Lovers Need Lawyers

“Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains!”—Rousseau, The Social Contract 1762
In the beginning, there was the Social Contract: a freely constructed community of Individuals who willingly give up their natural Freedom and voluntarily consent to the community's Laws if—and only if—it can sufficiently protect their Life, Liberty and Property/Pursuit of Happiness.

This is the foundation of Liberalism (the type of System we currently live under), which was discovered through a hypothetical thought experiment called the State of Nature: a device used by early Enlightenment Philosophers to imagine how Man would live if stripped of all seemingly conventional attachments to Country, Religion, and Family and existed only as the isolated, separate beings that the unity of our individual Bodies suggests.

The point of this experiment was to foment a conspiracy to undermine the legitimacy of all previously existing political regimes by exposing their Rulers’ supposed claim to serve the Common Good as nothing more than a means to exploit the Ruled for their own selfish, greedy ends.

(The formula goes something like this: We are all Selves + the Self is naturally selfish = its two strongest motivating passions are Self-Preservation and Self-Interest)

The goal was to give an equal Right to selfishness to the Ruled; to allow them to be the sole judge of their own Interests; to have the Right to freely choose Rulers who would best serve those ends. And, once the old legitimacies were sufficiently disposed of (i.e. Revolution), then the Rulers and the Ruled could consciously—using their Reason—construct a new Contract that would equally protect the Interests of both parties.

But, if one constructs a Society founded on our basest, most animal instincts will it not eventually reduce us back to them; if all these Social relations are shown to be merely conventional, with no natural basis, how do you prevent that line of thought from eventually extending to every form of relationship? And now, “History” has seemingly led us full circle back to the once fabled State of Nature—not as an experimental hypothesis as those who first proposed it, but, instead, as an ever increasingly realized reality.

The Youth today are now well provided for by our Country—and continue to demand more and more social security from their government—yet there is really little to no reciprocal civic engagement required of them; they are free to choose which, if any, Religion they wish to practice; and now, even sexual involvements have been completely liberated as well—no longer necessarily leading to commitment or Family life—completing the triumvirate of conventional attachments: Country, Religion and Family. We now exist as the naked Individuals who once “inhabited” the State of Nature—but with one little difference: we still inhabit Society and like to think of our-Selves as “civilized” creatures, but, as the State of Nature originally showed, the result of disconnected Individuals all asserting equal Rights to a finite amount of Nature’s bounty is really…a War of All Against All.

Despite the radicalism of the Philosophers that first proposed this new scheme for Society, they never imagined the break down of the Family as well, and had relied on this semi-natural, or at least unavoidable, necessity to provide some sort of bridge to connect the Individual and Society. The Individual would take a material stake in his community, in order to provide the best possible atmosphere in which to raise his Family—a way to ensure the Common Good that flows naturally out of our Self-Interest. Also, the concern for the safety of one’s Family is a powerful reason for loyalty to the State that protects them.

Rousseau, however, knew better and could see where the rising tide of Egalitarianism and Individualism (which he agreed with in principle) caused by this new philosophy would eventually lead. This inspired him to devote his entire career to encouraging passionate, Romantic Love to attempt to create a bond between Men and Women that was greater than mere Bourgeois calculation of Self-Interest. But, based on this sketch by Chappelle, it would appear that his great effort has failed and our view of our-Self as simply freely contracting Individuals has now penetrated our every relation—officially destroying any semblance of a natural basis that once connected Human Beings to one another.

Rousseau tried to discover/create Molecules (Family), as opposed to simply Atoms (Individuals), as the building blocks of Society because then Society’s parts would already be moved by different motivations than mere Self-Interest—which then could hopefully be extended to Others. People in love constitute a visible proof that Man can act for other reasons besides the Economic/Utilitarian motivations that dominate Modern Theory. In contrast, each partner in the Molecule is instead motivated by forces found in true attachment and concern for Others, whereas a Society constructed out of radically separate Atoms creates no shared basis of concern—only diffidence or, even worse, war.

