How to Make a Hyper-Individualist Society in Seven Easy Steps

a manual for creative social destruction

"'Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public...'" by Instant Vantage is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Cultural anthropologists like me share one thing in common, no matter our politics or specializations. We are very good at noticing received cultural assumptions most do not notice. And, as we do this noticing, we actively wonder: what are the consequences of not being aware of these guiding assumptions in a rapidly changing society? Isn’t this like flying blind in a hurricane? Are we trying to crash?

The Iroquois Confederacy eventually became famous for heavily influencing our Founding Fathers’ notion of a calm, wise, representative democracy with checks and balances. Less well known is the pre-modern (12th-15th centuries) Iroquois belief that any confederacy resolution should be thought through to the extent that it will remain valid for the next seven generations.¹ This Iroquois confederacy sounds like a pretty conservative place if they thought it was rational to plan social policy for the next 250 years(!) The rate of social change in the 15th century was not as rapid as it has been since 1970 in America (and many other urban metropoles I don’t have time to examine). Most readers would accept this, I hope.

In America today, most adults accept that social change is so rapid that, within our lifetimes, major moral boundaries from our youth we thought were fixed (e.g., young, single women don’t actively pursue transactional hookups, they always want sex in a relationship) may easily get crossed in our lifetimes. Sociologists call this inter-generational social change. Your parents and grandparents are nodding wide-eyed.

In rapidly changing societies like ours, yesterday’s foundational ‘truths’ about how to live your life rarely hold for the next twenty years, let alone the next fifty years. It excites many of us and terrifies some. I used to be in the former camp when I was young. Burn down the elders’ longhouse! Yeah, baby! This is also the privilege of living in an individualistic society. I can't even imagine doing such a crazy thing.

Here’s the recipe I share in my next book!

Step 1 - Unlock The Variables of Lifestyle Choice (for men AND women)

Since around 1970, virtually every middle-class adult in the U.S. has had unprecedented lifestyle choices. It’s a kaleidoscope of choice, operating in multiple dimensions. Trying to model it makes my brain hurt. So, I won’t bother.

Changing one variable - I want an ambitious career - may easily affect another - having kids. Again, the head starts hurting.

We may not exercise the full scope of the choices available to us due to family socialization, media influences, neurological disabilities, or other reasons. Still, when Americans break with the behavioral patterns of their parents or peers, there is certainly no one around to stop them. I mean, who can? Family members may complain and complain loudly. But they are easily ignored in a credit-rich, cash economy. You do not depend on them. Friends may ‘intervene,’ but they are easily replaced. Forget the haters holding you back, a very American inner voice says. There are millions ready to applaud you for ignoring your family. Defining your life on your terms is now a thing we admire without question.

And that’s precisely what America has done, more or less. If you stretch for lifestyle freedom, your family lets you go. Their reluctance to do this has little power over you.

By 1970 - America had effectively unlocked the critical lifestyle variables (e.g., marriage, child-rearing, female employment, etc.) that historically constrained individual behavior in traditional human societies. Using a computational math thought experiment, I have shown elsewhere that in the fifty years since 1920, America increased the sheer number of possible lifestyles by over 300%. This proliferation of ways of living makes it very easy to bump into someone making very different lifestyle choices, reinforcing our belief that we are somehow “unique” (when this isn’t empirically true). It may also inspire doubt that your lifestyle choices were the ‘right’ or ‘good’ ones. As social norms fragment, as the American lifestyle kaleidoscope gets increasingly complex, individualism seems more and more like an accurate depiction of reality even when it isn’t.

Step 2 - Make Privacy Sacred –

Doorbell cams, Deleteme data-wiping software, credit freezes, personal data deletion on Google, cache wiping, and incognito browser tabs. Modern technology has unleashed hundreds of ways to protect a very thin layer of foundational ID data about individuals. Our fear about the theft of this state-crafted data continues to ratchet ever upward.

In a world where we interact ever more with impersonal systems and bureaucracies run by people we will never know, our basal social paranoia has never been higher as a society. Compared to our grandparents’ generations, fewer people in our social worlds truly know us deeply than ever. Your kids. Your spouse. Maybe 1-2 friends? Perhaps one Aunt who lives right next to you still? That’s about it for a lot of folks.

