Individualization is an oft-quoted term intended to typify the current developments in society. Individualization means that people are increasingly expressing their own wishes and needs in all areas of society: these include work (the flexi-worker, the buffet model of secondary terms of employment), in financial affairs (personalized pension schemes and insurance contracts), housing (private construction of housing), and consumption in general, as reflected in the micro-segmentation of markets. This has led to an explosion in the product supply, as can be seen during a visit to the supermarket: an average supermarket outlet stocks some 20,000 items. This individualization is also increasingly to be found in the satisfaction of non-material needs, above all in the form of personal experiences: no more standard holidays but instead an adventure, no more walking tours but instead a survival trip. We don?t buy goods, but a ?good time? instead. And time itself is an increasingly scarce commodity that we spend in ever more individual ways. Life no longer unfolds in clearly defined periods of learning, working and retirement, but now these periods are intertwined: we take a sabbatical during our career, we take part in lifelong learning, and the over-65s continue to work. This is also reflected in the various roles that we fulfil simultaneously: as employee, father, goalkeeper in the football team, volunteer reader for children, evening student and chairman of the residents? committee. At the same time, ambitions are being bumped up mile-high: when at work we should find fulfilment, family life should be emotionally satisfying and our relaxing activities should be interesting as well. With so many roles, we are constantly moulding our individual lives in our own unique way. Uniformity has been replaced by uniqueness, and in this uniqueness we are all the same.

Individualization is an oft-quoted term intended to typify the current developments in society. Individualization means that people are increasingly expressing their own wishes and needs in all areas of society: these include work (the flexi-worker, the buffet model of secondary terms of employment), in financial affairs (personalized pension schemes and insurance contracts), housing (private construction of housing), and consumption in general, as reflected in the micro-segmentation of markets. This has led to an explosion in the product supply, as can be seen during a visit to the supermarket: an average supermarket outlet stocks some 20,000 items. This individualization is also increasingly to be found in the satisfaction of non-material needs, above all in the form of personal experiences: no more standard holidays but instead an adventure, no more walking tours but instead a survival trip. We don?t buy goods, but a ?good time? instead. And time itself is an increasingly scarce commodity that we spend in ever more individual ways. Life no longer unfolds in clearly defined periods of learning, working and retirement, but now these periods are intertwined: we take a sabbatical during our career, we take part in lifelong learning, and the over-65s continue to work. This is also reflected in the various roles that we fulfil simultaneously: as employee, father, goalkeeper in the football team, volunteer reader for children, evening student and chairman of the residents? committee. At the same time, ambitions are being bumped up mile-high: when at work we should find fulfilment, family life should be emotionally satisfying and our relaxing activities should be interesting as well. With so many roles, we are constantly moulding our individual lives in our own unique way. Uniformity has been replaced by uniqueness, and in this uniqueness we are all the same.

This individualization is closely connected to globalization. Globalization is the term used for the worldwide integration of economic, political, cultural and social relationships. Globalization makes the world bigger through these interconnections, but at the same time the world also gets smaller because the assignment of significance to one?s own position increasingly takes place in (the awareness of) a local context. The world stage has got bigger and one?s own role increasingly more trivial. Moreover, the loss of shared (religious, ideological and national) identities and history means that we increasingly need to create and interpret our own role. As most of these ?homogeneous spaces? vanish, people are increasingly compelled to define their own position in the world. Individualism and pluralism are words to describe this state. Pluralism in morals, religion, customs and authority. The current globalization is, in a way, a concluding phase here. Following the debunking of the nurturing cosmos and the discovery of the ?relative? position of the Earth in space, as well as the voyages of discovery which put national identities in a different perspective, we are experiencing the relativization of the individual through the enormous digital reach with others that has now become possible. The current globalization increases the size of the playing field upon which you find your own place in the world because you immediately ?see? so many others around you; it also makes the playing field smaller because you seek a small group of kindred spirits with whom the world can be viewed, experienced and lived. A group that has a small, understandable world within a big, confusing world: ?In the fragmented world that daily confronts us from all sides, we want to belong somewhere, to feel surrounded by a protective layer that enables us to encounter this world.? (Heijne, 2007c, p. 40). Instead of an all-encompassing ?Globe? in which everyone lives and acts together, we have become ?Bubbles? that cluster together to form ?Foams? (Sloterdijk, 2000). In this sense the current globalization is not a starting point but rather the end of a long development. The Internet completes the process of globalization, as it constitutes the optimum reach and the optimum co-existing individuality: the IP address.

 

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