Now, I would love to continue discussing the wonderful social benefits to arrive with the advent of exclusive humanism, and there is much more about them that I could say, but unfortunately, humanity tends to drive itself to extremes with negative consequences, and this case is no different. It turns out that there is quite a bit that can be said in opposition to ideas of independence and individuality, and that shall be my main direction from here on out.
Prolonged focus on the individual and its worth was bound to lead to some form of egocentrism. C. S. Lewis calls pride “The Great Sin” because of its undercurrent in all other Biblical transgressions. Modernity opened the way for pride to become a way of life, a cultural norm which infiltrates almost every level of society. I must confess that most of my statements will be more directly referencing the United States. It is the only country where I have prolonged experience, but my basic understanding is that similar themes run throughout Western society, even if they are variations, and one of the principal unifying generalities regarding the West is this egocentric humanism.
The problem with taking exclusive humanism to the extreme is that it becomes ultimately self-serving. It creates a society filled with autonomous individuals who must pursue their own ends. That is why less than a century after America’s founding fathers penned the words “all men are created equal,” Abraham Lincoln was warning the nation that a divided house cannot stand. The astounding thing about this statement is that it was made in the midst of a conflict regarding racial injustice. As was mentioned above, fighting for human equality was a positive consequence of exclusive humanism. However, the Civil War was not really fought over slavery. It was the catalyst and the cause for which the North was struggling, but it was not the real reason. What truly divided the country was state rights. The southern states wanted the right to choose slavery for themselves. That is why they tried to form a looser confederation. Lincoln saw that if each state acted in its own interest as an autonomous unit and did not have regard for the whole, it would be the same as a home filled with self-serving individuals, and it would fall. This was a powerful analogy. In those days, it was a terribly tragic thing for a home to be divided and a family to collapse. It is still a terrible thing today, but it seems less tragic by becoming more commonplace. Nowadays, unfortunately, every home is filled with autonomous individuals.
Division has become more and more commonplace since the West entered modernity. It is not always strictly on state borders, nor does it always lead to armed conflict, but what modern divisions sometimes lack in scale, they more than make up for in scope and diversity. In today’s society, all people feel entitled to their own opinion which they decide for themselves. Gone are the days when a king could declare, “So shall it be written, so shall it be done” and have his word carried out without question. Gone are the days when the leaders of a society would decide for all what religion the entire community would believe. Vestiges of these practices remain to this day, but they are shadows left from an ancient world. Papal authority is still the ultimate deciding factor in Roman Catholic doctrine, but that is no longer a guarantee that all individuals or even all churches will adhere to those decrees. In most modern democracies, there is an executive leader, but he can take very little action without first going through the individual decisions of judges and legislators who themselves are chosen based on the decisions of an endless line of other individuals. No governmental decision is direct anymore, and all along the way, these individuals are embattled in their own civil wars, fighting for their opinion to be superior.
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