The fundamental changes that have occurred in the typology of Albanian society and the nature of man in modern times have not been philosophically unexpected and sociologically unforeseen. Three decades ago, a political and social revolution took place, which brought about major upheavals of realities, social concepts, deterministically accompanied by the emergence of the nature of the adequate man, compatible with these changes. When society and its existential parameters change, man will also change as a social being and individuality.
Consequently, the “mass man”, conformist and “squeezed”, raised in the “cage of totalitarianism” and socially without individuality and with “totalized” behavior, forcibly bound to ideology, the statist state, dictated by the rigid inhuman frameworks of collectivist morality, taught to adapt to the “swamp of the crowd”, forced to live according to the dogmatic principles and “hidden gems” of an artificial and unnatural society, finally passing into a free society. Under these conditions, the anti-collectivist liberal philosophy and the individualist man, detached from the crowd and with narrowly personalized goals, became the new social creeds and realities of a “true” humane society.
Undoubtedly, we cannot become nihilists and deny the truth about the qualitative leap that has occurred in the life of society, which has brought new reports of the priority assessment and respect of individual goals as the quintessence of a free and democratic society in Albania. The new political, social, economic and psychological conditions constitute the material and conceptual foundation that enables the emergence of the modern individual, who, despite all the defects and political and social anomalies of our society, is generally free in his personal life, powerful and autonomous. But, on the other hand, if we make a true diagnosis of society, it is not difficult to see that it is facing the emergence of ontological deformations of human nature, which has begun to operate with brutal manifestations of cynical forms of individual egoism, which for the sake of sincerity, it must be asserted that they are previously unknown and have become evident features of the individual and the postmodern liberal Albanian society.
This is a great dilemma that Albanian society is experiencing today, which is shaken by the unilateral breakdown of the equation between the individual and society, making it difficult to cope with the wave of egocentrism manifested in chaos and anarchy, which makes it impossible to realize a social concept for the dimension, desires and pleasures of the postmodern man. It is not a question of taking “steps back” and returning to where we started, because our past society did not value man as an individual and personality, but on the other hand, the selfish philosophy of the individual that overvalues only The problem is that, while still in a situation of philosophical, moral and conceptual cacophony and due to the “slippery” terrain of modern life, the selfish, materialistic and consumerist tendency is expanding, which have become essential moral and social behavioral traits of the “egocentric man”, who aims to place himself at the “center” of everything, without taking into account the need to evaluate the “social space”, which objectively is beyond “individual existence”.
The hypertrophied idea of individualism as the essence of freedom, being a unilaterally hypertrophied feeling, taking on an eccentric dimension in current society, has not only become a toxic phenomenon, a rapidly developing “social tumor”, but even worse, selfishness and inhuman egocentrism has turned into a dangerous “trap” of the “degenerates of human subjectivity”, which increasingly appears with pronounced egoistic traits. Everywhere we are faced with people who think that what exists is “their own self” and do not want to acknowledge that beyond them there exists a reality that is objectively greater than themselves. The problem of manifestations of selfishness and egocentrism in our society is not simple or only of an empirical dimension. Time has shown that in general those people who have reduced the entire meaning of personal life to the closed limits of selfishness and egocentrism, of personal pleasures outside the social context have suffered profound existential failures. Precisely because they remain “within themselves”, unoriented to find the true meaning of life, which is outside the closed limits of selfishness or personal egocentrism.
I believe that some of the consequences we face in our society are present from the misunderstanding of the empirical essence of the egoistic liberal philosophy and the paradoxical deformation of the individualistic and egocentric typology in today’s social life. Recently, there have been more and more people who think that modern life is completely egocentric, that it is comfortable and can be made free and modern by denying, neglecting, not accepting the need that society has for people who have at the foundation of their personality, not only their “self”, but also natural moral feelings and social sense. Undoubtedly, it is normal that in our society the concepts of the way, the style of living undergo profound redimensioning. People feel disoriented and have existential doubts about the limited possibilities to live as they once did in supersocial megacommunities, or in groups with a traditional structure. But, the construction of modern life, based on liberal and individualistic principles, does not mean at all a denial of the value of social relations and relationships that are at the foundation of human life.
The problem, from the way it appears, is not simply empirical or even sociological. In my opinion, it is fundamentally philosophical and needs to be treated with a clear, precise hermeneutic in order to have clear normative and subjective conversions for the changed relations between the social and the personal in today’s man. The truth is that there is a lot of confusion and one-sided, strained interpretations of this relationship of man with his ego. Are there any ideas, ways to properly resolve this collision, which is as theoretical and social as it is empirical, related to the life and real world of man.
