Tocqueville on Egoism vs. Individualism

Alexia de Tocqueville in the second book of his justly famous Democracy in America proposed to differentiate simple egoism (or selfishness) from the more seemingly benign motive of individualism. Tocqueville feared that democracy in its positive promotion of individuals and their freedom, as left to itself led to a society that eventually discouraged its people from civic participation and virtuous action:

"Our fathers were only acquainted with egotism. Egotism is a passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect everything with himself and to prefer himself to everything in the world. Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Egotism originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart.

"Egotism blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Egotism is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition. (446-7)

"Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart." (448)

Tocqueville's thought here raises some important questions:

1. How does a society that sets its people free to pursue their own ends hold together any notion of the common good?
2. Does democratic individualism naturally lead to a breakdown in community and tradition?
3. How would Tocqueville account for modern consumerism and technologies?