Individualism is kinda the opposite of confucianism. Confucianism teaches that an individual is worth nothing and they must give all to family and state. I don’t agree with that. I deeply believe in thriving through self-exploration, free from peer pressure and especially religious dogma.

I wasn’t directly thinking about work ethic there, I just really hate the basic principles of Confucianism. I feel it’s restricting people. In the western world we have the same things, but they come from religions and conservatism instead (see the hate against trans people these days in the US). They’re also not as strongly embedded into society as they are in Confucian countries as far as I can tell. We value individualism a lot more, especially on the leftish/progressive side.

The reason I mentioned it is because Confucianism is often idolised in the Western world (“look there in China / Korea they still care about each other!”) but it’s also a terrible straightjacket for people not able or willing to conform to whatever stuff their society expects. Because people that impose rules upon themselves tend to want to impose those rules upon others even those that don’t share their belief.

I don’t mind others having belief systems but let me have none. And that’s really the part where things tend to not work out.