Individualism.doc

Individualism-the Core of American Cultural Values Abstract: Individualism is the core of the social philosophy and value in American culture. It plays a significant role in the development of American history. We can say that individualism has been influencing all the fields of American society, even the character of the nation. The United States is regarded as the cradle of the trend of individualism. Americans who believe in individualism hold that they need to think for themselves, judge for themselves and make their own decisions. And individualism takes up the most important position in American ideology, and it is so deeply rooted in people’s heart that it permeates every aspect of American society and is embodied directly in American daily life, education, family and so on. In recent years, at the background of globalization, intercultural communication has been more and more frequent. When we come across strange people from different cultures, we always experience culture shock, which is because people from different cultures are endowed with different values. But in my eyes, America is a special country. Though the United States is a country of immigrants with so many citizens coming from a world-wide location, we can see that people get along with each other peacefully, live together and develop, the reason of which is inseparable from its individualism of universality. When talking about America, most of people always recollect the freedom in their brain at once. Actually, to some extent, the word Freedom belongs to the concept of Individualism. Some Americans even consider the American and the individualism as the same thing. Just as Robert Jounce said” When I say I love America, it means loving the freedom and the individualism[1] in his book called The Dream of Rebuilding America. In the United States, people always worship different kinds of heroes. Every hero admired by Americans has some respectable qualities--bravery, courage, diligenc