[lawrenci]

Certainly, I completely agree that it's not always a positive. Western capitalist culture is better suited to providing freedom to non-conformists, and it's true that life can be arduous in communal cultures if one deviates from the norm.

On the other hand, there are psychological advantages to collaborating with one's community to address shared issues. In western capitalist culture, many individuals are predisposed to feeling that their problems are their own responsibility, leading them to believe that any misfortune they experience is solely due to a lack of effort or poor decision-making on their part.

I wonder if it would be possible to build a society that gets the positive parts of both approaches, or if there is a better balance to be sought between individualism and collectivism.

[int_19h]

I don't recall much "collaboration with one's community", at least not in urban Soviet landscape - perhaps things were different in the villages (but if they were, I don't think the Soviets could claim credit for that). The society that they ended up building was actually very cutthroat in many ways once you got past the guaranteed basics that everyone had, precisely because anything above that was that much harder to get.

Thing is, you fundamentally can't enforce good socialization. You can enforce socialization in general, but the more it is forced, the less likely it is to actually be good. A good society is the one that gives opportunities for people to socialize if and when they want it, and accepts that some people really just don't and that's fine too.