In Defense of Individualist Culture | Otium

Epistemic Status: Pretty much serious and endorsed. College-educated Western adults in the contemporary world mostly live in what I’d call individualist environments. The salient feature of a…

Epistemic Status: Pretty much serious and endorsed. College-educated Western adults in the contemporary world mostly live in what I’d call individualist environments. The salient feature of an individualist environment is that nobody directly tries to make you do anything. If you don’t want to go to class in college, nobody will nag you or yell at you to do so. You might fail the class, but this is implemented through a letter you get in the mail or on a registrar’s website. It’s not a punishment, it’s just an impersonal consequence. You can even decide that you&#

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