Civic duty is out and absolute self-enhancement is in. Sacrificing the self for the collective good will make a loser of the American citizen. If one does not become their own self-sufficient machine, they will not make it out of America’s liberal democracy alive. If it’s not illegal, it’s not wrong. Unless a crime is being committed, the American individual has every right to climb up the food chain, no matter who they are harming in the process.
America has not always been void of familial interdependence, communal respect and moral obligations as we see it today. The gradual turning of tides from individualism to hyper-individualism in the United States is a woeful tale of online isolation, mobile lifestyles, material branding and consumerist culture.
But to understand hyper-individualism, one must understand the story of individualism.
The individualism seen in modern American society is influenced by centuries of Western philosophy. In classic Greek thought, Socrates encouraged self-introspection and the individual pursuit of truth in a communal Greek society. In the Hellenistic period, Epictetus’ stoicism offered up self-mastery over emotions in the face of external circumstances. The Renaissance period’s humanism argued that individual achievement can determine one’s destiny. During the Enlightenment, John Locke’s inalienable rights of life, liberty and property empowered individuals to band together and overthrow a tyrannical government.
From America’s founding in 1776 to the 1950s, familial sacrifice and herd solidarity were sustained through Puritanism and nuclear family units. Forfeiting occupational aspirations to stay rooted and help build the family business was a simple routine of life which mothers were sealed to, for their nuclear family unit. Women had an unspoken yet ingrained sacrifice of the self when they entered motherhood. Their identity wholly their domestic duties of a housewife and the raising of respectable children. Though there were traces of it, the importance of the perfected self was an American ethos that did not fully emerge until the early 1960s. Suddenly, achieving personal dreams for self-fulfillment trumped sacrificing for the family.
By the 70s, social darwinism was on the rise and citizens no longer felt the civic duty to help their neighbors. The dismal reality of the world held that there were inevitable winners and losers, and no one owed the losers a helping hand. The impoverished simply lacked the mechanical, heartless grit that was required to climb the food chain of America’s free market system. All is fair in a meritocracy, even though the United States was built on the backs of slaves.
But, allegedly, America had changed! It was wholeheartedly egalitarian, according to the privileged. By the 70s, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had passed, alongside other human rights legislation, making privileged Americans claim total egalitarianism. So as disparities solidified, the rhetoric of meritocracy extended into the 80s.
By the 80s, intensive fitness fads and carefully curated clothing promoted a perfected self-expression. However, it was not until the creation of the internet and eventual spread of social media that the self became a product.
In the 21st century, individuals distinguish their online identity through overconsumption. The products they purchase are extensions of their personality. The branded bag someone sports on their socials becomes directly indicative of their personal identity. That girl is a clean girl, the other a coquette ballerina. If grandma’s cluttered home does not coordinate with the Instagram image, it does not go online. People brand themselves as a unitary aesthetic, diluting the jumbled clash of clothes a normal human being wears. Never before has identity been so vain and devoid of meaning.
In sum, late-stage capitalism and overconsumption creates the perfect haven for American vanity. Individualism in the modern day is backdropped by excessive consumerism.
And on social media, users are too preoccupied with their perceived brand to form authentic connections.
Their online personas are mere projections of the person they wish they were in real life. Online there are no awkward pauses, disheveled hair days or jumbled confessions. People display a two-dimensional manifestation of their desired self, soothing egos and denying hard truths.
Tangible, face-to-face relationships however, are the beauty of human connection. They can be heartbreaking, visceral, disappointing and poignant, but real nonetheless. To know someone is not to know their favorite color-coordinating hand towels, but to automatically know that they are about to cry by the way they twitch their nose.
The rise of the self and ultimate rise of the ego in American culture voids people of empathy for their fellow man. Kindness becomes transactional and has implied reciprocity. And to make matters worse, relationships are blocked by an incessant need to project the perfect self online.
To step out of the individual and join the community is boundlessly rewarding, but people are too wound up in the pressures of American capitalism to embrace it.
Isabella Ehring is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2024 quarter. She can be reached at iehring@uci.edu.
Edited by Trista Lara and Annabelle Aguirre.