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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Monday, February 24, 2025

Individualism intriguing

I found Lloyd Chebacle's viewpoint ("Belief in the individual has negatives" Feb. 26) interesting, and I agree that our individualistic culture breeds loneliness and disconnection, but I must disagree with one of his reasons.

The viewpoint criticizes the "Christian" ideal of monogamy as contributing to the "exclusivist and often lonely path of individualism," as monogamous partners place unrealistic expectations of personal fulfillment upon each other. Monogamous marriage as an institution existed long before Christianity, but I'd like to note that Christianity does not promote marriage as some sort of bottomless reservoir of emotional fulfillment. Instead, monogamous marriage is the holy method of expressing romantic love.

This is never promoted as a panacea for all of one's needs; in contrast, the believer is called the bride of Christ, and in this relationship we meet our fulfillment. Besides communion with God, the believer is urged not to withdraw into an "exclusivist" way of life, married or single, but is encouraged to "not give up meeting together", and is repeatedly told to engage with Christian community for learning and service. I have personally found this to be helpful in dealing with the lonely individualism that the viewpoint identifies, and a realization of the concept of the "healthy sense of self coupled with a... society that is practiced, not simply thought of abstractly..."

I think, however, an honest look into "lonely individualism" must conclude that the pursuit of self fails because the self is flawed, and when two people become intimate, those two flawed people become intimately familiar with each other's failures, on a daily basis. Becoming intimate with greater numbers of people will not eliminate flaws, it will merely magnify them. One reason community pursuits tend to satisfy some desires for fulfillment is that the pursuit of a cause serves as a distraction from introversion and personal failures. As the viewpoint points out, however, even the noble cause of one era becomes the laughingstock of another. The solution, I find, is not ultimately a human interaction at all; it is communion with a living God who cares enough to pursue us even when we're busy pursuing ourselves and others.



Matthew Dysart

LA '04