Spiritual individualism

At present the two main lines are mainstream, modern materialist individualism; or a traditionalist communal-ism.

The first regards man as merely biological, a member of a species created by natural selection - but atomised into hedonic individuals, pursuing gratification.

Traditional religion has been almost wholly about fitting each individual into a pre-determined and simple scheme; subordinating the individual to the group. (Identity is considered as a type, not an individual.)

I think the truth is probably neither of these - the reality of the situation is probably spiritual, nor materialist, individualism.

Much of the success of modernity is because it seems to chime with the innate individualism of modern Man - but this promised destination is then twisted and perverted, and turned against itself - by the incoherent nonsense that is materialism as a metaphysical assumption.

However, it is possible to regard Man as intrinsically individual, in the sense of each being different from the beginning, from his or her origin; and each having an unique spiritual and eternal destiny. Then, this situation of primal individualism is made cohesive and creative by love; by the fact of sexual difference, in the pre-mortal spiritual state; of complementary men and women eternally real) and by families.

So there are primordial individuals, and then there is the opt-in system of love, from God. (Those who don't opt-in are not a part of cohesion - they have chosen existential isolation.)

New Testament Christianity is saturated with the language of family, and this is not an accidental nor optional thing; but a fundamental and literal reality. But it has been the early and progressive abandonment of relational family-language and its replacement by abstract physics-language (under the influence of pagan Greek and Roman philosophy and scholarship) that has been responsible for so much confusion, so much error.

The destined future for the followers of Jesus is one of individual men and women within families, eternally - but current ways of thinking, current metaphysical assumptions, make it almost impossible even to think this.

Instead we lapse towards the destructiveness of materialism, or the anti-individualism of traditional Christianity; neither of which is the path God wants for us, neither of which is a path which (if totally honest) anybody wants for himself, or herself - because both entail destruction of the self, the distinctive soul.

The future is to embrace individualism - but spiritual individualism, within a set of Christian metaphysical assumptions.