It is not easy today to give “formulas” and find adequate solutions for the changed relations of man with an egoistic dimension and his biunivocal connections: with “himself” and society. It is difficult, in the conditions of a society based on the market economy, individual competition, the need for success and personal affirmation, to ask people to completely avoid personal egoism or to ask them to have a personal ideal of social humanism as “spiritual perfection”, as the first goal of their lives. These are new socio-economic and psycho-moral conditions, which dictate a deep individualistic orientation, accompanied in many cases by a consistent egoism. In many cases, even “unbridled”. Unfortunately, egoism has not only become an extremely widespread “social lymph”, which flows rapidly in our society, but what is even worse is the fact that we have turned this feeling into a quintessence, which is cultivated everywhere in social structures, such as in the family, school and society, turning it into the basic tool of a completely selfish personal education. It seems as if there is a social consensus, which influences the creation of a common climate, which makes the damages of selfish education indistinguishable. Modern sociologists believe that, “Selfishness does not consist in living as one wishes to live, but in expecting others to live as one wishes to live.” Raymond Williams, “Culture and Society” p. 262
Personally, I think that this type of education does not help to guarantee the need for creation, alongside the natural individualistic tendency and the “social regulator”, which would help to “neutralize” the aggressiveness of pathological selfishness. One cannot help but worry as an intellectual and sociologist, when one sees the retrograde trend of evident manifestations, the expansion of banal forms of ruthless selfishness, which in many people has become the essence of their personality. More precisely, selfishness has become a kind of personal feeling of high intensity, becoming an unmanageable trait, turning into a mechanism that tends to dominate social behavior and human nature. This widespread epidemic of sensational manifestations of selfishness and egocentrism among our people is natural and has its own causes.
If we were to make this comparison with our society of the past, with its “calm”, “sleeping” nature, covered by indifference and routine, with today’s dynamic, individualistic and turbo-capitalist society, with individual goals and personalized objectives to be achieved at all costs, to avoid failure and lack of success understood in a materialistic, simplistic and pragmatic way, of course we would not only be wrong, but we would also be at odds with the times. The situation we live in brings many impressions about human behavior, because we are in a liberal, individualistic, liquid, aggressive society, constantly accompanied by fears and uncertainties of failure, along with the risks and anomalies inherent in the lives of our people. Although distant in time, but quite true, coherent with the time the conclusion of Immanuel Kant, who accepted that human nature is “partly selfish” and partly “rational being”, who respects others, the law and society.
It is time for a new look at the relationships between individualism, personal egocentrism and the need for a common reason for building social relationships. This is an imperative that requires us to elaborate those mechanisms that affect the improvement of the mutual interaction between man and society, the combination of the individual with the social, while respecting a certain level of egocentrism, as a desire for personality affirmation, and the need for humanism and respect for the common norms of society. But in today’s time it has become a universal existential concern, how can equivalent, functioning relationships be built between egocentrism, as a desire for success, affirmation, and personal dominance over “others” on the one hand, and “social constraint” in the sense of a common system of values, meanings, agreements and moral “constraints”.
Absolutely true is the statement of the contemporary philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, who, making extensive diagnoses of social pathologies resulting from the dominance of egocentrism, accuses as a social factor supplying this feeling and these morbid attitudes some egocentric “instrumental habits”, as a way of treating others “as means to achieve personal goals”. This is accompanied by a feeling that systematically feeds, indifference to the “fate of others”. It is natural and we must accept that our society is not functioning well in social, moral, spiritual and cultural terms. Our “lifeworld” is flooded with the excesses of individualistic and selfish man, who have turned into negative factors, with a dysfunctional impact on society. It is precisely from these social defects and evident deficiencies in the functioning of the basic mechanisms, instruments and institutions of social life, that egocentric people are increasing, who are gradually turning into individuals with moral flaws.
Egoism is not individual freedom. Unfortunately, an individual and social “conceptual matrix” is spreading widely, with apparent aggression, which has brought the idea of the self-sufficient and egocentric man, who have made the “modus viventi” the absurd super-individualistic and super-egocentric idea, according to which people mistakenly think that no social reality can be “beyond me”. As a result, there have been more people who think that the “limits of freedom” and the self are set by the individual man himself. This is one of the most harmful illusions, which keeps man locked within the personal “cage of the ego”. I believe that, although it seems a difficult psychological and social undertaking to demotivate the egocentrism of the individualist man, it is not impossible, not even a “Sisyphean task”, to tame this “social monster”, if we work with people, especially children, young people to create new concepts to free them from the “narrow molds of the self”. I believe that the idea must now be clearly understood, that selfishness or concern for personal well-being cannot be the antithesis of the common good.
