INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM

05/31/2018

I think that cultural differences greatly affect our way of thinking and acting. In the case of idividualism and collectivism, I think it also has a great influence on how one grew up in their home. Perhaps within a country with collectivist influences there is a small percentage of families with individualistic thoughts. And the same with individualism.

Seeing all the examples of individualism and collectivism I have seen the positive and negative things of these.

In idividualism there are many things that you can see in a positive way, for example the self-sufficiency that the person reaches. On the negative I would say that relations with other people are distant and that they can not help each other easily, what I mean is that there is no constant concern.

In collectivism there is good relations not only with families but with very close people. But the negative aspect would be the dependence of these people, unlike individualism here people tend to depend on their family ties affecting everyone.

In my case, I grew up in a collectivist environment. I think that affected me a lot when I went to another country because there were several things that I needed and I felt alone, my need to find a group to relate to was urgent. I think in my case, this affected me a lot because I was still dependent on my comfortable environment where everyone gets involved.

After being away from my country for two years I became used to individualism, and when I returned home it was difficult for me to adapt to the collectivism environment again, there were small things that made me feel uncomfortable such as the little participation of children or young in a conversation, lack of privacy or execive participation in family customs.

Again, it is important to know the cultural differences and even adapt if necessary, but this will help to have a better communication with people of different cultures.