Changes in social structure and intimacy mean we have a tiny circle of close people who have deep knowledge of us, a substantial group of work-related (and parenting-related) weak ties, and a veritable ocean of strangers we constantly bump into to get the work of modern consumer life done. This is what we say we want: loads of privacy. Personal autonomy (i.e., ‘freedom’) doesn’t work without donning an intense veil of privacy every morning.

If you find it ironic that we worry so much about data privacy in America when so few people know anyone deeply anymore, you are a clever reader destined to enjoy the rest of my forthcoming book. Our interpersonal opacity in the modern era makes privacy invasion so terrifying. Our state of being forgotten and ignored by most of the humans we interact with makes the mysterious data breach so outrageous.

Neanderthals did not camp in groups of 2-3 for many reasons. Archeologists know this. They also did not care much about privacy like we do today. Insisting on rigid privacy norms to pre-modern humans would have looked a lot like insanity.

Step 3 - Make the Individual Responsible for Their Problems

The surprisingly high use of therapy among older Americans (Gen X and Boomers) surprises many, but it shouldn’t. If your culture has convinced you that you are the solution to all your problems, then, ironically, you will often seek out a professional focused entirely on your issues. These professionals will then focus on helping you manage the mental game of operating in an individualistic society where your boss and perhaps your spouse are not loyal by default and where you can not rely on many people at all. Therapy is the mental toolkit for operating in the loneliest of social structures invented by the human race. It’s an expensive band-aid. It prevents your already unstable marriage from disintegrating entirely, for example.

‘You are the solution to your problems’ is a very modern viewpoint. It’s also very Germanic-Anglo-Nordic. It lacks some serious empathy. When I was in therapy, over years, I convinced my therapist that most of my problems stemmed from the intersection of my basal neurology (clinically anxious) and the dysfunctional, chaotic company/service class I worked in. Others might have done better. I shouldn’t have been doing the work I was doing. Exiting the triggering social context was going to be essential for my mental stability. And lo and behold, it was. It took cognitive insights AND sociological ones to free me from a personal hell into which I had naively stumbled.

Contrary to all their mockery of Woody Allen movies growing up, Baby Boomer and Gen X folks got deep into therapy during their lives, far more so than a sassy Millennial might think. Individualism sets us up for periods of mental illness, not just those like me with underlying neurological issues. Older men you see on the sidewalk are much more introspective than they appear, kids.

Step 4 - Silence the Elders

Not literally, of course. They still have some good jokes. But, to exercise extreme lifestyle choice that guarantees to offend your grandparents doesn’t require silencing them literally. You can take candy from them on Thanksgiving. You can hug them on Christmas morning. You can light the Menora with them and smile. The elders often object to what their grandkids do, but immensely less than an Amish parent would in the same situation. Rumspringa is rumspringa. Then it stops. Or we will shun you. Instead of this rigidity, most American elders pick their battles. And what else can they do? They have no real social force to compel you to follow their rules. Your income and career do not depend on them, even when they own a family business they want you to work in.

Accepting this reality forces us to realize, by the logic of inversion, that the most efficient and powerful way to inhibit individual freedom of behavior is by ensuring that a choice is not perceived.

“That’s what everyone did back then.”

“I didn’t see it as a choice.”

“That never occurred to us back then.”

Evidence for the godlike power of culture has never been so robust and transparent as these statements you will often hear from your elders about their childhoods.

Step 5 – Reward Productive Anti-Social Behavior

Elon Musk doesn’t have millions of Twitter followers because they ALL hate him. Most of them are superfans. They enjoy his anti-social, insensitive comments. His ill-timed, poorly thought-out tweet-olary.

In modern America, many will easily tolerate narcissistic, even sociopathic, behavior as long as there is some end outcome the leaders of the group value or some positive outcome the free market validates monetarily.

Wall Street investors get catered to in the coarse hierarchy of modern social stakeholders before anyone else, even the CEO’s wife.