We have now turned the most intimate connection that can unite two Human Beings into just another contest in the War of All Against All—the final development of founding all human relations on mere contracts; simply another contest for the “Will to Power” to assert itself. The only possible peace is to be found in an artificial construct: the Business Contract—which we enter into for as long as it is convenient and serves our Interests; a union of two equally Self-ish Individuals who hopefully each have a good lawyer to settle the statistically inevitable Divorce.

And you know what the silliest part of all this is: a concurrent attempt by the same Individuals to turn the actual Social Contract—the societal one—into a more compassionate/caring relationship—i.e. some sort of Socialist type structure that could help to reduce our selfishness—while at the same time reducing real Human connection to an abstraction, with no natural basis. In the end, it appears that we all love our Rights, but hate their consequences. We want to be respected as an Individual, but also want to have real human connections.

And, what we are creating instead are a bunch of Social Solitaries and Isolated Individuals—all with their “own little separate systems”—who have no alternative to collapsing into their Self because everything else has lost its foundation. There is no longer any connection—natural or artificial—to make us care for anyone, except for number one; to draw our attention outward and give us a reason to care about a Community or Society; to not just use one another simply for bodily pleasure…

“I don’t know about you, but I’m still horny.”

When People Resort to Name Calling

Last night I went to see Charlie Gibson, the former host of ABC’s Good Morning America and World News with Charles Gibson, speak about the increasing polarization and incivility of the media and the rise of political niche-ization of cable networks. If you are not familiar with Gibson, he was the interviewer who asked the so-called “gotcha” question to Sarah Palin in her first major television appearance after her nomination for VP about how she felt about the Bush Doctrine.

It was an interesting evening with some thoughtful analysis about the current state of American politics and how the media shapes our world-views. There, of course, were the requisite attacks on Fox News’ brand of political coverage, with its self-proclaimed assertion of “Fair and Balanced” coverage contrasting with the obvious reality of its not so subtle bias; followed by the lamenting of the death of Objectivity—or at least the attempt at the suppression of the Subjective—in news coverage. He also shared a very telling anecdote—I call it anecdote, as opposed to fact, because he willfully acknowledged that he was severely approximating these statistics, despite their relative accuracy—about how our Primary System and Off-Year Elections usually workout:

The country can roughly be broken up into ⅓ Republican, ⅓ Democrat, and ⅓ Undecided or Moderate. During Primaries, the only ones allowed in many states to vote are people registered for those two parties. Also, in general, the majority of people who are active in politics are the people with the most extreme positions—whereas most people in the Center are generally satisfied by the Status Quo, or are just too busy to care, therefore do not get involved in the process. This means that the candidates who then trickle-down into the General Election or who are voted in during the Off-Year Elections—to which barely anyone pays attention—are those with the most extreme Ideologies causing the Moderates to choose between the lesser of two evils—both of whom they probably don’t generally agree with. You then get the fringes of both parties representing the country, who hold the most extreme Left/Right positions that can find no source of compromise in order to govern our nation.

This analogy seems to make a lot of sense to me and alludes to something I have mentioned before about how “the meek voice of compromise always seems to be drowned out by the angry shouts of Commitment and Moral Indignation because Passion speaks louder than Reason—and has an actual agenda and game-plan for implementing its goals.” But this “Live and Let Live” attitude of the Moderates is perfectly consonant with Americans’ basic conception of Rights: the idea that we have the Right to believe anything we want as long as we respect everyone else’s Right to do the same. I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your Right to say it. But this has no longer become acceptable for the extreme voting blocs and is the foundation of our so-called “Culture War.”

The Right is now being defined by its Christian, American Exceptionalism proponents and the Left is defined by the Cosmopolitan, Life-style Libertinism advocates and never the twain shall meet. The Middle is mostly defined by economic issues and their vote “swings” back and forth depending on the crisis our country happens to be facing at the time of a major election. It is hard to say where there could even be a source of compromise between the two extremes, at least as far as some sort of unified American Culture.

