The survival and progressive sophistication of human society and culture has always depended on the effective function of community-level values -- whether understood in terms of duty, honor, shame, mores, rule of law, or other mechanisms. Some influential portion of a population agrees (organically, culturally) that certain ways of behaving are more valuable (or unacceptable) to the community, even if not every individual necessarily agrees. This can obviously result in
extremely non-free societal structures, as you suggest, but community at any significant scale will always require some compromise of individual freedoms.
This is necessitated by the very diversity of individual human proclivities and interests. To refer to the compromise, sacrifice, or diminishment of some of those interests as "oppression" strikes me as selfish and melodramatic, even if it is often regrettable from certain perspectives. Certainly sometimes it is oppression, and it is frequently unfair, but extreme individualism doesn't fix or even address this fundamental tension.
This is necessitated by the very diversity of individual human proclivities and interests. To refer to the compromise, sacrifice, or diminishment of some of those interests as "oppression" strikes me as selfish and melodramatic, even if it is often regrettable from certain perspectives. Certainly sometimes it is oppression, and it is frequently unfair, but extreme individualism doesn't fix or even address this fundamental tension.