Elon produces. Elon wins. Elon defies the odds. Elon gets to give us the middle finger if he wants. Elon’s heroic individualism means we must admire him despite his offensive insensitivity to those around him. We respect his brutal, maverick individualism, not the content of his words. There is a solid male bias toward Elon’s fan base, but this fan base is not tiny. And it’s tied to one of our most sacred individualistic idols- entrepreneurship.

Don Draper, the office jerk who is also a star performer, only gets fired when he embarrasses the firm in front of a client (i.e. when money is at stake). His effect on his colleagues is ignored over martini lunches. Don’t sweat the small stuff, kid. Female subordinates complaining are the small stuff.

Rather than demoting or expelling the productive anti-social individual, she will most likely be rewarded for her anti-social behavior in modern America. I engaged in such behavior and saw others get away with it. The negative consequences were emotionally real for others but not considered problems by those in charge.

In the last 15 years, we’ve seen a growing backlash against what used to be garden variety office jerkism in modern businesses, but most have not changed. That’s why articles about ‘managing the jerk in the office’ get some of the highest click-through rates you’ll ever see. The problem is not solved because our society rewards their behavior at the most fundamental levels. We have no intention of solving it.

Changing this situation is like trying to get the Board of Goldman Sachs to operate like a Quaker family meeting (which does not end until there is total consensus). Good luck with that.

Step 6 – Distract Us All With Entertainment

Americans have an incredible amount of leisure time every day—roughly 4.7 hours on weekdays and 6.5 on weekend days. We like to “fun” if “fun” were a verb requiring no auxiliary. We watch 2.5 hours of TV each day and 3.5 on the weekends! The sad reality buried in the American Time Use Survey data is that TV use has relentlessly increased in the last quarter century in inverse correlation to time spent socializing.

Americans spend about thirty-five minutes daily, on average, socializing and communicating (i.e., face-to-face with those beyond their home). Yet, we spend roughly five times more minutes each day watching that irresistible, near-infinite video content.²

Slowly, we are drifting into a video-fueled Brave New World. Video is becoming our Soma.

Distract the populace so they won’t notice how few deep relationships they have. Sounds like an evil scheme fit for Dr. No.

Step 7 – Anchor Ourselves in an Imagined Future Known as ‘The Next New Thing’

The capitalist spirit of the post-industrial era, the era of high consumerism, encourages us to see choice everywhere, in even the most mundane of decisions affecting very little but our imaginative ticklings.

We then habituate to imagining alternatives constantly, even when we do not know why they matter. Because it’s there. That’s why, James. $15.99 pasta sauce, $9.99 pasta sauce and $3.99 pasta sauce. Which one?

Stoking excessive choice is the real engine of consumer capitalist societies. It’s a massive form of distraction from your social surroundings. Smartphones only boosted the amount of distracting promotional activity, the volume of the distractions, not the scope of choices (which didn’t require the internet to expand).

The economy would collapse if we ever woke up and stopped seeing most of these choices. The collapse would make 2008 look like a one-hour stock dip.

The critical element in all this excessive choice is that the choices themselves keep changing. This constantly builds an expectation of something new and exciting just around the corner. In the next 15 minutes, something cool may show up in my Facebook feed. I may hit the “shop now” button and get myself in trouble (with my wife).

And, with the number of lifestyle choices in urban America, including the choice to spend tons of our time alone, we can increasingly focus ever more on “my choices” and “what fancies me,” as the British used to say.

I can eat ramen alone in a noodle shop, avoid dating, watch incel videos on YouTube, and shop on Amazon for hours. I can exist alone for weeks in the middle of a downtown urban core.

This is individualism, folks when you let it rip. When no one steps in to say, ‘Enough!’

Why do we wonder at all that we see unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression in this society? In seven easy steps, we poured muriatic acid on the very fibers of human community, and now we’re scrambling to halt the destruction we openly welcomed.

I don’t wonder. Do you?

1. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/seventh-generation-principle#:~:text=The%20Seventh%20Generation%20Principle%20is,seven%20generations%20into%20the%20future.

2. 71% inverse correlation between the two activities, ATUS 2003-2021, United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics, American Time Use Survey, 2021, my analysis of Series ID TUU10101AA01014236 and TUU10101AA01013951 for persons aged 15 and over.