Another significant insight about current American voting patterns brought up by Gibson was the rise in homogeneity of counties, as high as almost 60% in many of them, who all vote for the same candidates. Gibson for all his probing insight into many other aspects of contemporary American trends, for some reason, could not come up with an explanation to this one. This really surprised me, especially in light of his awareness of the increasing niche-ization or balkanization of the American populace because I think these two things go hand-in-hand. As our opposition to political opponents becomes more and more uncivilized and divisive, of course we are going to cluster around those with like-minded Beliefs, Goals and Life-styles to find an anchor in a world gone mad.

This is also just an extension of our current search for Community and Culture because that is exactly what those two things mean—a shared set of assumptions which unites and binds a People. And, as the old grounding of these assumptions becomes ever more problematic, we are going to naturally gravitate towards and seek out like-minded people, who share the same Values and Goals as our-Selves. Unless we can find some new source to re-invigorate our old motto E Pluribus Unum, then this is a trend that is only going to be amplified to an even higher percentage.

It also doesn’t help that Marketers now divide us up in the same way when they talk about Target Markets and Demographics and then use Life-style Marketing that imprisons us in these constricted personalties and existences. As we increasingly learn to define our-Selves through Life-style choices, we begin to loose our sense of broader Community, Nationality and even Humanity. We become the narrowly-defined niche and our every action is expressed through this awareness.

It is hard to imagine what we will be able to use for the new foundation of Community, now that “God is Dead,” but this does not mean that it is not possible. Is Life-style really the best thing we can come up with, or can something more meaningful be found upon which to build the world of tomorrow?

You Can Lead a Man to Reason, but You Can't Make Him Think

The word Kultur or “Culture” was first used in its modern sense by Immanuel Kant—who was thinking of Rousseau’s description of the Bourgeois—in an attempt to make up for the, supposed, deficiency in character of this new type of man. The Bourgeois was neither Citizen nor Individual, and his Self-Interest—even his Enlightened Self-Interest—it appeared, was simply not a sufficient basis upon which to unite a People and create a Common Good. After Rousseau’s critique, the new Liberal doctrines—based upon the early Enlightenment thought of Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu—had become insufficient, or at least too unattractive, to found truly Human societies upon. To “Enlightened” Europeans of the time, countries like America looked merely like an aggregate of Individuals, or disorderly marketplaces—dumping grounds for the refuse of real Cultures—where Individuals would simply bring their sellable commodities in the morning, and then at night return to the privacy of their own homes and enjoy, privately, the proceeds of their day.

These new Commercial Republics had as their foundations the pursuit of Material Well-Being and Self-Preservation and had stripped politics of its old imaginary goals—dedication to the preservation of throne, altar and country—leaving Man unclothed and unprotected in a new “civilized” War of All Against All. The idea of “Culture” was created as a way to somehow make up for the loss of these higher goals after the demystification of Religion by the Enlighteners—to preserve something like Religion without having to resort to superstition and myth; it was an attempt to give Morality and Art a place in the Modern World, in order to preserve the “Dignity of Man.” This new Liberal mode of Politics, with its Universalistic view of Man as Man—as opposed to the man of a particular time and place—ended up not being as attractive as was first thought, and the Culture Movement—which continues, although in a deformed manner, to persist to this very day—was created as a proposed corrective to Liberal Society or as a radical rejection of its new mercenary Morals and indifference to Art and Politics.

Plato, almost 2,500 years ago, in The Republic, gave an allegorical account of what it means to be part of a Culture—although he never actually used the word and there is no Ancient Greek word that can even be translated as “Culture.” He said, more or less, that the particular Cultures/Communities of the world are caves into which we are all born and are chained with our heads restrained forcing us to look only forward. We all stare at a wall in front of us, upon which shadows are projected that constitute the gods and heroes that are particular to our time and place that the Culture’s ideas of the good and justice are based.

