The Metamorphosis of the Western Soul

Our inherent existential DRIVES certainly have a role in constituting our thoughts and behaviour, though the unique circumstances in which we born into determine how we handle these DRIVES: http://unrecognizedobjectsofthemind.blogspot.com/2013/07/existential-dri...

You are simply wrong in couching this story in your own personal context and in the broader global context you attempt to create but does not exist. The real crime here is a bunch of urban readers will think themselves intellectual sophisticates because you have thrown a disparate carnival across the physical hardscape of their worn out eyes and the gelatinous underworked aspect of their intelligences. But you are the media star.

I suspect that most psychologists, and normal people, too, understand self-esteem to be a built-in feeling that it is fine to be oneself, own and express and value one's feelings and needs. It's not to be "part" of, and subservient to, some aggregate or community. Self-esteem -- as the psychologists I admire say -- comes early from parents who give you to feel you are loved and valuable in yourself, not because you meet someone else's -- or many someones' -- needs. The latter would create contingent, precarious, false self-esteem that always forces a struggle to be "good enough." I don't care what the author says about culture. Psychological health and dysfunction are in the individual psyche, just as physical health is in the body -- not in the consensus.

The author makes several great points, however, I am unsure of the sincerity behind the movement from "me" vs "us". To me, the scourge of identity politics is nothing but a repackaging of the narcissistic impulse. People need to signal how virtuous they are by repeating tedious calls for empathy and inclusion (terms, whose frequency of usage, have rendered them all but bankrupt). To me, most people calling for social justice today partake in a unique but conceited form of the burnishing of the self. So this societal change from me to us is less a transformation and more an exercise in subterfuge.

I'm always suspicious when someone uses "we" in such a broad, universalist manner. I want to ask, who is this "we" you keep referring to? Are you including me in that "we"? Have we met?

An article with a big title but not much substance. Disappointing.

Bravo for acknowledging racial differences. This has real world implications for immigration policy and other public policy questions. Just witness all the second and third generation Asian-Americans advocating for the abridgment and even abolishment of free speech in this country in the name of diversity, multiculturalism, etc. Some peoples just don't have the cultural or, as you point out, biological prerequisites for freedom.

It seems like everything from cutting taxes and regulations to supporting free trade is called neo-liberal. The idea that Hillary Clinton would have been in the same tradition as Ronald Reagan strikes me as absurd.

"We" turned from hippies to yuppies? Who did? Working class black women? White Appalachians? Fundamentalist Christians? Affluent white men are not all of America - Storr's assumption to the contrary renders invalid anything he's got to say.

Biology versus sociology

Russians are using new troll tricks, like making a false statement and attaching several links that "verify" the lie, knowing full well only a tiny percentage of folks actually check out the "proof." (If they did, they would be puzzled that the "proof" just isn't there.) Rooskies know this works, so look for it and other more sophisticated techniques as they get caught in their simpler propaganda efforts more often. Since the ancient Persians were masters of weaponized lying, look for the Iranians to add to the misguidance of naive Americans. The "start with compliments" technique has disarmed many a fool.

"Between 1965 and 1985, the Western self was transformed. We turned from anti-materialistic, stick-it-to-the-Man hippies into greed-is-good yuppies." The claim is as absurd as it is false. All of "the West" was not wearing tie-dyed t-shirts and listening to the Grateful Dead. Nor did those who were magically "turn into" something else just a few years later. A nonsensical premise leads to a worthless article. Will Storr may be a journalist, but he's no anthropologist, historian, political scientist or economist.

I hate to break it to you, but there were far more hippies in 1985 than in 1965. This is the silliest just-so analysis I've read in months.

This is a slur against God and Man. WE ARE NOT ANIMALS. We are moral beings that are made in the image of God. Pleasee do not attempt to diminish our status and God's work in us and through us.

This article brilliantly couples 19th-century Orientalist pseudoscience with schmaltzy 20th-century cultural criticism to support a point that few would have questioned until hearing it defended in this way.

