#individualization

Our culture often seems to combine the promotion of and prurient interest in hedonistic behavior alongside a puritanical mortality -- we live in a puritanical world, we could say. In other words, on the one hand, we are encouraged to have fun, to be completely selfish and pleasure-seeking, but, on the other, if we make a mistake, or become the target of others, there is no limit to the social punishment that can be melted out.

The courage to be which is rooted in the experience of the God above the God of theism unites and transcends the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself. It avoids both the loss of oneself by participation and the loss of one's world by individualization. The acceptance of the God above the God of theism makes us a part of that which is not also a part but is the ground of the whole. Therefore our self is not lost in a larger whole, which submerges it in the life of a limited group. If the self participates in the power of being-itself it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of individual selves.