There is, however, a steep incline that leads out of the cave through which the bright light of the sun shines blindingly through. “Philosophers” are people who have broken free from the chains, have exited the cave and can see the situation for what it truly is. And, for Plato, it is their responsibility to the Common Good to come back into the cave and to try and influence the politicians to rule more reasonably. But this does not mean the execution of the gods; it does not mean the empowerment of the People; it does not mean the multitudes be made capable of philosophizing. Only the Leaders—and the Philosophers who inform them—know the truth of what’s outside the cave but the masses, in the end, can at least profit from the insights of this blinding Truth. However, they are never to be told the Truth because they “can’t handle the Truth.”

Modernity changed all that. The Enlightenment philosophers didn’t necessarily think that the Masses could be made into Philosophers, but they did recognize a certain level of reasonableness of the People. If Man’s deepest motivating passion is Self-Preservation, it would be logical to conclude that Man could make rational decisions about what will help preserve himself the best—especially the type of Regime that would preserve him the best. Thus a conspiracy was born to shine the Light of Being into the caves—permanently dimming the images on the wall. The task was to rationalize all the old legitimizations of power—strength, wealth, religion, tradition, birth, age—to show that they were all simply Man-made, and hence not morally binding. Revolution became Man’s greatest and most celebrated act. The new Societies that would be created no longer would put a Socrates to death because his usefulness to Society could be made evident: Science can aide in Man’s pursuit of Self-Preservation.

But as I have said previously, at the very moment of its triumph a very large wrench was thrown into the gears of this modern machine. Rousseau’s critique of these new types of Societies was undeniable and it did not paint a very pretty picture for the future of Humanity. From this new outlook, the Culture Movement was born. For some, such as Rousseau and Kant, the goal was still the universal justice of Freedom and Equality implicit in the Enlightenment project, but the character of it was in need of some slight adjustment. The bland uniformity and universal homogenization that were to be the result of this overly rational, overly calculating mode of politics was rejected because it turned out to be only an easy fix for a very difficult problem and didn’t seem to take into account the full range of the human condition. It just wasn’t capable of accounting for the creative, artistic, or “Free” aspects of Man’s Nature and its deficiencies caused a backlash that continues to persist.

Today, in America, there are two different uses for the word Culture: 1) is as a description of a People or Nation—American Culture, Japanese Culture, Iranian Culture, Jewish Culture, etc; and 2) is everything that is created that’s opposed to Commerce—Art, Music, Literature, PBS: creations that aren’t merely dictated by the amoral demands of the Market. These two conceptions are linked in that 2 is what makes up the content of 1. The Art, Music and Literature shape the world-view of the American, Japanese, Iranian and Jew and are expressed through the customs, styles, tastes, festivals, rituals and gods that unite the separate Individuals into a community with shared roots and common goals. The Individual is sublimated into the collective, which allows a People to think and will generally for their Common Good.

“Culture” was originally conceived by Kant as the goal of our highest human aspirations—an attempt to synthesize our low brutish, animal nature with our noblest Human longings; to restore, on an even higher level, some sort of wholeness that was lost after the initial Social Contract that destroyed the perfect unity of our being that we had in the State of Nature. It was on a higher level because this new wholeness now included all of Man’s faculties and capabilities and attempted to aim them toward Man’s greatest ambitions in all the creative fields we have acquired in Civil Society.

But it soon came to simply retroactively describe the various and varied Human phenomenon that had resulted during Man’s journey from the State of Nature to Civil Society. It was transformed from Culture to Cultures, and it now has become Politically Incorrect to judge the content of the these manifestations despite these old “Cultures,” as Nietzsche put it, being nothing but “superstitious custom that originated on the basis of some misinterpreted accident.”

