“We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. This premise of primordial individualism underpins the understanding of rights contained in the American Declaration of Independence and thus of the democratic political community that springs from it. This premise also underlies contemporary neoclassical economics, which builds its models on the assumption that human beings are rational beings who want to maximize their individual utility or incomes. But it is in fact individualism and not sociability that developed over the course of human history. That individualism seems today like a solid core of our economic and political behavior is only because we have developed institutions that override our more naturally communal instincts. Aristotle was more correct than these early modern liberal theorists when he said that human beings were political by nature. So while an individualistic understanding of human motivation may help to explain the activities of commodity traders and libertarian activists in present-day America, it is not the most helpful way to understand the early evolution of human politics. Everything”

― Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Looking back on history, from the ancient world on, humans have been fundamentally communal and collectivist. In histories of the ancient world, what stands out is how nearly everything people did was as group activities. And this social way of being remained strong through the Middle Ages (Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets). Individualism was invented and rather recently, and hyper-individualism more recent still. It is a historically-contingent social construction and civilizational development, be it an ultimate achievement or blind alley, not something we are born with as part of an ancient biological inheritance handed down to us from evolution. Systematically and repeatedly, it must be actively reinforced and defended, far beyond merely the initial enculturation and indoctrination of each new generation of children. It’s a collective ongoing project.

When some refuse to submit to and conform to individualist norms, they must be constrained, suppressed, isolated, punished, or otherwise neutralized. There are many examples of this. In the United States, when a communitarian group like the Hutterites become too successful, their jealous individualistic neighbors sought state power to hobble their farming competitors (e.g., outlawing large communal ownership of farmland). Individualism doesn’t win because of free markets, quite the opposite since individualism requires heavily constrained and controlled markets. This had been going on for centuries. Starting in early modernity, there was a concerted push by the elite (e.g., William Godwin) to destroy organic group identities, specifically to eliminate shared freedom (a word cognate with ‘friendship’) in order to make way for modern capitalism and private ownership, including the emerging concept of self-ownership.

Of course, this is part of a larger shift, mostly happening without conscious intent. Though individualism proper has shallow roots, proto-individualism has been emerging for several millennia, apparently a seed planted in the decline and collapse of Bronze Age civilization and then first taking hold in the Axial Age. All of the major elements that would later form individualism were taking shape, if not yet fully assembled as individualism itself. Many theorize that the transformation had to do with innovations and developments of media technologies, specifically written text, but there were also the changes in the foods humans ate and the substances they imbibed, with a particularly interesting observation about the widespread switch from mildly psychedelic groot ales to caffeinated beverages.

The idea that humans aren’t originally, fundamentally, and primarily individualist is obviously an ancient understanding. One can see that by reading ancient texts for oneself or by looking to the philological research on such ancient texts. But that understanding didn’t entirely disappear in the modern West. Though relational dividualism was on the decline, 19th century philosophers like David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about the bundled mind. Shortly after that period, in the United States, others began writing about this topic, including Henry Adams who was the great grandson of multiple American founders and presidents. Those like Carl Jung were also expressing a similar understanding of the psyche. Following in those footsteps were many other philologists and psychologists, along with some political philosophers: E.R. Dodds, Bruno Snell, Julian Jaynes, Eric Havelock, Joseph Henrich, Larry Siedentop, Francis Fukuyama, etc. The human reality of the bundled mind doesn’t go away and so the idea of it is continually rediscovered.