Forced individualism damages society the way dams damage watersheds

Evidence

Reality is blobby. It refuses to be systematized. Things like the American obsession with individualism, customized filter bubbles, and personal branding—anything that insists on atomized, competing individuals striving in parallel, never touching—does the same violence to human society as a dam does to a watershed. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 510

Categorization

• XREF: The dam metaphor parallels the author’s earlier ‘bag of skin’ critique of the atomized self and connects to her anti-withdrawal defense against the title misreading. — connects to: Unchecked individualism destroys individuality rather than protecting it — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 169; Cheap hydro power from new dams lured the corporations that poisoned the river — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 96; Land allotment and dam flooding drive current Lakota social pathology — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 747