In defence of individualism

It’s the funniest scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. A parable-seeking mob gathers outside Brian’s home. They think he’s the messiah and will dispense some wisdom they might live their lives by. Instead he tells them to think for themselves, because ‘You are all individuals’. ‘We are all individuals,’ the mob intones, robotically. ‘I’m not,’ pipes up a lone, individualist voice, only to be shushed by the unthinking crowd.

Observing the current political debate about individualism, I often feel like that dissenting bloke in Life of Brian. Today, we’re surrounded by politicians, thinkers and hacks who chant that, for the worse, we are all individuals now; that we live under a ‘cult of the individual’, which has elbowed aside communitarian values and replaced them with a secular religion of self-satisfaction. I want to cry, ‘No we don’t!’ We are not all individuals, sadly. In fact, individualism, the exercise of individual autonomy and the expression of individual thought, has never been weaker than it is today.