One of the ‘American’ concepts is the myth that freedom is the prerogative of an individual in the first place. A single human in the jungle is as good as dead over time. Only by cooperating with another can one have time to sleep, to think and to live without fear of attack, or to raise a child.

All ‘competitive’ individualism depends on systems that only exist out of cooperative behaviors and security. Individual barbarians build cities to be free of fear when they get tired of always running from something. Unfortunately, cooperative civilians take the city’s riches for granted and forget what resources it takes to make it work, leading to collapse and decay, either through overreach or boredom.

Cooperative civilians forget how to cooperate outside the civilizations they are born into. The cooperation that enables their power also makes them become arrogant. The use of money to measure that power adds another level of isolation from reality and nature’s resources and selling individualism is highly profitable, especially as the system that allows it commits global suicide.

Seeking individualism may not even be the problem so much as ‘buying individualism’ is; especially when you do it just like everyone else. It’s all in the marketing, and it’s all marketing.