Principles concerning the emergence of Individuality in society and the characteristics of Individuality as a stage in the development of personality.
Individual and Society[]
The relationship between the Individual and the social collective is complementary.
- The collective is a powerful entity that gives shape to the formation of the Individual.
- But this collective wants the individual to accept its lead and submit to its conditions in total.
- The Individual is a product of the collective and functions entirely under its control.
- At the same time it is the individual – in the role of the Pioneer -- that leads the collective to higher levels of awareness and accomplishment.
- This process continues until all the members of the collective rise to the level of the pioneering individual leader.
- In other words, the Individual is the Guru of the society, exemplifying the principle of “Leading the leader.”
- The collective is an amorphous mass out of whose subconscious experience the formed Individual emerges as an example, forerunner, or pioneer of various dimensions.
- Out of the collective mass, the unit of the Individual is born as a micro formation. His size, power, influence can range from the world to his personal circle like a family.
- He who has the urge to conform cannot be an Individual as long as that urge survives.
- He who does not hesitate to pursue a course of action that he knows to be rational just because it does not conform to the social norms has the seed of the Individual within them.
- This attitude and tendency qualifies a person to become an individual. His actual level of accomplishment may range from no action to action in spheres of varying sizes.
- Individuality is a faculty of Mind. Hamlet, whose mind made him hesitate to kill Claudius, is the symbol of nascent individuality.
- Not that the vital and physical are entirely incapable of Individuality, but when it arises it is made possible by the mental element in the vital and the physical.
- The Individual, being of a higher order, accomplishes at a higher level.
- There is no individual in one who does not accomplish something new.
- All Pioneers and Leaders are marked Individuals, though the pioneer is far different from the leader. Individuality is only one marked trait of the pioneer. In another essential sense, all the three have distinct personalities with one element in common.
- There can be individuality even in conforming when one wants a concentration of that kind.
Personality and Individuality[]
As there is a difference in personality from manners, behaviour, character, there is an essential difference between personality and individuality.
- Personality is the ability to transfer the essence of capacity of character to an utterly new situation, as the politician who assumes power for the first time.
- Individuality is the personality that refuses to conform to the collective.
- In the formation of Individuality, man enters the zone of psychological growth that permits
- the emergence of perfect form, and
- the formation of the unique type.
- While character is rigid and fixed, personality and individuality carry original freedom. They are free to withdraw from that formation to attempt a new form.
- The formed Individual is the acme of the accomplishment of the political structure called democracy. Law maturing into individual liberty is the process of an illiberal democracy growing into a liberal Democracy.
- The greatest negative examples of perfected individuals are seen in the total loyalty of the serf in Europe and the dedicated chaste wife in India who dies the same moment her husband’s life leaves the body. In Alexander Dumas’ Man in the Iron Mask, Porthos’ servant Mousqueton died lying on his master’s clothes when his master’s will was read out.
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