After the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties in America, there became an over-emphasis on the need to be an Individual, to be oneself, to be a free, autonomous Being defined over and against the “Organization Man” in the “gray flannel suit.” The attack began with a direct, physical assault on the United States government, which soon failed because the government simply had more guns/soldiers. So the Radicals’ strategy was altered a bit. It began to be thought that if one could just change one’s own mind, to start thinking for oneself and remove the controls planted there by the State and the Corporations—which kept people subservient to the dominate "system"—then the old order could still be overthrown and it would be “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” of non-conformity, of Freedom and Democracy, and, above all, Community.
This new form of Individualism, however, is much more radical and doctrinaire than the old brand of US Individualism—personified by the image of the Rugged Individualist—and replaces the idea of Self-reliance with the vague notion of Self-esteem. People wanted new ways to express their “Self” in a seemingly conformist world; to differentiate their Self from “The Masses;” to break free from oppressive and repressive Tradition and Convention. The only problem is that there is no guide for being oneself. People then tried to “invent themselves,” but where do these new values come from? Is the Self something that can be deliberately found, or made, or does it require instruction from Nature and History, as well? What exactly does an invented or discovered Self look like and how does one know when they are being authentic or inauthentic to this Self?
The idea of Self-fulfillment that went along with this Movement gave a bit of glamour to this new Self-centeredness, but it was by no means a noble act—it was merely a concession, an admittance that all other alternatives had failed.
It is now become more important to feel awesome, than to do awesome things; we have become more accepting, but also much less demanding. We are now Egoists, not in a vicious way, but because the Ego is all there is in present theory. We are a nation of narcissists taking pictures of ourselves in mirrors and posting them on the internet in order to get instant Ego-gratification. But there’s nothing new to be seen in a mirror and this Self-centeredness has actually become the ultimate form of dependence which has no other standard than the opinion of Others about our-Self.
And the ultimate irony of it all is that this Radical Individualism does not seem to satisfy the Self. The initial goal of the Sixties movement was really an incoherent idea from the start—somehow through greater emphasis of the Individual, we will ultimately create greater Community—and we are now feeling the repercussions of its dissonance. We have become a nation of Individual Wills, simply bouncing off of one another with no Common Good taken into consideration. Republicans try to express this idea when they talk about "The Real America”—apparently still in existence somewhere in the South and Midwest—yet, whenever Liberals try to express it they are denounced by the same Republicans as being Marxists. This is not a new problem, we have just reached the end of its history—the culmination of a project begun 250 years ago during the Age of Enlightenment, which has been criticized by every major Philosopher (on the Left and the Right) that has lived since then.
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