Resilliance and individualism

In our culture, we are all taught to be resilient. To find the strength inside of us to conquer any kind of adversity we may face. This is wrong. This is just not how humans, who are social creatures, are biologically wired.

I found this out myself about five years ago when I was at the lowest point in my adult life. Coming from a broken, chaotic and poor household, I always considered myself resilient, and my social anxiety reinforced that idea. In the loneliness that came from working a new job and living in a brand new house, in a new town, I soon began to realize that economic opportunity wasn't a replacement for what I truly needed. Money really didn't buy me happiness.

I discovered that the social circle I left in the pursuit of opportunity was a more significant source of happiness and belonging than I originally thought. And when I say social circle, I mean in the classical sense. You know, real, tangible relationships and not just fake, virtual ones. Instead of quality relationships, many of us strive for a quantity of likes and "friendships". The reality is, popularity is good for nothing meaningful while "a friend to all is a friend to none." Humans need more that this.

This pandemic is exposing to more of us the cruelty and coldness of the individualism that neoliberal capitalism thrusts upon society. The same individualism I pursued in the face of the adversity of losing my first professional job. Social media gives us the illusion of community while the GoFundMes of the world provide us a way to contribute without actually having to move a muscle. Rising division, hate, personal-debt, suicides, drug overdoses and mental illness is proving that we are doing things wrong.

If we are going to fully recover from this pandemic, we also need to start to recover from individualism. We need to start being there for each other. We need to stop thinking we can or should do everything on our own. We need to hold governments and corporations accountable and remind them that they have responsibilities in a society. We need to make them work for us and not the other way around. This is how you build a resilient society.

For more on how overrated personal resilience is, check out this short article from Jami Attenberg at the Times.