There’s a constant tug-of-war in everyday life between doing your own thing and going along with what everyone else wants. You know the drill: you want to stay home and binge-watch your new Adam Brody’s show Nobody Wants This, but your mom insists you must go to your cousin’s bar mitzvah, which is a four-hour drive away. It starts at 8 a.m., and if you don’t go, your aunt will call you selfish, guilt-trip your mom, and start a minor Cold War. That right there is the eternal struggle between individualism and collectivism. It is a tension as old as time—or at least as old as Aunt Rachel’s guilt trips. On the one hand, we all love the idea of freedom, of doing things our way, but on the other hand, we are also social creatures who sometimes have to sacrifice our desires for the greater good (or in this case, for family peace).
This however isn’t just about family dynamics or whether you can get away with skipping a wedding (spoiler alert: you can’t). It is also a debate that has shaped human history, from ancient tribes working together to avoid being eaten by saber-toothed tigers to Ayn Rand rolling her eyes at the mere mention of community.
Are we then better off doing our own thing?
The Power of Teamwork: How Homo Sapiens Survived (and Thrived)
Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. Sure, you might be an introvert who thinks you could live in a cabin in the woods for the rest of your life, but let’s be real—eventually, you’d miss other people. Even if it’s just someone to bring you UberEats.
Evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, along with science writers like Matt Ridley have long argued that human survival depended on cooperation. Think back to prehistoric times when early Homo sapiens faced challenges like predators and harsh environments. Humans hunted in groups, built communities, and shared resources because it was the only way to make it out alive. A lone caveman wasn’t going to take down a mammoth by himself. As Matt Ridley puts it in The Origins of Virtue, cooperation wasn’t just nice to have—it was essential. Humans worked together because, in the long run, it benefited everyone. We helped others today so they could help us tomorrow. It was a prehistoric version of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”.
Of course, it wasn’t all kumbaya and sharing mammoth steaks. Even early humans had self-interest, but they balanced that with the realization that the group’s success meant individual survival. In a sense, it was like one big group project—everyone had to contribute, or nobody got the mammoth burger.
However not everyone thinks teamwork is the magic bullet. Evolutionary psychologist Michael Tomasello, for instance, argues that while cooperation was key, it evolved right alongside competition and aggression. In other words, yes, we’re great at working together, but we’re also great at being jerks to one another when resources get scarce. Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, adds that conflict and competition were just as important in shaping human history as cooperation. So, while Ridley’s team spirit theory is great, it is not the whole story.
Ayn Rand: The Patron Saint of Doing Your Own Thing
If teamwork makes you roll your eyes, then Ayn Rand is probably your kind of philosopher. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism says, “Forget the team, you do you.” According to Rand, individualism is the highest good. In The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, she paints a picture of the heroic individual who stands against the demands of the collective and says, “Nah, I’ve got this.”
Her Fountainhead protagonist Howard Roark is an architect who refuses to compromise his artistic vision to please the masses. Rand’s message? Creativity and innovation come from individuals, not groupthink. Society with all its rules and expectations, is more likely to crush individual talent than nurture it. If Howard Roark wants to design a building that is entirely different from anything anyone’s ever seen, who is to stop him? Certainly not the masses. They according to Rand, would rather stick to boring, safe ideas that don’t push any boundaries. Later, in Atlas Shrugged, Rand introduces the idea of a tight-knit community—Galt’s Gulch—where like-minded innovators gather. Yet she still vehemently rejects any concessions to the dominant society, portraying this enclave as a haven for those who refuse to compromise their values.
Rand is not a lone individualist. John Stuart Mill, one of the fathers of liberal philosophy, also championed individual freedom. In his work On Liberty, Mill argued that the only time society should interfere with an individual’s actions is when those actions harm others. Otherwise, everyone should be free to live their life how they see fit. Then there is Friedrich Nietzsche, who wasn’t exactly a fan of conforming to society’s expectations. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche argues that we should strive to be “Übermensch”—individuals who create their own values rather than blindly following what society tells them to do.
