Collectivistic societies also tend, by definition, to be more heavily ritualized than individualistic cultures. For example, Protestantism’s association with individualism is well-known. And one of the biggest differences between Protestantism and Catholicism is the former’s anti-ritual tendencies. Protestantism has in turn deeply shaped the modern West, leaving us comparatively light on ritual in multiple senses: religious, but also civic, interpersonal, and personal. China, meanwhile, has been shaped by millennia of Confucianism, which is heavily ritualistic and encourages collectivism.
Meanwhile, although individualistic countries are more satisfied with life than collectivistic societies in aggregate, collectivism is strongly associated with life satisfaction at the individual level. This is probably at least partly thanks to the better self-regulation that comes with living a collectivistic life full of ritual and responsibilities. So even though it’s good to live in a wealthy, individualistic country, it’s really best to belong to a collectivistic sub-community within that country, which can help you develop the self-control and responsibility that the majority national culture can’t.
What does this say about underlying yearning for collective satisfaction and community even in the landscape of individual drive?How could a life jam-packed with responsibilities and apparently meaningless traditions and rituals be better for us than one where we’re free, finally — after all the extreme social control in our entire species’ rotten history — to decide how to live our own lives?
Goethe wrote that “Everything that liberates our minds without at the same time adding to our resources of self-mastery is pernicious.” We supposedly civilized Westerners have been chasing after personal freedom and individualism for a really long time, and “the disappearance of rituals” is one of the necessary consequences. But with this disappearance, we may have let some basic tools for self-mastery slip away.
In fact, among Westerners, those who are more politically collectivistic (that is, who prefer the government to be heavily involved in redistributing resources) are psychologically much more individualistic than the bulk of the population. This may be because political collectivism, by removing the burden of social care from local groups (Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” of family, church, and neighborhood community), actually enables people to pursue their own independent agendas without being as burdened by the many obligations than come with “platoon” life.