We are now told we must respect Others' Cultures and that we are not allowed to judge the Values of them; that we must worship and promote Diversity and Multiculturalism; that what separates us (Culture) is more important than what unites us (Nature). But there is this vast contradiction of internal logic that no one seems to recognize here. Liberal Tolerance—Classical and Modern—is completely debilitating to Culture—which was first created as a response against Liberalism. Although, we currently use it as a means of building a dam against the torrents of Capitalism and “Eurocentrism,” in the end, it will completely subsume them.

Liberalism has no respect for Cultures because it is based on Reason and Science, whereas the old Cultures are all based on the dictates of a god and the attendant superstition and myth. Liberalism is based on Individual Freedom and the Right of the Individual to decide what is right for himself; it separates us by allowing our subjectivity to take preeminence over the collective expressions of our Peoples’ particularistic historical journeys. If an old value—say, the status of Women’s Equality in a particular Culture—does not coincide with Liberalism, then the Liberal denounces it because they believe in the intrinsic Equality of all. But how do we determine which Values can and cannot be judged?

Once you take that first step and decry that even one single Value that a Culture holds is unethical, or unreasonable, or indefensible, then you open up the floodgates of the dam and eventually drown the entire village. Everything is then open for critique and nothing is safe from the cold, clear lens of rational inquiry.

We may wish all we want to protect other Peoples from the ravages of the Capitalistic machine and so-called “American Culture,” but, unless we can have an honest conversation about the history that has resulted in the present, then all we are going to have are incoherent, whitewashed, ineffectual attempts to do so—such as the new “Cult of Diversity Worship” that is the intellectual rage in all the major universities of America today.

If you open yourself up to other Cultures and look into their cultural practices, what you will find there is, in fact, closedness because Cultures are, by definition, insular. They have to be; that is how they create and sustain their distinctiveness and inner-connectedness, which is what makes the world diverse. All Cultures think that their way of doing things is the best, except currently for the West. There are a multitude of reasons for this—mainly, I would say, due to so-called "Liberal Guilt" for Imperialism, Slavery and Racism—but we must realize that our current incoherent Liberal Ideology is going to result in either a) an extreme Right-Wing Nationalistic/Race-based reactionary force, who will not stand for the destruction of their Culture, or b) in the destruction of all distinct Cultures into one Universal Homogenous Culture.

Is there a way to reconcile Tolerance and Culture, or are these mutually exclusive world-views; does Tolerance necessarily require a relativism that goes to the depths of our very souls?

A Disruption in the Normal Swing of Things

What is “Culture;” or, to put it another way, what is “a Culture?” It is another one of those words in the modern American lexicon that everyone uses, but seems to have lost its content and has strayed very far from its source. Everything seems to be a Culture these days: Online Culture, Drug Culture, Gang Culture, Rock ‘n Roll Culture, Sports Culture, Corporate Culture. We’ve even acquired the incoherent phenomenon known as “Sub-Cultures,” as well—which still participate in the “real” Culture, just separately…I guess. But what exactly does it mean to participate in a Culture and how does the Individual fit into this picture?

According to Wikipedia—an example of an “Online Culture” or Community—there are generally three different definitions of what Culture means:

1) The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

2) An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning

3) Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture

As I have said earlier, Culture can generally be defined as “a shared set of assumptions that unites and binds a People.” It gives a group an inner unity of mutual ideals and a shared set of symbols through which they can outwardly express their beliefs. In the past, the foundation—the bedrock upon which it was built—of Culture was the gods that a particular People believed in and the specific “Values” that they prescribed. These beliefs, as Nietzsche puts it, were usually “superstitious custom that originated on the basis of some misinterpreted accident,” preserved by a tradition that it was considered “moral” to follow. And, if one did not strictly adhere to them, it was very dangerous for the Community because one ran the risk of angering the gods and thus calling down the vengeance of the gods upon the Community.

