Individual / Social

This History of hatred post by whirlwings has triggered this stream of thought in me.
I have this theory that the Man is essentially an individual animal except for his fears. Fear of something is what brought about this social existence. And hence the whole society is driven and needs to be driven by one fear or the other. The fear of something is the rallying point for the society.
Lets start from expression of indivdualism and then onto the need for the groups and how fear and hence hatred are a sustaining factor.

Let me start with the reason why we have this need to constantly form sects and sub groups ..
Its there at every stage of one's life .. from childhood when a group of friends get together .. coz they are like minded .. BUT different from all others, to political parties and religion.

Thats the essential paradox of human existence as a social animal with individuality. Hence the necessity of subgroups and subsects, the divisions go on and on until there is one!
The Hate part of it comes about as a rabid form of a distinguishing feature of a newly created sub-group. More often than not .. its a negation of the group from which it split.. rather than an affirmation of its existence. The exceptions are the ones that survive. Those that dont need an external force to be the cause of their existence.

Individual achievement is always given more importance over social achievements. There is a hierarchy in everything and one is always pushed a little bit harder to achieve. As we chronicle the achievements of mankind, we are always looking for that one hero, at every point in time.
But then thats the only way to progress too.