ABSTRACT
The Central Park thesis reflects a picture of individualism at its worst, of people who seek human rights, material wealth, and social privilege without concern for others. This critique of human rights is also a critique of modernity, of liberalism, and of the excesses of the capitalist marketplace. Several centuries of social evolution in the West have produced a type of society that has not evolved autonomously anywhere else. As this type of system spreads elsewhere, it produces a strong social reaction. Liberal capitalist society is based on a strong cultural element of privacy. The human being is an individual separate from his/her family, society, and the state. The individual is presumed to have a strong need for separation from the community. The reflective individual is the public person, the one prepared to act as a citizen in the public domain and to realize the commonality of his/her interests with the interests of others.
