sympatico

excerpt from Deep Economy by Bill McKibben,
Chapter Title: All for One, or One for All
the passage quoted below proceeds from and has just concluded noting "the new religious idea of the Protestant movement"

"...As Marx and Engels put it in their classic summary: 'All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.'
All of these liberations have brought benefit, often great benefit: they have helped produce the ideas we hold dearest, such as democracy; they helped spur the civil rights and women's revolutions; and they have made us much, much richer. But most of them also carried costs, sometimes harder for us to see. We surrendered a fixed identity - a community, an extended family, deep and comforting roots - for, quite literally, the chance to 'make something of ourselves.' Now we create our own identities. We build from scratch the things our ancestors once took for granted. This liberation is exhilarating, and it is daunting; it is exciting, and it is lonely."

here I omit a paragraph referencing Adam Smith and the concept of pursuit of self-interest i.e. "making something of oneself" amounting to general welfare of all...

"In recent decades, however, this process of liberation seems to me to have come close to running its course. What ties are left to cut? We change religions, spouses, towns, professions with ease. Our affluence isolates us ever more. We are not just individualists; we are hyper-individualists such as the world has never known."