Everybody talks about late capitalism, which I don’t think is a concept that makes a lot of sense. But I do think we live in late individualism, that we have gotten to an almost terminal point. – I agree with you. – In how much we understand ourselves as individuals and our purpose here as individual expression and fulfillment. I’m curious in — with the cultures you know and the gatherings you’ve explored, how you think about the way we form our individualism now and the tensions that creates for us, then, living in, being in or creating community. I mean, you may be listening to this and thinking: Well, isn’t that the only way to be? Like, how else would you structure society? And I think of so many examples in which, again, whether you think of it religiously or whether you think of it as the pursuit of purpose, where the design of the philosophy or of the society is based on each other. I’m half Indian and there are many, many different cultures and religions that inform India and a huge, in almost every context, whether it’s Baha’ism, whether it’s Hinduism, whether it’s Sikhism, whether it’s Islam, virtue and attainment of God is through the others, through community. And there’s a saying in Hindi, “mehmaan Bhagwan hai,” guest is God. And so there are so many traditions in which the sacredness, the sense of our purpose on Earth is the orientation to the other. By the way, many of these societies are oppressive to the individual. There’s also a reason why so many immigrants come to America. It’s to escape the group, it’s to escape the oppressive community, is to have a self —— – The multigenerational household. Absolutely, the multigenerational household. There are beautiful, beautiful parts of the protection of the individual. Western civilization is based on the right of the individual. The individual deeply matters. But we have gone to late- stage individualism, where we’ve fallen off the cliff and completely forgot that the individual also needs group life, that we are — what if we are not also through and with one another? It’s also boring.
