Bouvard on Individualism Beyond Liberalism's Dialectic
You want to know what I foresee? The concentric circles around the sovereign center, as you say, but the cultural identity being different enough as you move from nodes placed in that concentricity. Liberalism won't be going away as an identity, and just as we see today, honor culture never really went away as much as changed where it's densely found and how prominently it gets to display itself within broader culture. This merchant-libertarian identity is never going away. We need to figure out how to interface with their nested declarative literacy and give them terms to help us help both parties, not it always be a simple war. I know it can be done, because I know the structure of language is there if people would only interface with it.
There are practices that are now housed within liberalism that are not going away, and a strong sense of individuality is probably one of those practices. In fact, something like that will need to be enhanced under "absolutism" (or whatever it ends up being called), because liberalism hypes it but actually corrodes it. So, yes, there will be a dialectic with liberalism. I think the idea of clarifying imperatives we all hear and try to obey is consistent with what you are saying here. The point about "concentric circles around the sovereign center" is the one I wanted to make. But heightened individuality also means heightened resentment--anyone can see himself as a potential occupant of a more highly "assessed" center. This is the kind of thing Gans thinks can only be sorted out in liberal democracy and "market society." The alternative would be conferring honor on the fulfillment and "filling out" of the imperatives one was "meant" to obey. The imperatives get increasingly concise and precise, while covering wider fields, so greater preparedness and intelligence is required to complement their "letter" with their "spirit."
Bouvard on Individualism Beyond Liberalism's Dialectic — https://center.study/post/reddit-online-version-of-erics-gans-a-new-way-of-thinking