Misunderstanding Liberalism (5) — Accommodating Cultural Dislocation - The Individualistic Turnaround

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Continued from here.

I have noted in the last post of the present sequel:

Releasing the power of self-interest represents both

• an advance in "security technology" shielding man from avoidable detriment, as well as 

• a major boost to human productivity, 

always assuming that self-interests are made to interlock by social regulation.

However, unlike modern liberals and libertarians are wont to convince us, classical liberalism does not strive to replace the primacy of the (allegedly naturally evil) collectivity with the primacy of the (allegedly naturally good) individual. Instead it seeks to create latitude for greater personal autonomy in the context of a reformed collectivity better suited to an era no longer capable of supporting the (anti/non-individualistic) regimes of social cohesion that used to dominate human togetherness for millions of years: small groups, tribes, families, castes, kinship-based communities.

From a classical liberal point of view, the individual is not an end in itself. The individual remains embedded in and ultimately dominated by the rules and the nature of his social framework. The purpose of classical liberalism is to improve the quality of social relationships amongst human beings that have lost leadership and guidance by the customary institutions of a closely knit community and, for that reason, are forced by default to organise their lives as agents of increased personal independence.

For classical liberals, personal independence is not an end in itself, but a means enmeshed in a matrix of social considerations. To them, personal autonomy is but an important facet that needs to be fitted into the changing broader picture of society. In the classical liberal reading, personal freedom is valid only to the extent that it is properly regulated. Personal liberty is only sustainable thanks to normative social discipline. Personal freedom is released in controlled fashion, ever being carefully restrained, channelled and coordinated with the purpose of turning individuals into benign and productive agents that gravitate toward mutual betterment.

Whatever happened to the old forms of social interaction, man remains a social being crucially dependent on a viable mode of interacting with other human beings—a condition which always requires elements of personal subjection to the community, as well as coordinated collective action, which again tends to demand that some of the scope of individual discretion be conceded to public prescription.

Classical liberalism is about organising a society of culturally dislocated agents; it is not about the self-subsistence of the individual. 

If we want to learn more about what 

• brings forth liberty, and 

• releases more of the potential for individualism in the human being,

we must look not for personal discretion, but for socially dominant regulation— laws, norms, habits that threaten and nudge man to comply with the needs of mutually interlocking, mutually respecting, mutually conducive individualism.

Under the new rules, the individual has less to gain, in fact, much to lose, from blind group affiliation and much to gain from charting his own careful course. Should I kill my boss because he supports a different political party than I do? No, I have more to gain by tolerating his stance. A new logic of compromise and toleration emerges among people. And this changes contents and conduct in politics. Accommodation works—far better than it used to, if it did at all. People are busy building lives in close correspondence with interests that they experience as theirs. 

Initially only a few new options may become available to the culturally caged individual — say, an occupation in the city away from the manor — but choices quickly beget choices. A small number of new options paving the way to fundamentally new choices are liable to ramify into an extensive network of alternatives that undermine the uniformity of a cultural home base, confronting the person with a new found individuality, which is essentially the experience of personally ponderable or even welcome choices that challenge the wisdom of cultural probity. 

As a person gains more psychic and material assets from pursuing an individual course, rigid dedication to a uniform pattern of responses becomes more costly and less rationally appealing than in a world where personal identity is largely congruent with preordained cultural stereotypes. There is now more at stake in attempting to practise intolerant dominance over other individuals, and what is at stake is close to the heart of the person part of whom is already transcultural, i.e. attracted by intelligible and appealing perspectives that point beyond her traditional cultural purview. The same is true for the opponent, the neighbour, the friend. A possible definition of the individual is that of an multiplier of options, and individuals dealing with individuals add another dimension to the multiplication of options. With more options to act upon and more of them worth of protection against obliteration by sweeping decisions, man's dealings, and ultimately politics too, become less violent, more reserved, more negotiable, more conforming to general rules than to parochial, exclusive, sectarian, (sub-)cultural absolutes.  

In the classical liberal vision the uprooted person left behind among the remnants of the feudal world — the individual — is enlisted as a pivotal agent in a new world characterised no longer by rulers but by rules that are geared toward the promotion of 

• peace (for its own sake, rather than being an exception in a world of  mutual predation)

• heightened social intelligence (better supplies of information, better gathering, processing, and recycling of information), 

• greater scope and better incentives for collaboration and cooperation, and 

• conduct apt to increase productivity and protected wealth.

In acquiring her new persona as an individual the human being emphasises, instigates, and partakes in a novel trend whereby all members of society tend to be included in the processes of pacification, intelligence, collaboration and cooperation, as well as growing productivity and wealth creation.

Continued here.