“Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our Freedom.”  Victor Frankl

“People are like dirt.  They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.”  Plato

Growth can be for better or worse.  Growing physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually is almost always a good thing – even though it may have its consequences.  For example, when a person outgrows the relationships he or she is in,  the result can be loneliness and alienation.  On the other hand, growth in population, transportation, manufacturing, agri-business and de-forestation is not turning out to be the panacea people may have imagined.  For example, these five factors are now accounting for almost all of the human-caused climate changes we are experiencing. 

In 1776, Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and “Father of Modern Economics,” wrote the book Wealth of Nations in which he advocates for laissez-faire economic policies that allow free markets to regulate themselves through competition and self-interest.  He also created the concept of gross domestic concept (GDP).  His essential assumptions were that economic growth is not only good, but also that growth is accelerated by limiting government “interference” in business.  I’m not so sure those assumptions were right.  Unbridled self-interest without an appreciation for the common good hasn’t worked out so well for our earth or for 90% of the population. 

In this post I will explore the tensions between individualism vs. collectivism and what each means for positive growth.  Let’s start with a summary of a terrific new book on this very topic entitled The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger.   The visionaries are four strong women all born between 1905 and 1910:  Simone Weil, Ayn Rand, Simone de Beauvoir, and Hannah Arendt.  Weil and de Beauvoir were both born in France and were raised in Christian families.  Rand and Arendt were both Jews who emigrated to France and then to the US from Russia and Germany respectively.   Weil, regarded by many as the most brilliant of the four, died at age 34 while the others lived into their 70’s.   Ayn Rand is the quintessential individualist and narcissist.  She is famous, of course, for the books Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead.  De Beauvoir is the classical phenomenologist/hedonist who was intimately involved with Jean Paul Sartre for over 50 years.  Her most influential books were the Second Sex and Coming of Age.  Weil was the most altruistic and self-sacrificing of the lot.  She wrote Waiting for God and Gravity and Grace.  Hannah Arendt was the most pragmatic and realistic of the group.  Her defining books are The Origins of Totalitarianism and the Banality of Evil. 

For me, all four of these powerful women’s voices addressed the twin issues of the tyranny of the Collective and the terror of individualism.  The tyranny of the collective is manifested in our culture wars, our over-identification with ideologies, and by the norms and values of the groups in which we live, learn and work.   Victor Frankl captured the essence of this phenomenon in his quote:  “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth the our freedom.”  I believe the tyranny of the collective can close down the space in which we choose and generate responses that enable our growth and freedom. 

All of these women addressed the terror of individualism.  They were all in their 30’s when Hitler, Stalin, Franco, and Mussolini were in power.  They confronted the ugly truth that individuals can’t cause terror without the collective compliance and sycophantic support of a large share of the population who somehow stand to gain by the policies and politics.  The idea is that the only way a will to war can come to fruition is to engender a will to murder in the people who are required to execute it.  The examples of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain are all testaments to that truth.  Sadly, the combination of a tyrannical leader and a compliant collective is still threatening to destroy democracy and freedom in the US, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, China, North Korean, Iran and elsewhere in the world.  As a Vietnam Vet, I experienced first hand how dehumanization was the first step to achieving the compliance required to implement state-sponsored murder.  But I digress.

What all of these women, in their own unique ways, implored us to do was to transcend the collective consciousness and to promote freedom and growth.  I think all of them were dealing with the dilemma that Plato raised a couple of thousand years ago:  “People are like dirt.  They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.”  All four of these women were very selective about the people with whom they engaged.  They were very cautious about becoming part of any collective that might stunt their growth. And they were very careful to protect their individual freedom.  Essentially, their existential choices revolved around collective tyranny and individual transcendence. 

I think there is a middle ground here.  I’m very careful about where, when and with whom I socialize, but I also firmly believe that we all have a responsibility to create social cultures that support individual growth and freedom.  I’m clearly not an Ayn Rand fan and de Beauvoir was a bit too hedonistic and self-indulgent for me.   I’m a big devotee of Hannah Arendt and think she was entirely prescient with her views and predictions on totalitarianism.  I feel badly for Simone Weil because her self-sacrificial behavior led to a very early death at age 34.  At one point she worked on an assembly line to experience the oppression of poorly paid laborers.  At another point, she volunteered to fight the Franco army in Spain to show solidarity with people who were risking their lives for freedom.   She finally succumbed to Tuberculosis as a result of wearing down her body from these “adventures.” Weil was a towering intellect with enormous passion not only for transcendence but also for cultural  transformation.  To me, the biggest challenges are to create space in our lives between stimulus and response, to find people in our lives who nourish our freedom and growth, and to do whatever we can to shape the culture in which we live – without destroying ourselves in the process. Hopefully, that’s not a fool’s mission.

Yes, that’s a long detour from the ultimate path of this post to explore how individualistic and collective approaches affect growth, but hopefully the detour will lead to a better understanding of how growth can be for better or for worse.  To me, it depends on how we balance our energy on individual and collective needs.  Currently, it seems to me, we are over-indexed on the collective and on economic growth, and we are under-indexed on individual growth (particularly emotional and spiritual growth) and culture/climate change. 

Whew, where can I start?  Clearly, as individuals, we need to focus on our emotional/spiritual health, our freedom and our growth.  And, undoubtedly, as a society, we need to end the divisive culture wars that dominate the news and address the climate catastrophe that could lead to our demise.  What’s clear to me in this mind-scrambling missive is that both individual and collective freedoms are necessary in order to achieve personal and organizational growth.  In spite of what Ayn Rand says, people need to relate to other people in order to grow in a wholistic manner.

Having worked in the domains of individual wellness and organizational culture change, I have found that it’s very difficult to achieve high level wellness (transcendence) in a soul-sucking, tyrannical organization.  You can only swim upstream for a short period of time.  I have also found that organizational soul is created when high functioning individuals come together to create healthy, innovative and productive environments.  You can’t have one without the other. 

We know from the behavioral change literature that context matters.  Kids who grow up in poverty and dysfunctional families have a much smaller chance of experiencing any level of self- actualization.  And many families and organizations thrive because a few exemplars drive for positive change.  It seems to me that it’s a mistake to focus entirely on either the collective or the individual.  Maximizing positive and sustainable growth requires us to focus on both. 

I’m hoping more individuals can find Frankl’s “space” to pursue freedom and growth by generating new responses to rapidly changing conditions.  And I’m hoping that the collectives in which we participate provide Plato’s nurturing soil to accelerate our growth – not the dirt that makes us wilt and die.  May it be so.