Do people not understand that civilization is for the group benefit first and the individual second?

Oh yeah. I had originally read it as something else, when I wrote my original post. I have a bit less to say in that case (cultural stuff isn't something I study a lot), but can offer a few musings, observations, and the occasional insight, if I'm lucky. So I think a lot of this has to do with marginalization that occurs when maturing, and how we cope with that, combined with the decreased power of the individual in western society, and thrown in with a dash of the professionally outraged, and you get this weird mix of everything that's going on today. So let's begin with the lessened power and sovereignty of the individual, since that's probably the aspect I understand best. This is most noticeable in the United States, I think, partly due to our being a world leader, partly because of our relatively short history, and partly because of the vast changes society has undergone in the last 200 years. If you had lived in the 1800's, you would have far different expectations of what you expected from your government than you do today. The federal government, in terms of how it affects the lives of ordinary people, was basically non-existent. In economic terms, federal spending was only 3% of the GDP of the entire country. This year it will be 21.5% of GDP. Many immigrants flowed to these shores from all over the world. No help was offered to them by a central power, and none was given. Life was hard, but most were full of optimism and hope. Opportunities were abound, and for many people, it was the first time they had lived in a place without a glass ceiling. There were no nobles, no royalty to restrict you from rising up. If you could succeed, you had the potential to become extremely wealthy. Not everyone did, of course, but many were able to improve their conditions and their lot substantially; most were better off than they would have been had they stayed in their home countries. Move forward into the first half of the 1900's, and you see another instance of people not being reliant on the government. This primarily took the form of mutual-aid societies; groups of people who voluntarily came together and offered their services and skills to one another, while all contributing to a central "pot" to pay for various things that would come up. So someone would be a carpenter, and would work on furniture for others who did not have those skills. Another would be a doctor, and would help them with illnesses, diagnose them, and recommend specialists they knew if they were very sick. And so on. People contributed to Parent-Teacher Associations. Most heads of school boards for a country were ordinary citizens looking to contribute to society by offering their time and efforts toward something that helped everyone. This was common across the entire country. Today, things are obviously very different. I believe the political changes that have been coming about in the last several decades are also contributing to our weakened social capital. [To quote from a blog](http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/09/honor-dignity-victimhood-and-death-of.html) I read that touched on this subject - > This story is a well known one: over the last five decades American social capital has fallen apart. Americans are less likely to volunteer, participate in local political parties or caucuses, join civic, religious, or self improvement associations, attend church, have group hobbies, vote, read local newspapers, organize neighborhood gatherings, play cards, spend time on social visits, or have as many friends now as they did in 1960. > At the same time many organizations which once gave average men and women the chance to work together or serve in local leadership roles disappeared--or have been consolidated to heights far beyond the reach of the average citizen. There are fewer school boards and municipal governments now than there in the 1950s, despite the doubling of America's population since then. National charities are more likely to ask their members for money than time; lobbying has replaced supporting local chapters as the main activity of most national activists. The federal government assumes powers traditionally reserved to local and state governments. Local businesses have been pushed out of existence by international conglomerates. The businesses, associations, congregations, and clubs that once made up American society are gone. America has been atomized; her citizens live alone, connected but weakly one to another. Arrayed against each is a set of vast, impersonal bureaucracies that cannot be controlled, only appealed to. As compared to when I was a child (the 90's, mainly), these bureaucratic monstrosities seem even more impenetrable. I can't imagine what many young people today think of the idea of social mobility. I'm sure it seems impossible to imagine the rich becoming poor and vice versa. Indeed, it's greatly on the decline since the 1970's in particular; while it was at its highest in the early stages of America's history, through the 1800's. And I believe this contributes greatly to the general feeling of anti-western ethos that is beginning to pervade some institutions, such as universities in particular. Now combine that with a dose of marginalization - the idea that you have to sacrifice some parts of yourself to even engage in a society. There are things I want to do and not do that come up in life all the time - I _do_ want to go out and enjoy myself; I _don't_ want to go to work and earn a paycheck - but you make those sacrifices because you realize that it's necessary for society. You do the same as a child, right around 4, developmentally speaking. I've studied a little about this from watching lectures on it. A child that is socialized properly, by the age of 4 or so, will understand that he sometimes must put his personal desires aside in order to participate with a group of children. Even if he doesn't understand that by spelling it out, he understands the concepts in his mind. And so when we begin to participate in society that happens too, on a larger scale, and I think a lot of it happens when you're a teenager. That's why we're all so angsty and weird and into counter-cultures at that time in our lives. We're trying to deal with the fact that we have to sacrifice bits of ourselves in order to integrate into society, while at the same time desperately hanging on to our individuality so that we're not just another run of the mill citizen. It's a hard process and most of us come out of it OK, but not all of us make that leap so well. So now we have these people who struggle to cope with having to live in a society as they become adults, and are trying to hang on to their individuality, and don't really know how to do it without being outlandish in some regards. Now throw in the professional outragers - economist Thomas Sowell, of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, talks about this a great deal. As a black man who lived in suburban white neighborhoods and Harlem growing up as a child, he saw both sides of the coin, so to speak. And so he could call bullshit on some of the professional racists when he went to university where others did not have the experience or knowledge to do so. So you have these people and they talk about how unjust society is. "Look at rape statistics, that's a product of patriarchy; look at the incarceration rates or the police killing rates, that's a product of racism". So you have these people basically extolling all the evils of western society, and it plays into the mindset some of these people already have about how bad and terrible things like conservatism, capitalism, and other various freedoms can be. So now you throw all of this into a pot together - you have individuals, while struggling to hang on to their identity and not become clones, look at this "western society" we have built up and see only an impenetrable bureaucracy - mostly made up by older white guys - and don't see any way for them personally to have any power or influence or ability to change things, and _then_, there's also all this perceived injustice (whether it's real or not) going on all around them and how horrible it is for blacks or women or other minority groups; and they must think to themselves "holy shit, this whole fucking system is shit. Why should anyone give a shit about it or defend it or anything?" And so that's why they begin to want to tear it down. No wonder they don't care about society - _society is completely corrupt and primarily exists to give power to white men_; women and people of color need not apply. Society wants them to "integrate" and act more normal and get a job, and they think the same thing again, and decide "No! I'm my own person, and don't want to be another clone." Then all these ideas that were already in their head are further reinforced by the Al Shaptons and Anita Sarkeesians of the world, further reinforcing their ideas. They all get told "Join us and help us make things right!" It's no wonder so many young people are falling into these ideas and embracing them while shunning everything good about the west; they've fallen into an ideology and it colors their perceptions of everything. It's no accident many of the people you describe are either deeply into very different counter-cultures, or else are part of groups like Social Justice Warriors. That name is no accident, by the way. Think about what it really means - _they truly believe they're fighting for what's right and proper_. The "justice" part of the name gives away instantly. If they were telling the story of the world, _they would be the good guys_. And all of society is evil. They don't see the good, only the bad. So anything you can do to disrupt it, or damage it, or make others think twice about freely participating in it, hurts the bad guys. It's all OK. The ends justify the means. I don't know if all of that flows together smoothly or if it is quite on point for what you're talking about, but I think I got it in the ballpark.