My life as a Curious Autodidact

…individuality is an illusion wrought by the Western emphasis on objectivity and rationalism. Western understanding requires that things be analyzed, dissolved into parts, distilled into fundamental units, and, finally, isolated from the larger ecology that sustains and nurtures them and may even provide their reason for being. The Western ego ideal is strength, independence, and self-sufficiency. Although we certainly have relationships, we do not require them, for relatedness entails dependency, and dependency entails weakness. Our scientific theories have inherited this bias. Even a notion that many psychologists would take for granted—that personality is composed of smaller units, or traits—can be viewed as a cultural distortion.

—Personality disorders in modern life By Theodore Millon, Carrie M. Millon, Seth Grossman, Sarah Meagher, Rowena Ramnath