What is more important, the needs of the individual, or society?

Without the benefits of society, individualism does not exist. Traditional tribal societies such as the kind in which we lived for the first 45,000 years of our species were cooperative societies, not incidental affiliations of individual rational agents acting in their self-interests. Fierce rugged individualists either died quickly or conformed to the natural necessity of the society. Individualism is a byproduct of advanced surplus-producing society and neither can nor will occur under any other conditions. The lady that says it is like asking what is more important, food or water, is wrong. Water is more important; we will die without either but food occurs only because of water and therefore although both are essential, one is primary and the other is conditionally dependent. This is as simple as a first grade math equation: Individualism is a luxury entitlement provided by society and wholly dependant thereupon; society comes first and the quality of individualism is that which is the maximum society can provide; individualism that occurs at a net negative value to society is a math equation that produces a negative sum and in the real world, that translates to the disintegration of society and consequently, the discontinuation of individualism. American individualism is superstitious mythology; a self-contradictory, self-destructive and self-cancelling proposition.