The Far East is often thought of having strongly collectivist cultures. Was this always the case in their histories, or did it take root over time by sheer necessity as their populations grew?
More generally, is there any correlation between the age of a culture and where they rank on the individualistic to collectivist spectrum? Do older cultures tend toward one or the other?
/u/Yodatsracist had a good post about this here. To quote the conclusion
So, in short, there are differences in countries, but it's not along these clear lines we often have in our popular imaginations. By trying to make these clear lines, we ignore all the elements that don't fit our neat typologies. What's more "collectivists" than JFK's call to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?" And, indeed, we see that these popular typologies change over time--the Japanese are now "collectivist", but at one time needed baseball to each them how to work together as a group. In the end, there are indeed some culture differences that do cluster, but they're hard to classify purely into neat "Eastern" and "Western" categories, and they're certainly hard to cluster into "collectivist" and "individualistic".