Individual Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about the individual that dominate Western thought—the often-unexamined assumptions that the individual is the fundamental unit of society, that individual rights are primary, that individual choice is sovereign, that individual responsibility is the basis of morality, and that social arrangements should serve individuals rather than collectives. Individual orthodoxy includes specific commitments: that people are autonomous agents, that freedom means absence of constraint, that individuals should be free to pursue their own good, that collectives are just aggregates of individuals, that social problems have individual solutions. Like all orthodoxies, it provides a framework for social understanding, but it functions as ideology—making individualism seem natural and universal, obscuring how individuals are constituted by social relations, and delegitimizing collectivist alternatives (community, solidarity, common ownership). Individual orthodoxy determines what political arrangements are considered "free," what social policies are "paternalistic," and who counts as a "responsible" person versus dependent.

Example: "He couldn't see how social structures shape individual choices—not because he'd examined the question, but because individual orthodoxy had made structural thinking invisible. The orthodoxy's power is making its own assumptions seem like the only way to see."

Individual Orthodoxy by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026