One of the biggest problems in the United States is dischordancy
between the values of educators and the values of business world. The
more idealistic people, interested in nurturing youth, become teachers
and impart them their idealism; then business world and media culture,
populated by people who do not have such ideals, tears them down. The
people who seriously take to the liberal teachings of achieving and
striving for good of mankind find themselves broken down, and their
moral code torn to shreds, by the "real world" of cruelty, hypocrisy
and deception that wants to claim their ideals inapplicable to reality.
As this world tears away their ethics and principle, it then claims
that they possess none - when they are the ones who possess the
greatest purity, the greatest intellectual honesty, and the greatest
inspiration. The result becomes an inversion of value, in which the
most callous and most unprincipled run the world and claim they are
ethical - while insight, inspiration, beauty, excellence and goodwill
are criminalized and driven into extinction.

The direction taken by most is of claiming the liberal values
inapplicable to reality. Recognizing that social reality is a function
of people's actions directed by their beliefs, a far more rightful
approach is to strive to make the reality of the world more reflective
of such ideals. The man being both an individual and a part of mankind,
true humanity consists of benefiting both world and self. The two
aspects can be arranged in the worst way, two medium ways, and the way
that is most optimal.

The worst arrangement is the one we see in much of the United States.
It is the arrangement known as "keeping up with the Joneses." The
mistaken version of collective good is used to break down people's
individuality and tell them what to be, how to think, and what goals to
have. The mistaken version of individual liberty - liberty that in any
meaningful sense is denied through the mechanism shown above - is used
to prevent people from doing good deeds for others or organizing for
common benefit.

To this abominable way, both pure individualism and pure collectivism
are superior. Both however only get it half-right. The man is both self
and part of mankind; and the optimal order is one that allows people to
make the most of both. That means: Giving people meaningful
intellectual, spiritual and emotional and personal freedom - and making
it a value to do good deeds for other people and for mankind. Thus, we
get the best of both individualism and collectivism, and the two work
together to make the optimal world and the optimal lives of the people
in the world.

This, I refer to as the philosophy of Integrationism.

http://ibshambat.blogspot.com
Ilya Shambat.