 The fact that there are developments of each tradition that bring each closer to the other may suggest that each could learn from the other. Even if not all rights-oriented codes are “atomistic,” an increasing worry about Western culture as it has actually developed in practice is the prevalence of an individualism that Tocqueville defined as a “calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends,” such that “with this little society formed to his taste he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself.” Such people, Tocqueville observed, form “the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands.” They come to “forget their ancestors” and also their descendants, as well as isolating themselves from their contemporaries. “Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart” (1969, pp. 506, 508). Those impressed with this worry and connect it with gross inequality in the most affluent nation in the world would do well to look to a tradition that appreciates the way we thrive or falter within specific communities that nurture or shut us out. Or consider an intriguing argument by Bell (2008, pp. 43–55) that in contemporary East Asian societies the importance placed on social hierarchy provides an outlet for the rich and powerful members of these societies to distinguish themselves, whereas in socially egalitarian societies such as the U.S., the primary outlet is through the accumulation of wealth, and hence the relative economic equality of East Asian societies as compared to Western societies such as the U.S. On the other side, a tradition that has tended to value the idea of social harmony at the cost of sufficiently protecting dissenters who desire to point out abuses of power or just plain bad thinking by authorities would do well to look at another tradition that does not value social harmony as highly but has endured and is vigorous.