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The Paradox of Mass Individualism
“Be true to yourself.”
“Honor who you truly are.”
“Don’t be afraid to stand out.”
And so on, and so on, and so on: the trite clichés of popular me-centric culture.
Shortly after moving to California in 1991 I went to a party. Everyone (and I mean everyone) was talking in clichés which I later learned were catch-phrases from TV shows and well-known lines from movies. An earnest young man (and I was young too, back in those far-off days…) sat down next to me and proceeded to ask my opinion about some TV show. I explained I never watched TV.
He said, “Sure, I get that, but you must have seen XXX, right? So what did you think when Mary said YYY to Jane?”
In his mind (and in the minds of everyone else at the party, as I later discovered) the phrase “I don’t watch TV” meant “I only watch two or three hours per night.”
It was simply incomprehensible that a person would not watch television, and indeed would not even own a television. That would be akin to trying to imagine someone doing something utterly bizarre like reading a book for the pure pleasure of it.
As I embedded myself into the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area I saw how everyone around me seemed to absorb whatever…
