Some people consider individual liberty to be supreme.
Nothing else comes even near, except for private property. Which is seen as the practical embodiment of freedom.

‘Me and my property, free from any outside intervention’.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I agree.

Some others consider ‘community’ to be the most important thing.
Or various alternatives. ‘Traditions”, “elders” and so on.

I also agree!

And here comes the tricky part.
While ‘traditionalists’ have dominated for most of human history the ‘individualists’ have gradually gotten the upper hand during the last 2 to 3 centuries.
For example, Confucianist China – traditionalist by definition, had been the first civilized nation. It had a very productive economy when Europe’s was primitive and a sophisticated culture when Europe was yet learning to read and write. Yet it had been the Europeans who had invented ‘science’ and who eventually dominated China. For a while, at least…

So. In the end, it seems that individualism trumps traditionalism… or that it had been able to do it at least once…

But there’s a catch.
Ever since individualism got the upper hand, humankind had experienced her worst crises. Not only more intense but also more often ones. And almost always starting in the Euro-Atlantic area. WWars, most economic crises, ‘erosion of values’…
Only this hasn’t always been the case. Historically, China also had her share of wars – both ‘civil’ and with her neighbors, the Spaniards had been able to conquer Central and South America simply because those living there had been at each-others throat when the Spaniards had landed… and so on.
Not to forget the huge number of wars fought inside Europe, between European ‘factions’.
Then what if European individualism wasn’t the whole explanation for what had happened? What if Europe had been able to basically impose her Weltanschauung over the rest of the world simply because she had kept, at least for a while, her trade-mark individualism under control? At least when ‘domestic’ matters where at stake…

When Europeans dealt with other Europeans…
Remember the rules governing King Arthur’s Round Table. What chivalry used to mean. The Geneva Convention, so often invoked and less and less observed as conflict took place further and further away from Geneva.

My point being that freedom – and private property, don’t make much sense unless accompanied by at least some mutual respect. While mutual respect won’t take you very far unless exercised amongst free agents.

Freedom understood as ‘ending where my nose starts’ is nothing but a continuous bout of fisticuffing.
Preserving your ‘private property’ against all others is hopeless while preserving it in a collaborative way – as we currently do, is a breeze. As long as enough of us consider theft to be unacceptable, of course.

I was speaking a little earlier about ‘mutual respect among free agents’.
In a sense, the phrase is an overkill. Respect cannot be mutual unless it is extended among free agents. And if those who show respect are not free, that respect is neither genuine nor mutual.
This being the reason for which whenever respect ceases to be expressed among free agents it becomes nothing more than ‘window dressing’.

Hence useless when push comes to shove. When people need to gather together. To cooperate towards their common good.
Towards their common survival.