But the Enlightenment changed all that. It was a “conspiracy” that rejected all the Myth and Superstition that had defined all Societies and Cultures up until that point, in order to try and make a more rational and peaceful world to live in. To do this, the Enlightenment thinkers created the hypothetical State of Nature—a pre-historical time, before Man had contracted into specific groups, without any artificial cultural adornments—in order to look at Man as Man, uncolored by any human convention. Through this, they were able to show that all the loyalties that had constrained Man up till that point—strength, wealth, religion, tradition, birth, age—were all simply man-made, and hence not morally binding. They removed the veil that had legitimated the domination of one group by another and freed Man from the tyranny of dead ideas that had enslaved each generation to the “misinterpreted accidents” of their Fathers, and their Fathers’ Fathers, and so on. Or, as Jefferson said, “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

The new governments that were created using these novel ideas—such as the one in the United States—laid their foundations on the concept of Individual Rights, which sought to protect and uphold the Natural Rights that Man possessed which predate government. These Rights are the ones annunciated for us Americans in the Bill of Rights. The goal—in theory, at least—is to treat every person as an end, in and of themselves, and not a means, with a Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. But it is their own, private Right to Happiness, not the Society’s or Culture’s overall well-being that is an Individual’s main concern—which is the general way people tend to choose to exercise this Right.

But how do you go about making a Culture and a Nation out of all these Individual Wills? Is the Social Contract still possible if there is no conception of a Common Good? Can there even be a shared set of beliefs when everyone has become a Cartesian and only trusts their own judgment?

Reason reveals that every Culture in the past was based upon the dictates of god(s). Nietzsche thus concludes that what we need to do is reject Reason on rational grounds because Reason leads to a dead-end, to an abyss. He thinks that you cannot rationally create Values and the new “civilized” War of All Against All unleashed by the Enlightenment arrangement is intolerable and its even worse, even more rational mutation of worldwide Socialistic Self-satisfaction is an even worse evil. What is needed then is a strong willed Individual who can create—a word formerly reserved only for God: The Creator—new gods, in order to create new Values that can take the place of the exhausted ones that are rapidly disintegrating because the old “God is dead.”

Today in America, we have taken the ideas of Nietzsche and his picture of the most idealized Individual, which he referred to as the Übermensch—The Superman or Overman—and now prescribe it for everyone and hold it up as the model of a healthy, well-adjusted citizen. We use these ideas to create children’s cartoons that casually preach to kids to “be themselves” and “that what makes them different can make all the difference in the world”—but that is only half of the equation. How are these radically individualized persons suppose to come together to create some sort of Community or Common Good? We don’t even think about what we are saying, nor the consequences of these ideas, because if we did we may think twice before so casually propagandizing our children.

At the end of Happy Feet, the Community completely reforms itself—in true Nietzschean fashion—around the new Values and Conventions of Mumbles, the free-spirited Creator. He is an authentic Individual, who refuses to compromise himself, who has imbued into the Culture new life and new Values. But, once the Individuals in the Culture become adapted to the new situation, everyone once again all share the same Values and beliefs and go back to living in harmony. But that is not what the true message of the movie is supposed to be. Its goal is to tell every kid that they are special and should only be them-Selves, regardless of the consequences for the Community, and magically everything will work out and there will be a nice, happy ending. Sure, you don’t have to worry about the wrath of the gods being brought down upon the Community for going against tradition—because now God is dead—but there are definitely consequences for only thinking about your own particular welfare above the Community's: that is the reality of Culture and Community. Movies like this only succeed in further complicating the problem that has been festering ever since Rousseau first articulated it 250 years ago.

If everyone is only doing what makes their Self happy, this does not lead to social harmony, it leads to chaos. It grows in the heart a selfishness that places your desires and the satisfaction of them above any concern for Others and will only exacerbate the War of All Against All that the makers of these movies wish to alleviate. This Selfism makes us slack in our duties and weak in our constitutions. It also furthers the Capitalist System, by encouraging people to indulge their Self. And what’s an easier way to do this than with all the beautiful, shiny objects that this system produces for their satisfaction? Whereas, the goal of the people who create these kids’ movies—I can only assume, and feel I am warranted to do so by the evidence—are most likely on the Left and are among Capitalism’s greatest critics, they are actually only succeeding in perpetuating and amplifying the situation.

