Human development though liberal capitalism

Western thinking has always believed in the radical separateness of individual consciousness, even to philosophical doubt about the existence of the physical world and other minds. Economics puts the individual on one side, society on the other; and the problem is to devise a compromise sufficiently fair to both. Liberal capitalism, in common with other western thinking, emphasizes the individual and individual rights. Personal development is a private affair. The paradox is that general wellbeing can only be attained if people work with enthusiasm for their own self-interest.

In internal/external terms, liberal capitalism emphasizes achievement in the external world and equates development with success, whether due to knowledge, courage or intuitive ability, although it does not claim that success always accompanies achievement. This attitude is based on protestant ethics and on a behaviourist approach, the latter taking externalism to such an extreme that it virtually denies the existence of an inner life. (More sophisticated approaches such as cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence research still view man as a machine).

Externalism and individualism collide because the latter affirms the irreducible originality and non-interchangeability of human beings, so that this model of human development has an unresolved tension between freedom and determinism, inner autonomy and external manipulation. A new model, that of liberal humanism, is developing.

One of four current models of human development, that described as individual external.