Individualism

One the components which characterizes what James Carey calls "the ritual view of communication" is a "representation of shared beliefs" within a community (Carey 18). In a democratic system this sharing of beliefs can lead to political action on a grassroots level. Indeed, ritual communication enables people to better represent their own needs while at the same time forming cohesive ties within society.

Yet ritual communication has been neglected by American culture for the past century, though new technologies which facilitate communication have continued to appear. Lack of communal organization counters participatory democracy by allowing power to reside in the hands of the central state apparatus.

This failure of democracy (as reflected by current political apathy) finds its genesis in the Enlightenment conception of the autonomous individual. The Enlightenment view states that a subject is free to create one's own self and world. Societal interaction then is comprised of trading degrees of autonomy for certain personal benefits. This adherence to 'individualism' and one's own material well-being, "disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and friends so that... he willingly leaves society at large to itself (de Tocqueville 118)." The lack of physical interaction in virtual spaces may exacerbate individualism, isolating people from one another.

Of course postmodernists would argue that the individual cannot remain an autonomous being in today's society, especially given the way in which electronic technologies can endlessly reconfigure notions of the self. Habermas's conception of the ideal speech situation, however, advocates a certain amount of individual autonomy, while at the same time stressing the importance of communal discourse to democracy. Thus, he avoids the selfishness associated with individualism while respecting individual needs, per se. But material self-interest must be placed aside for this combination of the personal and social to gain realization in the discursive structure of electronic communications.