Individualization Quotes

“This is the existential contradiction of the second modernity that defines our conditions of existence: we want to exercise control over our own lives, but everywhere that control is thwarted. Individualization has sent each one of us on the prowl for the resources we need to ensure effective life, but at each turn we are forced to do battle with an economics and politics from whose vantage point we are but ciphers. We live in the knowledge that our lives have unique value, but we are treated as invisible. As the rewards of late-stage financial capitalism slip beyond our grasp, we are left to contemplate the future in a bewilderment that erupts into violence with increasing frequency. Our expectations of psychological self-determination are the grounds upon which our dreams unfold, so the losses we experience in the slow burn of rising inequality, exclusion, pervasive competition, and degrading stratification are not only economic. They slice us to the quick in dismay and bitterness because we know ourselves to be worthy of individual dignity and the right to a life on our own terms.”
― Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

“We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.”
― Franz Kafka

“[The] philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state, and from the state's institutions, but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.”
― Michel Foucault, El sujeto y el poder

“Collaboration is generally the least valued and most haphazardly executed aspect of teachers' pedagogy, and some entire schools are being built around individualization and specialization. When we then ask students to, in effect, be their brother's keeper, many understandably have no idea what comes next. And this is where we, as teachers, must have more to offer than a day-one 'abracadabra!”
― Matthew R. Kay, Not Light, but Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom

“Most of society is moving toward individualization—in medicine, fashion, entertainment, and many other areas where products and services are tailored and curated for each individual... It makes no sense that education is going in the opposite direction.”
― Brian Hooks Charles Koch, Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World