Sure, there are lots of US group activities, but they are not collectivist in the sense I was using the word. Churches and sports teams and even the US military today are free and voluntary associations. Nobody forces you to join if you don't want to. It's entirely your choice. If you choose to join the group, great -- it's nobody else's business unless you are harming someone else. It's not an intrinsic or automatic part of you, it's a choice you've made.
What I mean by collectivism is the psychological self-perception that one is involuntarily, primarily, and inherently a member of a group (rather than foremost an individual who happens to choose to join some groups) and then considering all decisions in this context of "what effect will it have on this group that I have found myself in?"
Of course these are broad generalizations and they do not describe everyone in either country, and this short summary is incomplete in some ways. Americans do indeed have a somewhat automatic collective identity as Americans, but it's different in character in that it expressly emphasizes individualism as a core value. I think nonetheless that these broad summaries are also not entirely inaccurate.
What I mean by collectivism is the psychological self-perception that one is involuntarily, primarily, and inherently a member of a group (rather than foremost an individual who happens to choose to join some groups) and then considering all decisions in this context of "what effect will it have on this group that I have found myself in?"
Of course these are broad generalizations and they do not describe everyone in either country, and this short summary is incomplete in some ways. Americans do indeed have a somewhat automatic collective identity as Americans, but it's different in character in that it expressly emphasizes individualism as a core value. I think nonetheless that these broad summaries are also not entirely inaccurate.