Manila, 2017. I am excited about my new job at the University of Santo Tomas and the new experiences I am having in the Philippines. I find a new surprise every day, a new intellectual or physical stimulus, and it took me nine months to feel routine. Joining a jeepney means losing the control of your body to become part of a communal body, no matter your age of gender, and everyone accepts it. And never say no to a karaoke, because singing alone makes no sense, and singing together is the best of enjoyment, even if you don’t have the right pitch, because there is no “right pitch” or “the best pitch”. And if you think you have it, the group will allow you to sing the same number of songs as the rest, and everybody happily accepts it.
But at some point, I needed an (individualistic) break, I needed to walk calmly alone in the park, breathe deeply, and relax. It is not easy when there is virtually only one large park in the city, Luneta, but luckily, I lived relatively close to it. I went there, but during the few hours I stayed, many nice people came up to me wanting to talk about anything or offering to street-dance cheesy songs. I deeply appreciated it, but I just wanted to be alone! Some days later, after discussing this experience with a young independent illustrated upper-class colleague, she recommended that I use headphones or pretend to read a book, even if I weren’t listening to or reading anything at all, and she was right. But after half an hour, I needed to feel pinoy social hearts warmth. And all that reminded me of my childhood in Venezuela.
Manila, 2024. After a bunch of bad experiences, especially in Vietnam, I came back to the Philippines, and I came back to my trips around the country, to my walks around the barangays, and to my chilling moments in Luneta. However, I found crowds looking at their smartphones -bought thanks to the economic development of the country especially after Covid-, more foreigners than before, and no one coming to greet me and wanting to have a small conversation. I found, as “El individuo flotante” states, people living together alone. And I felt sad and even desperate.
Still in Manila, strolling around the disappearing traditional lower-class barangays and markets, the cemeteries, or the cockpits makes you feel like you are in the Middle Ages. And “El individuo flotante” accurately adds this kind of communal society, based on social habitudes in which there are very few means for individualism, is the society that existed until the Renaissance. So yes, it seems the disappearing Manila takes you back to the Middle Ages even in the deepest unrealizable touches. However, here’s one of the challenges the book faces: it is always suspicious to establish the first moment for something, and even though Marino Pérez Álvarez strongly defends the birth of modern individualist societies after the Middle Ages, he also opens the door to some kind of individualism during the evolution of the ancient Greek polis.
Back to 2017’s Manila, many people -among them my colleagues at Miguel de Benavides Library- sadly looked at me when I said I lived alone. For them, it was like the most depressing fact on Earth for a human, but I internally thought that I would never live together with anyone, except for a couple or a family maybe, because I would not want to deal with anyone, and I wanted to be always free. Interestingly, one of the people who looked at me with compassion when I said I was living alone got a nice opportunity to develop an individualistic life in Madrid, and it seems she doesn’t want to return to the social Filipino life anymore. And this is one of the other weak points of “El individuo flotante”: it doesn’t focus enough on the economic conditions that enables and enhances individualism, although it mentions them. In my case, I enjoyed -and I miss- the communal societies like 2017’s Manila, but I did so from the individualistic side: I did not live in a room with other five or more people and a bunch of mosquitoes, cockroaches and rats, but just alone, with all the possible amenities and services, and with a nice salary. They -the social Philippines- were a psychological and philosophical relief to my needs and wrongs derived from my excessive individualism, and I took advantage of it when I needed without renouncing to the advantages of the individualistic way of life, which makes such a hypocrite illusion even more individualistic.
The rise of individualism after the Middle Ages made humans abandon their traditional references -God, family, king, and later nation- to gradually make themselves their own reference points, and finally to get totally lost in their individualism, as they need to find some meaning inside themselves. Ironically, these meanings are chosen from external “markets of meanings”, and simultaneously, the buyers find others as entities to “conveniently use”. Even though this analysis has been present for more than a century, Pérez Álvarez clearly explains and structures it, considering the idea of “salvific communities” as substitutes for the traditional references. Nowadays, individuals substitute God or family for bachata, Aragonese language, new religious options, or CrossFit communities, even when they do not have any traditional -e.g. Family, village- or other substantial reason to adopt them. Or even worse, they try to solve individualism self-exploiting -taking a Master, then another Master, and then a PhD, and then another PhD, and then a BA in Mathematics- generating more stress and more individualism. This process becomes even more pernicious with the spread of smartphones and social networks, plenty of easy-to-access “salvific communities”, developed following colorful addictive individualistic patterns like the “like culture” and the “selfie culture”, with the final goal of the profit of a few global corporations that sell an image of freedom while enhancing addictive slavery.
The previous analysis is not original, but it is accurate and well-founded in Pérez Álvarez’s piece. However, the draft solutions the author suggests -e.g., controlling spaces, timings, or swimming- are weak and detract from the overall power of the piece. Pérez Álvarez also defends a progressive limitation of social networks, while from my own experience, it might be total -as with many other addictions. While criticizing mindfulness and other cheap -often individualistic- psychologies, what he does in his book is not so different, but more formal, refined, and, from my experience, useful. In this sense, his veiled reluctance to scientific and analytical psychologies and philosophies, in favor of rigorous humanistic options, is too radical.
“El individuo flotante” is a piece that deserves to be widely read and spread, not only because of its analysis on how smartphones and social networks are making us increasingly unhappy, but because of its reflections on how we are becoming increasingly individualistic, with no references, with no paths, considering the others as entities to “properly use”: as a result, loneliness is filling our souls, being the base for many of our current psychological pathologies. Interestingly and ironically, I read “El individuo flotante” a week I had three cancelled dates by different people in different places, always at the last minute: trying to overcome my individualism and set commitments after my Manila’s experiences, what I am finding is more and more individualism.
Before finishing, I would like to apologize for writing an individualistic review of a book that offers clues for solving individualism, but I could not have done it another way. I find “El individuo flotante” an excellent self-help and social analysis book, even though the author tends to criticize the former. In fact, it helps me as much as writing my blogs.
“He feels overwhelmed with exhaustion and can no longer bear his doctoral thesis, his mother, his house and his street, the hypocritical people he has to greet or who greet him. So, he decides to move to another city, one that is there, waiting for him—empty and brand new—where he will have a different job, a different woman, see a different landscape when he opens the windows, spend his nights on different hobbies, friendships, gossip. And so, his life is renewed, move after move…” (adaptation from “Invisible Cities”, Calvino, 1972, mentioned in page 165 of “El individuo flotante”).
Pérez Álvarez, Marino (2023). El individuo flotante: la muchedumbre solitaria en los tiempos de las redes sociales. Deusto.









