Religion in the 21st Century

[Tuuvi]

The reason for my OP is statements from Scientologists(mostly former). They point at how they have grown personally, how they themselves have benefited from it. Like a guy who went from being shy to holding lectures, for example(from a BBC documentary on scientology I can't remember the name of atm). The collectivist aspect seems to be missing from Scientology.

You see a lot of this in the Mormon church. It's common to hear members talk about how the gospel has brought peace into their lives, or how they were blessed for following a certain commandment, or how serving in the church helped them develop new skills or overcome weaknesses.

Interestingly enough, the Mormon church also has a more collectivist mindset, albeit with an individualist twist. There were several attempts in the Church's history to establish collectivist communities and the church played a big role in organizing the settlement of the Western US; Utah territory was essentially a theocracy until the federal government stepped in and asserted its authority.

The Mormon church has always preached the importance of sacrificing one's self to give aid to the needy and contribute to the community, and by doing so the individual is supposed to achieve true happiness and self-actualization. A common mantra in the Mormon church is that the best way to be happy is to forget about yourself and focus on others.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I guess the point is individualism and collectivism are not necessarily opposed. Religions and governments use individual rewards and consequences to encourage positive contribution to the collective. This is, I think, a reflection of our nature as a species. As social animals, our ability to survive depends on the community, which requires our contribution to sustain itself. However our ability to look past ourselves and care about the community as a whole is limited and sometimes falls short. But even this trait is necessary to the proper function of the community, because if the individual's needs were not met by the community than that individual would not be able to contribute to the community, and the community would cease to work. In the end, the collective depends on a certain level of individual selfishness.