What we are up against in this country, in any attempt to invoke private responsibility, is that we have nearly destroyed private life. Our people have given up their independence in return for the cheap seductions and the shoddy merchandise of so-called "affluence." We have delegated all our vital functions and responsibilities to salesmen and agents and bureaus and experts of all sorts. We cannot feed or clothe ourselves, or entertain ourselves, or communicate with each other, or be charitable or neighborly or loving, or even respect ourselves, without recourse to a merchant or a corporation or a public-service organization or an agency of the government or a style-setter or an expert. Most of us cannot think of dissenting from the opinions of the actions of one organization without first forming a new organization. Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism. Dissenters want to publish their personal opinions over a thousand signatures.
The contrast between individualism in this excerpt and that of Jung's thinking speaks to the plurality of perspectives on individuality. Berry is discussing the downfall of self-sufficiency and increased dependency on the corporate state to facilitate our national preoccupation with leisure and convenience. Here, I would say "Go, Individualists!"
Jung, in the short bit I wrote about, takes a more internal psychological view (as usual) lauding not self-centered individuality but the individual as a process of authentic self-realization, individuation. Both discuss individualism but from two different perspectives, equally valid, and all but totally separate.
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