I used to joke about what I called Carder's Law: Eight out of ten income earners fall in the bottom 80% percent of the income distribution. Silly? Perhaps not if you are fall into the bottom 80% and you come to realize that for the last 40 years the rules of the game have shifted slowly but steadily, decreasing your share of both the common wealth and income. And, you see that the birth lottery is becoming the primary determinate in our children's future and chances at happiness. Then, as a pragmatist, you may start looking at how Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher re-engineered our economic systems to change our souls. Mrs. Thatcher was correct, economics are a method. But for most of us our goal is not to change souls. We leave that to religious and spiritual leaders. What she didn't mention was that public policy is the agency that drives economics and that gradually changing public policies and regulations was the way she planned to change our souls. Ultimately, it is shifts in public policies and regulations governing the relationships between citizens that moves the needle between a winner-take-all economy or an economy that supports life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (That was the choice, after all, that caused us to part ways with Mrs. Thatcher's home country in the first place.) Changes in public policy can be motivated by values such as individualism and collectivism. Or, if you are in the bottom 80%, it can just be a matter of pragmatism.

When I recovered from addiction, and could see again, the self-discovery that lay dormant for so many years spilled out like a raging waterfall. It took only a few months in recovery to see that my chemically-perpetuated estrangement from life was an escape from an identity I couldn't bear. An identity whose composition and value was contingent on my willingness to play the part. Outside of that fake sense of self and worth, there was nothing but shame and agony. Then oblivion. My "economy," and where I fit in to the scheme of what society told me was supposed to make me happy, was actually the source of my cowardice, fear. And even almost 14 years into sobriety at age 57, I still grapple with it, and must continue to do inner work around it. None of us are we think we are. And until it's about "we,"and not "me," we will remain hopelessly lost. So, this IS a metamorphosis (regressive) of the western soul, but to bring it a little closer home, it's really the closing of the American mind. As I watch my own raise their own, and navigate their way through a 21st century culture so hopelessly subservient to unbridled capitalism, I recognize idiosyncrasies and attitudes in them that seem oblivious to the collective good, and I lament to myself that I didn't raise them that way, or they certainly didn't get that way of thinking from me... ...but, they really did.

Dear Mr. Will Storr, "Metamorphosis" kicked my brain and called the word "polymorphism." Biological states and state of being. However,"metamorphosis" also concerns "witchcraft." Proper for the politicians talking about "witch-hunt." And witches making the Ronal Reagan and Margaret Thatcher leaders, who were afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. And the societies; hippies, yuppies ... And the Greece of Zeus generating Western individualistic cognition versus the Eastern collective cognition. The Greek geo-politics had polymorphism. Not only Alexander the Great went to the east but also some lost Indian cultures, and ethnocentric and nomadic Asiatic cultures have been coming to the west. Don't forget the Egyptians, Romans, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Persians, Christians and Moslems. You reduce Greece to Athenian civilization. In Greece there were many states. One was Sparta. A good example of collectivism. Here, individualism concerned doing the right thing as a member of the society. Spartans did not use money for a long time. Spartans did not have city walls. They fought to remain as they are. Yes, they had slaves, but they did not fight to obtain slaves. Unfortunately, Spartans learned about gold from Persians and got tricked by them to dissolve. And in Sparta polymorphism became metamorphosis like the rest of Greek states. Without knowing what happened to Sparta, you could write only a Greek tragedy, not a report about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher world.

I'll agree with the general trends described, but I chafe at a tendency among observers, especially journalists, to ascribe too much influence for our laws/economy to a president or PM when it is actually the legislative bodies that must act to make big changes. Who rules US today? It isn't Trump but the GOP collectively since both houses of Congress are also GOP, plus a majority of governorships and legislatures. Presidents actually have very little power but for some ancient king-worshipping or paternalistic reasons, we focus on the person at the top too much. I personally believe Reagan (don't know about Thatcher) and the GOP in 1980s were promoting a message that the social/environmental problems identified in the 60s as outrages had been solved and everybody could just go back to making money for their families (that's not necessarily greed - but self-centered survival for many). Or if not solved, government could be trusted to handle it. Reagan did symbolic things like removed Carter's solar panels from the WHouse, and appoint anti-regulatory people to head the EPA and BLM and Interior who were short-term thinkers instead of long-term (and those agencies needed to be long-term managed). We all have to balance, for ourselves and our societies, short-term and long-term thinking, and capitalism can be managed to promote a healthy balance, or not. We are living unsustainably on the planet; the longer we wait to reconcile ourselves to this, the harder to fix.

