The danger of individualistic thinking

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/rate-of-aborted-female-fetuses-increases-in-india/article1968017/

1:

The above article is a classic case of individualistic thinking.  This is to say, a case where an individual imagines his or her own good to have no relationship to the greater trends that are occurring within the milieu in which he or she lives.  The individual is aware of the milieu, but at the same time does not imagine himself or herself to be a significant part of it.  Here is an example of this logic at work: "Having a female child will be a financial burden for me because of dowry, etc.  Also, female children don't have the earning power of men and can't carry on the family name or stick around and take care of us when we're old." 

Obviously, some of these arguments are compelling in that they do secure and improve the welfare of the individual in question (assuming that he or she is able to eventually produce a male heir).  What these individuals don't take into account, however, is that they are not alone in their thinking and that this same act of self-preservation is being committed at the same time by thousands and probably millions of other people who share the same concerns and cultural values.
 

 When all of these people repeat this action without considering the possibility of larger, long term, consequences then the result is a massive population discrepancy in which an entire generation of men (and possibly two generations of men) will be forced to live their lives single for want of a woman within their caste or even outside their caste to marry and thus they will not reproduce or have any children of their own to care for them.

While this dilemma will solve the population problem quite neatly; and also probably ensure that women gain a much higher cultural value than they have presently (if you believe the old market principle that scarcity of a necessary object leads to an increase in its value), it isn't the happiest or most efficient way to solve the problem (and also allowing people to keep aborting female foetuses highlights one of the worst qualities of the human race), but what can anyone do about it?

By way of proposing a solution that will never work and that no one will ever take seriously, I suggest that people need to be more in tune with a mode of thinking that better promotes long-term collectivity.  If I to try even to suggest to you how this might work I fear my argument would fall apart in my fingers like a moth eaten sweater as I lifted it, thread by thread, but nevertheless the principle of what I am saying is sound.  If people in India want to have secure futures for their progeny then they need to accept that women are as important as men are to that process and consider that having a female child may be hard individually, but that collectively it will be better in the long run to let the child live.

Often, particularly nation states and other large political or religious bodies, have been effective at fostering a sense of collectivity by tying the sacrifices of individuals to the good of the nation and trying to get people to imagine themselves as a significant part of a much larger project.  The difficulty with this is that nationhood (and other such things) have also produced as a by-product of themselves untold instances of human suffering and carnage.  It is a difficult situation to be in.

Anyhow, regardless of all I have said above, India is clearly failing to create any sense of collectivity that promotes the usefulness and necessity of women, since women are being aborted there en masse.  Maybe they should try subsidizing female children?

2:

While I am picking on India specifically here, it is not as though India is the only offender when it comes to individualistic thinking.  Everyone who throws litter, for example, as opposed to disposing of it in the proper place, is thinking to himself or herself: "well my little bit of litter won't matter that much, it's just a little packet or bit of paper."  The problem is that 1000 other people eating the same kind of thing and walking by the same place on the same day also think the same thing and throw the same bit of litter.  Soon the grass is a mess of  windblown packets of crap.  People just don't consider that their actions are not at all unique, but are *always* part of a larger pattern which is inevitable destructive.