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PARTISAN REVIEW
money, too often there is no pleasure involved, only the moralistic
compulsion to do everything possible to develop our potential.
The current emphasis on fulfilling one's potential is not new in
American culture. The literature of the first half of the twentieth
century is filled with the happy messages of positive thinkers. Opti–
mistic inspirational literature has been widely published and read
throughout the century. The current self-help and awareness groups
are merely a new reflection of the paradoxical relationship between the
pursuit of individual interests and the public good that has existed in
American culture since its beginning and was evident to its early
observers, such as de Tocqueville. The current version plays down the
conventional work ethic and competition for money and success and
emphasizes competition for experiences. Similarly, just as the Protes–
tant Ethic of individualism obscured the structural aspects of inequal–
ity, the new awareness gurus tell us that oppression is simply a state of
mind, thus denying the structural, culturally reinforced origins of
oppression and inequality. The specific content has changed, but the
ideological function remains the same.
In
The Awareness Trap,
Edwin Schur points out that those social
commentators who analyze this change in American-brand individual–
ism as if it were a distinctly new phenomenon overlook the fact that
"the quasi-religious dogma of optimistic individualism ... has always
sold well in America. It appeals almost exclusively to the middle and
upper classes; it is politically innocuous and socially complacent. ..."
The attempt to analyze the current American scene in terms of
narcissism is itself a reflection of individualism, though of a different
sort. It focuses on self-indulgence as the core of the problem and
implies that since our problems arise from purely individual foibles,
we can,
as individuals,
solve them.
