After numerous conversations with people and watching and listening to many interviews and commentaries and reading many books I have concluded there are two kinds of people in the world.
Some people are individualists who regard society as a collection of responsible individuals and some people are organic thinkers who regard society as an organic, interdependent whole.
Of course, people exist along a spectrum, but all fall either more to the individualist side or to the organic side.
Individualists tend to expect everyone, with a few possible exceptions, to take responsibility for their lives and make good. Such people tend to resist anything like socialism and even critical social theory.
Organic thinkers tend to expect everyone to take some responsibility for others, even people with whom they are not related or friends. Organic thinkers are attracted to critical social theory and some degree of socialism. Individualists tend to be horrified by socialism, the “welfare state.”
These are, of course, not bounded sets or categories; they are centered sets or categories. I have described the centers above.
Individualists today, in America, are attracted to the Republican Party. Organic people are attracted to the Democratic Party. They may disagree with some policies of the party to which they are attracted and they may identify as independents. However, in general and overall, the today’s Republican Party leans into individualism and today’s Democratic Party leans into an organic view of society.
The pathos of individualism, at least in America, is Social Darwinism. Many, perhaps most individualists are at least sympathetic with SD even if they have never heard of it. What I mean is that when they hear it explained they tend to nod yes.
The pathos of organic-ism, at least in America, is what is often called “woke-ism,” the belief that everyone is responsible to make sure his or her words and actions do not offend anyone except the already privileged.
These two pathoses or extremes make people on both sides angry or at least frustrated at the other side.
Is there a Christian view? Does authentic Christianity lean into individualism or an organic view of society?
Know that Walter Rauschenbusch was an organic thinker. An individualist thinker, also a Christian minister, who lived around the same time, was William Graham Sumner, author of What Social Classes Owe To Each Other. His answer was “nothing.”
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