One exercises selfishness when making choices. If you are selfish, you will prioritise your own benefit, no matter its dimensions (insignificant or substantial, petty or profound), above everyone else’s. Or at least, you will ensure that you obtain as much benefit as you can get away with. A selfish person is someone with a propensity to make choices in this way.
In contrast, individualism can be selfless and generous. An individualistic person does not prioritise themselves above everyone else. She does not see surrendering potential benefit for the well-being of others as an unpalatable sacrifice. Even more, she can be comfortable in doing so when nobody is looking. She can do it simply because for her it is a pleasure in itself to see others thrive.
As opposed to selfishness, individualism and genuine generosity are not mutually exclusive. The reason is that individualism is not inherently related to where you put yourself in a scale of value in comparison to others. Individualism constitutes a philosophical stance on the nature of human identity.
An individualistic person is convinced that all people contain a seed of unique individuality that needs to flourish, so that the individualised person can achieve their true potential in the world by harnessing the energy,, enthusiasm, and joy of life that being in tune with one’s natural proclivities can release.
The individualised person is one that is able to mark off the limits of what they are, and by doing so also understand what they are not. In this way, they are less permeable to the limitless choices and ever updating illusion of novelty that the modern world provides. Moreover, they are able to translate that particular energy into the world through deeds, creations, and participations that bring that individual’s essential strengths into light.
The individualised person brings a certain coherence to how they experience the world and act in it: the things they choose to pay attention to, to commit to, to learn about, and the unique way in which they interpret them, are all framed by a larger totality of who they are: they make sense as part of a larger whole, and in this way they strengthen each other because they belong to something bigger that is growing towards something.
This overarching, framing totality is made up of those recurring elements that underlie everything an individual is and does in the world (those patterns that if removed from her, would make her stop being who she is, making her someone else, or even worse, an inferior imitation of a cultural prototype).
The individualist believes that a world with more people connected to their individuality is a more generous, varied, and beautiful world. It is a richer world both materially and spiritually, because it becomes the aggregate product of the harnessing creative, purposeful energy.
This is why individualism is also a political stance: it presents an ideal view of what makes for an optimal organisation of the collective, which is one that is the product of the collaboration of individuated wills, while also being increasingly more conducive to people having faith in the profound advantages of discovering what becoming more like themselves means.
Thus, they simply are happy to witness, bolster, multiply, contribute to, and participate in the process of individuation in people. Whether it is their own individuation or that of others is not of essential importance, because they themselves are embarked on their own journey towards realising their own individualities and know that each of these journeys have their own timeframes and special requirements. In fact, the journey itself is an endless source of profound soul-nourishing delights.
There can of course be selfish or egocentric tendencies in individualists, but that is not intrinsic to individualism.