Individualism In America Today

In America, we make our choices based off self-interest and working to achieve the American dream. According to lecture, individualism is how an individual’s actions or source of meaning is their responsibility. Today, our lives are filled with individual wants and individualism has become the prominent way of American’s consciousness.
American individualism has been created from three main sources; the Puritan origins, new world, and geography. These three sources led to America valuing individualism, by having the freedom to do what they want and create their success (Halman). Firstly, during the Puritan origins, for the first-time these individuals experienced independence. They also created a new work ethic and began to believe that they were the chosen people of God. They focused on the fundamental individualism of each man and their experiences while also being, antiestablishment and antiauthoritarian. This will connect back to the source of the individualism in America today because many believe that the experience of life is primarily based on the singularity of their own. In addition, many Americans believe that success does have to do with being special or getting a gift from god. …show more content…
This new world also broke away from institutions and encouraged true liberalism while expressing individuality. The new world created a very bourgeois society promoting that from hard work anyone could become successful. This led to opportunity, which created the very ideology expressed in individualism. Today, Americans are very focused on reaching their goals single-handedly and their achievement primarily relies on how much success they achieve by themselves (Rifkin). In addition, many Americans still believe in equality and in the freedom to make their own