Individualism, Collectivism and “You”
In English, the singular and plural forms of second person pronoun
are the same. It means the word “you” can mean two things: you
the person or you the people. For example, when someone says
“you are smart.” to you, it can mean you as an individual are
smart or you as part of a group are smart. Because there is no
distinction between these two meanings, a person who grow up in
a dominantly English speaking environment is inevitably conditioned,
subconsciously, to think there is no distinction between an
individual and a group of people they are with.
As you see, the English language itself is very collectivist and
biased against individualism.
What do you(individual) think?
((printed without permission)) by
_____________________________________________________________
warning: not a linguist, just opinionated/thinking/poetically/philosophically interested
so I see (of course) many faults to this argument … I think you are *generalizing* and *specializing* the entire supporting evidence and *ignoring* the various strands of why this may be occurring, not so much a defining cultural bias (this connotates a negative or positive conclusion *ending*, not a neutral realization *opening*), possibly an intrinsic development of the human to (testing a recently developed theory of mine) complete the loop and paradox of the human vs. humanity conflict … one must look at the context, cuz man, it is ALL ABOUT context … as in, when I use “you” I may be reflecting several personal/community psychologies/sociologies, not one of which would be a bias, but a of who *you* are and using this plural/singular complex as a tool for intricate awareness of how the self exists within the community and how they reacte off each other in the combined STRUCTURE of language/ communication … although, I have not delved enough into other languages to be able to relate this theory to other cultures, the English language itself is extremely versatile, complex, and revealing … and I think you are revealing/contradictng/answering yourself in the very question: What do you(individual) think? Because you are addressing a community of individuals, asking for a *pluralism* of answers, while still maintaining an emphasis on the *singular* person … pretty damned interesting, hmm? I am going to go ask a friend about this, thank you for the meme, man …
hahaha – talk about generalising froma weak argument……