Which is more important; the individual or the society?

It depends on the situation - balance is important Overall, balance between individual rights and the good of society is the key to finding a successful, happy society. In general rights of the individuals are more important when and where they do not encroach on the rights of other individuals, but where they interact the good of society must come first. The action followed must be that which will most benefit society.

Thus, when someone acts out against society, such as through theft or murder, directly violating another individual's rights it is in the interest of society to stop them. In that case, the good of society must come before the right of the errant individual to do whatever he jolly well pleases. Thus laws are created as a way of determining in those interactions who is right, who is wrong, and how society should react to those actions..

I believe for the most part society is more important and here is why. We live in a society in which usually each individual puts themselves first. This should not be.

I believe it has to do with the mindset of the people. Because most people are consumed with making sure their own needs are met, the result is that most of the time the needs of others are ignored. This makes our society one of great need and lack.

If everyone were to stop focusing on their own needs and wants and began to look outside of themselves for those in greater need, the needs of the "individual" would disappear. Why would a man voluntarily give his life in battle to saves the lives of others around him? I believe it is because he sees the bigger picture.

He recognizes that as an individual he can do so much to help society and to make the world a better place. Are not these the kind of people we call heros? The truth is that we can all be heros everyday by putting others ahead of ourselves.It is much more difficult to create a sucessful and healthy society than to meet the needs of one individual, and because of this I believe the needs of society are more important.

One man's ceiling is another man's floor. Sure there's a middle ground....that's what society is. It's the middle or rather the common ground where individuals come together and act corporately to accomplish what individuals generally can't get done alone.

I don't think your question admits of an answer, because it's not an either-or situation. Individuals are important, at least we think think so, and the society is important because it's the cooperative aggregation of individuals. That's a very Western, humanist Rousseauvian answer, of course.

We grow up with the notion that individual fulfillment, that famous "pursuit of happiness," is the ultimate definition of good. We expect our society to be organized in such a way as to allow us the widest possible latitude for doing our own thing. A society which demands painful and non-consensual sacrifices from us is by definition repressive and bad.

Rousseau's philosophy, which was coincidentally being published and widely discussed as the American Colonies of Britain were ginning up for revolution, relied on the notion that the natural condition of individuals was one of free will and the desire for perfection, an inborn instinct for constructive self-actualization, a natural tendency towards compassion and a desire, when bound together in societies, to attain the good opinion of others. It's a very best-case scenario of human behavior. It also happens to be the underpainting of our picture of ourselves, our larger social units and our world.

There have been (still are) societies which declared that the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number was the very definition of morality. The problem, of course, comes down to who gets to decide what "good" is, and who gets to tally up the numbers. This approach, placing the needs of a posited entity called Society above the needs of a demonstrable set of entities called Individual, failed in most cases because the definitions and the definers didn't perfectly reflect the thoughts and needs of the individuals concerned.

One of the most shattering culture shocks I ever received was learning that there are ongoing, functioning, perfectly happy societies whose members don't consider the individual to be the basic social unit. The ones I'm most familiar with are tribal societies. Individuals who grow up in tribal societies are indoctrinated from birth to place family/tribal welfare above personal desires.It works for them, because they accept the tradeoff between personal wish-fulfillment and the ability of the tribe to provide security, support, acceptance and a meaningful value set.

The society-first model doesn't work at all for me, and has not been notably successful in practice. The tribal model works very well for people in tribal cultures, but begins to break down when the tribe grows too large or has to deal constantly with cultures which are non-tribal in nature. When this happens, people on the "outside edges" of the tribe--the tribal leaders at the top, most exposed to other cultural influences, and the tribal misfits who feel themselves poorly served by the rest of the group--begin to drift away, willing to risk alienation and losing their safety net in the hopes of gaining something that looks shinier or more personally satisfying.

So I come down, finally, on the side of a society which places a premium on the freedoms of the individual. But hey, that's the way I was raised..

Individuals and Society are intrerrelated, I don't think one can exist without the other. Say one is the most individualistic person on earth. That can only be defined by how that person relates to the rest of society.

Similarly, society is a collective of individuals who make up the whole. If what you are asking is whether one should be individualistic at society's expense, the question becomes more difficult. Similarly, can society serve to stamp out the individual?

I have lived in China, it certainly can try. These are matters of human nature and politics. Some people call it a dialectic question, where individualism and society make up two ends of a spectrum, and we all exist somewhere on that spectrum.

Which doesn't get us any closer to the question you asked. If the individual and society both need the other to exist, how canone be more important than the other? But I can say that a society where individualism is respected, rewarded and even valued is preferable to one which is monolithic, unforgiving and beats individuals down by societial pressure because "the greater good" cannot tolerate diversity.

Great question, and I am just amazed at my self control that I could go through it without talking about politics or religion. Directly. Sources: Too much higher education and books, life in capitalist and communist countries, too much free time..

If the individual is not helped, society would not be a fun place to be. There would be no joy to transfer.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.

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