From the basic matter of sensing and valorizing [to a point] an individual identity and conscience to property and politics and the market, all good things.

And I agree that was a very good thing and I have benefited from it. It is a danger we all face now that we are so used to it that we can look back on more traditional societies and, not seeing state socialism or anything like modern socialism, underestimate the demands it placed on the individual.

Still I’m not at all convinced that Western Civ ever actually put society in its place beneath the individual. It was the only civ that furnished the intellectual material from which that idea could be constructed, and that’s not nothing. It created societal architectures that made a larger place for the individual [granted, often only relative to its time and place until the advent of America...] but it’s not clear to me that this dream ever quite caught hold of a majority or became the dominant structure of society itself.

At minimum, people largely seemed willing to sacrifice a lot, and saw an obligation to do so, for kin, neighbours, town, [state, at times] and country. Few seemed to see these purely in utilitarian terms.

I always figured I was glad not to have lived in an intrusive extended family and/or small town, since I take the view that literally nothing about me is anyone else’s business, and I hold pretty fast to that line at 48 as I did at 20. Still, there’s pluses and minuses to everything. Every once in a while someone who knows me well enough demonstrates that they actually do know me better than I know myself, or at least have noticed something I have not processed well enough. And there’s something I think of value lost with kinship, community and people.

I rely on myself because I always have my own best interests at heart, and I know myself better than anyone else knows me.

Society is at best a resource and at worst an obstacle. Western civilization prospered by putting society in its place beneath the individual. Collectivist societies put society above the individual, an abstraction above actual people. That generally ends badly.

A collective must justify its existence to the individuals involved. An individual need justify his existence only to God.

A family is a collective. It’s socialism on a small scale. And socialism is simply family on a monstrous scale.

Certainly there is plenty of dysfunction in the institution, but it beats the next best alternative by a factor of ten.

To a degree, I think that there are simply some changes that some people cannot accept or adapt to; these are populations that are never going to be able to work with those changes, and whose only means of coping with them is to wait for more changes that they can accept and adapt to, or to die out entirely. The other option is to simply become socially dysfunctional, and cease contributing in some or all aspects of the community.

It would not surprise me to discover that some of this is down to hard-coded behavioral traits in the genes, either. Some people simply may not be able to adapt, and we’re not going to know that until we can begin to unravel all the little things in the genes that make people behave as they do. To add even more complexity, there may be subtle interactions with our internal biome that play a role, given the influence that things like gut bacteria seem to have.

But if you’re going to be alone, a rural area with a harsh climate is certainly not the place for it.

Actually, it’s not that great a place to raise a family either. How about just go live somewhere else instead?