Humans : A Social animal that needs the "herd"

In some societies, young people are encouraged to leave the family nest and start their life journey on their own.
This is a laudable endeavor as it gets them used to navigating life's labyrinth and prepares them for the obligations of adulthood.
On the flipside, this puts a distance between them and their families. It alienates them from their loved ones, since the emphasis is put on individuality and independence, rather than cooperation and contribution.
In this scheme of things, everything is looked at through the prism of personal, individual gain.
Every action is recorded in a transactional balance sheet. Emotions like empathy, silently and slowly morph into a materialistic indifference that is motivated by blind personal benefits and unhealthy competition.
Parents in most western countries, after a certain age, sever the umbilical cord that ties them to their own kids, pushing them to leave the family cocoon if they are not contributing financially to the monthly expenses.
One could also see instances where children, who grew up in these individualistic environment, asking their own old parents to pay for rent if financial or health trouble forced to move in with their kids.
This eats away at the very fabric of the family, thus breeding individuals who see each other as either a material asset to be used or a liability to be discarded.
The notion of the family gets diluted in the pot of this boundless quest for independence. Time spent with friends starts to be looked upon as "unproductive", and we end up destroying bonds that are essential to our emotional well-being.
When seperated from our "herd", we become weak, dejected, malleable and docile. We become a fertile ground for stress and fear.
The strength of most animals is the herd, the flock, the pod, or the throng. They help each other, care for each other, and  sometimes sacrifice themselves for each other. 

Within this system they thrive and last for a long time as a specie.
This community system is dictated by their genetic composition that developped through years of evolution as a result of the varied interaction their ancestors experienced with the existing environment.

As a result practices that favored growth flourished, while the ones that promoting weakness were pruned and abandoned.