis is South Dakota, not North Dakota: thank you! I knew it in my head, but clearly didn't make its way to the page. It's been amended.
This is such an important read. The explanation you provide about collectivism vs individualism is key. I study the history of Victory Gardens in WWI and WWII, and in wartime mobilization, collectivism often won out. Thanks for this piece. Will share it.
I'm getting so much pressure from my family to come home, and it breaks my heart. I'm a frontline healthcare worker, and both my clients and my parents are from very vulnerable populations. I've had the conversation with my family, and they swear they get it, but then one week later it's like, "Well, if you really wanted to come home, you would make it work." It's just like, to do this remotely safely requires weeks of PTO I do not have, and even then it's still unsafe. My family just acts like I'm using the pandemic as an excuse to not see them, and I just have to be like, "That is wrong and cruel."
Really appreciate this analysis. I have some strong individualist voters in my family. Talking to them about politics is so disheartening precisely because the only things that matter to them are less taxes, preserving their status and lastly the idea of their descendants who they are argue will be better off if they continue supporting the GOP in lock step.
Did you see the extraordinary essay by George Prochnik on Lithub about his conversations with his son who is an EMT in NYC? I thought about a few people it might persuade. I believe it is a "Do not miss"
Have you read Eugenia Cheng's new book, x + y? It's totally about this. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/eugenia-cheng/x-y/9781541646506/
The collectivist approach is so often framed as antagonistic to an individual's interest. But more often than not, the collective interest is the individual's interest. Just about anyone you'll ever meet in a country with universal health insurance will tell you they would never choose the American system over their country's. They acknowledge that they pay a lot in taxes, and then they'll offer an example about the great healthcare they got for near free. Ultimately, it's a system that keeps them healthy, saves them money, and gives them peace of mind, more than making up for the taxes they pay.
The collectivist argument for fighting Covid, at least back when we could have contained it, is that if we all lockdown for maybe three weeks, we can go back to mostly normal lives after.
Knowing individualists, I understand why it's hard to reason with them this way. But the idea that what's good for the collective is good for the individual is one we need to start promoting, given that our society has been soaked with anti-collective propaganda for the last 40 years.
This is wonderful, Anne. I wrote something similar just before the election about how the time had come to actively start voting against our own interests...and choosing the interests of the collective good.
I want to put in a word for peer pressure.
We all grew up knowing that was a bad thing, but I also see it turned to good effect all the time re: masking, not traveling, not going to work when your company refuses to implement effective safety measures, etc. We also call this "being a good example," but I kind of like the less moralistic and slightly more pushy, more regular-human-sounding "peer pressure."
Personal example: A bunch of my family thought a planned birthday gathering with folks from multiple states was a good idea back in August. A few of us flatly refused to make travel plans, and we were clear about why. That made other family members think twice, and conversations were had that would not have been. (We stopped trying to figure out it for ourselves, maybe, and considered a larger body of folks...) Eventually the number of holdouts was so low it would no longer have been "a gathering." It was cancelled.
Peer pressure might be strongest when you actually know and like the people you're "pressuring." But then again:
A personal/observed example: I walk around my neighborhood a lot. The other day, I saw 5 neighbors gathered on a street corner to chat. I masked up to pass them. Overcautious, totally. But I'm done feeling weird about that. I waved, they waved. One of them suddenly stepped back a few feet and put on her mask. Immediately the other 4 dug theirs out of their pockets. Sometimes we forget—or we see everyone else forgetting and we figure it's probably ok. Or we're just tired of all this. We're human; it's hard. One person can be the example that flips that forgetting, or that laziness, or that exhaustion, though. It's remarkably effective.
I appreciate your thoughtful writing about this subject. It's actually more complex than individualists vs collectivists. Other factors include agreement with our model of authority/consent (I should be ruled over) or not and historical awareness. For many people I know, it's not just "You're not the boss of me and I only care about my own wants." People are alarmed at loss of freedom and the threat of tyranny. Laws passed in response to 9-11 are still with us. Our dignity has not been returned. We should think long and hard before giving away more.
The media oversimplifies the dynamics here in a way that pits Americans against each other. Who benefits? Not the average citizen. I don't know anyone who thinks we shouldn't protect the vulnerable. There are many reasons to be very concerned. It's really not one monolithic agreed-upon path. The consensus is manufactured via censorship. People aren't the good educated collectivists who obey orders to show they care for others or the bad selfish ignorant individualists who don't care if people die. My neighbor is not my enemy, but my community. Our strength.
I'm glad that you're grappling with these questions, because I am too, both in general and in this particular moment when the divide between individualism and collectivism is having acutely deadly results. I often find myself trying to think about the origins of this predicament--I might be deluding myself into thinking that that will help direct us toward solutions, but what choice do we have, really? I can't help but think that some of this relates to the legacy of the communist bogeyman that can find a slippery slope to gulags in any talk of collectivism and therefore sends some people running quickly in the opposite direction. Yet we also know that the individualist/collectivist breakdown doesn't find a hard line between the right and the left. There's another part of me that thinks it's due to an overall decline in civic-mindedness due to the social atomization arising from consumerism, but I think the jury is still out on whether there's been an actual decline in civic-mindedness. What I do think can't really be disputed, though, is the decline in institutions through which people can easily develop that collective feeling and channel that civic-mindedness. (I suppose this is the whole Bowling Alone argument.) There's more to it than this, of course, and I'm not meaning to hearken back to an imagined past that was in fact filled with real and symbolic violence, but I guess I wonder how we can take this beyond those absolutely vital individual conversations, or rather, how we can (re)build that cultural mesh that supports overall feelings of collective/civic care, that creates an environment that allows for those one-on-one kinds of conversations to be had, and reinforces a sense of broadly shared social reality. I'm unfortunately skeptical that we can actually do that work when so many forces are aligned against it, but I suppose almost-certain failure is a hallmark of any project like this, even the successful ones.
Probably worth noting that every flu pandemic for the last 250 years had a second wave, roughly 6 months after the first and almost always worse. So, people may not have been doing the right things and it is worse, but it is also true that this tends to happen.
I have thought about this divide in world view and ethics a lot since 2016, but I have used the terms "humanist" and "tribalist."