Assimilating the Lone Gunman
As a nation, our collective hearts are broken. Our hearts
are broken over the unspeakable horror of Newtown ,
Connecticut United States
We are deeply troubled because we know in our hearts that
these psychotic acts of violence go beyond the need for gun control… beyond the
de-sensitization to violence inflicted upon our youth via movies and video
games. We know that this psychosis cuts to the very core of who we are as a
people. We know this to be a symptom of a national… perhaps global… behavioral
health crisis.
Specific to America
On Thursday, December 13th… the day before the Newtown
The Cult of
Individualism
God died. The seas of metaphysics were limitless again. A
new horizon of possibility opened for all beliefs and ideals. Values were
re-evaluated, re-molded, re-constructed – and each new value was made in the
image of its creator: the individual self.
We were “freed” to think whatever we want, say whatever we
want and believe whatever we want – more or less, that is. What we got:
apparent freedom, inalienable “individual” rights and in America
Later came the prevalent I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude – with
all its cool and edgy indifference. But I-don’t-give-a-fuck really means
I-don’t-give-a-fuck-because-it-doesn’t-affect-me – this is the prevalent
attitude of non-judgmentalism meets moral relativism. Sociologist Charles Smith
found, after interviewing 230 young Americans, that the common response to
standard moral questions (about rape, murder, theft) was one of bafflement.
Young people lacked anything substantial to say about even extremely generic
ethical questions. The default attitude was that moral choices are a matter of
individual taste, where one’s morality is just a small piece of a carefully
crafted individual self that one fashions at whim. “It’s personal,” many
interviewees responded: “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say? Who am I
to judge?”
When beliefs, aesthetic preferences and moral proclivities
are all left to personal style, we have the hipster mentality, where nonchalant
nihilism is cool. Indeed, the word “moral” itself is a dirty word amongst
anyone outside the realm of conservatism. But the cult of individualism
transcends politics: we are all in the cult. We’ve all had its invisible lens
pulled over our eyes such that we perceive the world through a warped and myopic
tunnel vision. Aiming to find and remove this lens is as futile as trying to
bite your own teeth – for it is built into us.
The great myth of our time is the heroic
pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps tale of His Majesty the Autonomous Self
(and how convenient is it that this selfsame trope is the foundational myth
capitalism needs most for its continued political survival). But this myth
needs no creeds to perpetuate its dominance, for it is woven into the very
fiber of our being.
We were all inculcated into the cult of individualism – by
our families, who tell us we are special; by the vision of the American Dream;
by schools, who demand that we specify fields; by advertising which compels us
to carve out who we are by consuming certain commodities; by capitalism which
teaches us that to succeed is to win in a competition of yourself against all
others; and by the ever-growing new-age and pop psychology œuvre which tells us
to create our own realities…
But if everyone were to believe themselves as the center of
their own universe in which they create their own world, values and all meaning
– civilization would quickly deteriorate into solipsism, narcissism,
megalomania and/or collective insanity. So it comes as no surprise that “we”
are in decline – for what is really wrong with the united “us”? There is no
“we,” no “us,” just me, myself and I. This nation is not a unified whole but a
cacophony of atoms, each spinning alone to their own idiosyncratic rhythm – and
frequently colliding. The Declaration’s axioms are relinquishing their sacred
aura, for the glue that holds us together is… well, it isn’t there.
The marriage of this egoism to rationality – the hubris that
comes with our self-awarded status as the sole “rational animal” – this may be
the fatal flaw of Western civilization, we just don’t know it yet… or do we?
With discoveries in neuroscience that expose us as primarily
social beings, the ecological crisis which demands global cooperation in spite
of differences, and amidst the peril of capitalism, which reveals the limits of
a “survival of the fittest” social philosophy – the fabric of
who-we-thought-we-were is being unravelled. It is like waking up from a long
hallucination… disorienting, frightening, yet epiphanic… for what we are facing
is nothing other than an identity crisis, one that forces us to create a new
account of what it is to be human.
It’s uncomfortable to go against the grain of a totalizing
and pervasive culture that reinforces a dog-eat-dog conception of human nature.
It’s frightening to reconsider who you are in the midst of realizing that what
you were taught all along was a lie – a myth exposed as a myth. But this is
just what Buddhists have been saying for thousands of years, that the notion of
a “separate self” is an illusion, and a dangerous one against which we must
constantly exercise vigilance in order to correct this misperception and not
forfeit our potential as beings capable of empathy and conscience.
Our concept of the individual self was born in the context
of the 18th Century, at least, and it is reaching the end of its course. What
is the new paradigm of human nature that is emerging in response to the world
as it is in 2012 and 2013? Should we continue to carry the curse of unchecked
individualism, it will be our undoing.
The time has come for us, as a people, to examine our core
beliefs. The time has come to understand that the lone gunman is a dark and
deeply troubled part of us. Are we to be a nation self-centered and perhaps
increasingly isolated and alienated individuals… or are we a cohesive nation of
people… caring for our own? The time has come to balance our unalienable rights
of the individual, with our responsibility to the whole. This is the question
of our time… as a nation… as a people… as a planet. What is our responsibility
to the whole?
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