But here is the thing: as much as Rand, Mill, and Nietzsche celebrated individualism, there is a downside to being the lone wolf. Sure, it is empowering to chase your dreams without caring about what others think, but at some point, you’re going to need a road that someone else paved, or a community to support you when times get tough. Even the most die-hard individualists can’t escape the fact that we’re all interconnected in some way. As nice as it sounds to never answer to anyone, it doesn’t keep society running.
Team Haidt: The Case for Working Together
On the flip side, Jonathan Haidt reminds us that being social isn’t just a survival tactic; it’s wired into us. In his book The Righteous Mind, Haidt argues that humans aren’t purely rational creatures. We don’t make decisions in isolation—our moral judgments are deeply influenced by the communities we belong to. We care what other people think, and we tend to align our behaviour with the group’s values.
Haidt’s argument builds on the work of thinkers like Émile Durkheim, the French sociologist who believed that societies need shared norms and values to survive. In The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim argued that a sense of collective consciousness—what we all agree is right and wrong—holds communities together. You can’t have a functioning society if everyone is just off doing their own thing. Similarly, Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, emphasized that morality is something we practice within a community. Ethical behaviour doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s shaped by our relationships with others.
When Collectivism Goes Too Far: A Soviet Example
Of course, not all teamwork is good, especially when it is forced. If you want a cautionary tale, look no further than Soviet-era collectivism. The Soviet Union took the idea of working for the collective to the extreme, with disastrous results. During Stalin’s reign, forced collectivization of agriculture was a key policy. The idea was simple: individual farmers were required to give up their land and join collective farms. This was supposed to boost agricultural production and create a more equitable society.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t. In reality, collectivization led to widespread famine, the destruction of livelihoods, and millions of deaths. Farmers had no incentive to work hard when the fruits of their labour were taken by the state. Without the ability to own their land or control their production, individual initiative disappeared. The result? A total collapse of productivity. Thus, while cooperation can be great, forced collectivism is a different beast altogether—one that shows us what happens when individual freedom is completely sacrificed for the so-called greater good.
The Eternal Struggle: Bar Mitzvahs, Family Drama, and the Balance Between “Me” and “We”
And that brings us back to the tension between individual freedom versus social responsibility. Sure, you would rather stay home than drive four hours to your cousin’s bar mitzvah, but sometimes you have to suck it up for the greater good. Whether it is your family, your community, or society, the truth is that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves.
The challenge is finding the balance between doing your own thing and being part of the group. Ayn Rand and Nietzsche might have you believe that individualism is the ultimate goal, while Haidt and Durkheim remind us that we’re social animals who need each other to survive. Neither extreme works on its own. If we focus only on individualism, society crumbles. But if we lose ourselves entirely in collectivism, we risk becoming just another cog in the machine.
In the end, life’s about walking that tightrope between personal freedom and collective responsibility. Whether it’s deciding to go along with pizza night or sacrificing a weekend to avoid Aunt Rachel’s wrath, we’re all just trying to figure out how to balance “me” and “we” without losing our minds.
The Balancing Act: Finding Harmony in a Tug-of-War
In the end, the tension between individualism and collectivism isn’t something to be fully resolved; rather, it’s something to be carefully balanced. And crucially, that balance is only possible in a society that respects and protects individual autonomy. When people are free to weigh the costs and benefits of their choices—whether it’s going along with the family or sticking to their own plans—they can engage with the collective on their own terms. This kind of nuanced, community-enhancing individualism allows people to contribute to society without losing their personal agency. In contrast, a purely collectivist system removes this freedom, forcing individuals to conform under threat of social or even physical punishment. True balance, then, exists only where free choice exists—where each person can decide when to prioritize their own needs and when to contribute to the greater good. After all, we’re all in this together—but only when we freely choose to be.
Bibliography
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Durkheim, Émile. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by W.D. Halls. New York: Free Press, 1984.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Edited by Elizabeth Rapaport. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1978.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1966.
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011.
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957.
Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943.
Ridley, Matt. The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
Tomasello, Michael. Why We Cooperate. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
