Essay On Individualism

A person may be a great general, an efficient carpenter or a first-class pilot, a lawyer, a mechanic or a pathologist, a renowned doctor, a chemical engineer or a chartered accountant, but still may remain a semi-educated, ill-mannered, immoral, unrighteous or unjust person. Similarly, someone may be a very fine painter, a good poet; or possess a love of beauty which is highly delicate and sensitive, but may, at the same time, be cruel or brutal, or an untruthful, unsocial individual, who deliberately ignores his or her duty towards neighbors or even spouse and children. We can say that people who have specialized in certain educational fields are well-instructed individuals, but we cannot necessarily regard them as truly educated. On the other hand, someone who knows and performs his or her duty towards self, family, neighbors and humanity, and at the same …show more content…
The human being is both an individual and a member of a community. One cannot be detached from the other without destroying something important in both. The individualism that stresses complete freedom from any kind of social control is in practice impossible because it leads to the disintegration of society and gives complete license to the individual to break or make social institutions at will, and overthrow the ideals and value-assumptions of the community according to whatever individual urges dictate. Similarly, a complete social control that suppresses the creative and critical urge of the individual cripples the spirit, and leads society either to degeneration and stagnation or to sudden and violent social turmoil. Education preserves the basic structure of society by conserving all that is worthwhile in basic values and institutions, by transmitting them to the next generation and by renewing culture afresh whenever degeneration, stagnation, or loss of values