Kids don’t need to be told to be Self-indulgent, they will naturally be so because the whole world already seems to center around them and bend to their every whim and desire. What they need are instruction and rules that can help shape them into healthy, well-adjusted adults and active members of Society. This of course, also requires that you have a Society that is worth participating in, which, with only some reservation, I would say that we no longer have (but that’s a whole other discussion altogether). This problem did not begin in the Sixties, however; it has been endemic ever since our Nation’s birth, but was below the surface, hidden, so not yet completely corrupted. It has been the object of constant philosophic study and speculation for over 200 years that so far has not produced very attractive real-world solutions that I would recommend our Society emulating. But our current arrangement is not only theoretically incoherent, it is manifestly intolerable—I could point to the high level of psychoactive prescription drug use, legally and illegally, as just one among many symptoms of its malady.

But there is no going back, nor can you just kill history and cross your fingers and hope for the best. We need some sort of creative synthesis that can balance respect for the Individual, as well as respect for the Community; that recognizes the Subjective, without discounting the Objective; that can somehow be Idealistic and Realistic at the same time. I know that this may sound ridiculous—but the extremes have been played out with some very scary results, and it appears that Liberal Democracy has emerged the victor from this battle of Wills—at least for now. What does this mean? Are we condemned to spiral aimlessly, or can we once again grab hold of the reins and steer it confidently into the future?

Koyaanisqatsi

The Smart Phone is a marvel of modern technology. It is an empowering tool that gives you instant access to any and all information one could possibly desire—wirelessly, at a moments notice. It helps you to better organize your life, to keep in touch with distant friends and family, and to discover new and exciting things. It has processing capabilities that were unimaginable even just five years ago and only promises greater achievements in the not so distant future. It puts the world at your fingertips and your wish is its command.

And that's why, "You don't need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you."

The Smart Phone is the ultimate Individualistic technology. It is designed to conform to your specific needs and is capable of being modified to your personal requirements. Its intuitive functionality integrates with your daily routine and no two phones will ever end up alike. It is customizable down to the most minute detail. From the Apps that you download, to the music you load upon it, to the custom case in which you encapsulate it—every facet of it allows you to express your-Self and to differentiate yourself from your neighbors.

"Because there's no one else quite like you."

And while this technology is awesome, not to mention incredibly useful, American culture is becoming increasingly built on this adolescent fantasy that life is all about you as an Individual—your ideas, your appetites, and your needs. And these HTC ads play on and fan the flame of that fantasy, with its constant repetition of the word “You.” You. You…You! It's all about you! You are the warm little center that the life of this world crowds around. The whole world exists to satisfy your desires, to make you happy. "Your whole world seems to center around you, it'd be easy to make the mistake that maybe you're why the world was made."

And in this Culture of increasing Hyper or Radical Individualism, everyone has set up their "own little separate system" and cannot risk interdependence. We are simply Individuals who have come together voluntarily and who can separate just as easily, without maiming ourselves. There is no longer a bond—Natural or Artificial—binding one to the other and what we are seeing is what Nietzsche called the civilized re-animalization of Man. He thought that a system built on our basest instincts—those found in the State of Nature (self-interest; self-preservation)—will eventually reduce us back to them. And he made it his life work to try and combat this problem.

Whereas, I would not prescribe anything quite as drastic as Nietzsche did (although it's not entirely fair, there can be an argument made that his ideas inspired Fascism, especially Nazism) I don't see how it would be reasonable for us to expect our Leaders—Political or Business—or anyone else who is supposed to be our Role Models or Heroes, in a Democracy (derived from the Greek dêmos "people" and krátos "power") to act with any concern for the Common Good, if the citizens, who their power is supposedly derived from, have no conception of it for themselves.