What the author calls neo-liberalism is, in fact, 'basically working for most people" even after 2008. There has never been a smaller slice of humanity living in poverty. Life spans have never been longer, the violence rate has never been lower. Never in human history have parents been less likely to see their children die of diarrhea, malaria, murder, or any other cause. That's globally, of course, and even the people who supposedly think globally - progressives - seem to have trouble thinking globally when it comes to globalization. Progressives seem to glorify developing world poverty and want to turn back the clock to an imaginary golden age, the 1950s, maybe, when American white men had it great and India and Nepal hadn't yet been ruined by cars and modern communications. They equate things that can't be equated: for instance, bothersome student loans or only owning 1 car in America is the equivalent of being unable to afford a mosquito net or shoes in the developing world. "We are the 99 percent!" Globalization has fostered the greatest reduction in human poverty in history - that's a good thing - and has furthered almost every other progressive value, such as women's rights, gay rights, individual rights, etc. It's baffling that the hard Left and some "progressives" align themselves with the far right in opposition to globalization - or I guess it isn't, if the saying is true that "progressives hate progress."

Vulture capitalism has destroyed society. The world's eight richest people have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of humanity.....3.7 billion people. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/16/worlds-eight-... The three richest Americans have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of Americans....160 million people. https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-america... That math is downright sociopathic. The rich need to take their boots off the throats of the poor and start coughing up a few bars of gold. We are part of a society. The sooner individuals realize that, the better off we'll all be. Human greed ruins everything; it's a global poison.

This kind of thinking is horrible. These broad generalizations are too error ridden to catalogue. Its as If Carl Jung said that Ax handles are in the DNA of Scandinavians, and Samarai swords in the DNA of Japan. What about 120 years ago, when 95% of us lived on a farm in the US? What about how the West was really won, with neighbors helping neighbors through harsh winters? Sorry the writer grew up watching TV instead of studying history. How is it he gets a platform to pontificate the bland observations?

"We turned from anti-materialistic, stick-it-to-the-Man hippies into greed-is-good yuppies." Seems Storr spent too much time in Golden Gate Park or standing on the corner of Haight and Ash, while the rest of us were going to class each day and graduating and planning to get married, raise children, and buy the first house by 25, which "made all the difference". No "greed" in that, just diligent hard-work and good planning.

Thank you very much for this essay. I would put the same sad story in these terms: For the past 35 years our democratic values (community, equality, dialogue, tolerance) have been replaced by corporate values (strict hierarchy, bottom line rules, no back-and-forth dialogue, intolerance). I feel the specifics you cite support my broad statement.

You lost me at the first sentence. You suppose "stick-it-to-the-Man hippies" represent the entire "Western self" in 1965, totally ignoring who the "Man" is they wanted to stick it to and what cultural values that "Man" represented. To argue that the 1985 "Western self" was the "greed-is-good yuppies" (assuming that a single movie, Wall Street, sums up the entire Zeitgeist of the 80's) is basically to say that the "Man" the hippies wanted to stick it to won out in the end. Ergo, nothing changed. Of course, all of this is bizarre speculation and has nothing to do with any sort of actual cultural studies.

Absent in this article is an essential argument of the harrowing effects of Overpopulation and its brute twin Hyper Competition on human psyches, happiness, and equilibrium. One can fume all he wants about the decline of prudent business regulation, wage raises, workplace loyalty, individual and collective fulfillment, etc. What principally has changed how we "get along" and "get ahead" is the tragic reality that there are TOO MANY OF US.

An odd column with a single insight buried at the end: "we go along to get ahead". This is why I comment so forcibly about so-called-progressive values. The virtue signaling is gussied up with moral statements about "all our welcome" but my outspoken liberal friends are really only liberal because it is socially beneficial. You could argue that positive peer pressure makes a friendlier society but at our root, human beings HATE being told what to do, particularly if the messenger is a sanctimonious hypocrite. I don't expect any converts but at least an understanding for why we deplorables feel the way we do...

Dear Mr. Storr, The most intriguing souls care neither about the physical landscape, the economic landscape, or the political landscape. They paint in broad strokes from a palette possessed of unlikely colors, creating pictures of impossible dreams. And they leave the rest of us to our fingerpainting. Cordially, S.A. Traina

Narcissism has been even more rampant with the advent of social media ; it also has given rise to anxiety , depression and suicide . When people slavishly rely on the opinion of strangers to find approval it kills self confidence and self reliance . What is broken is the stuff we were meant to be . It is a conundrum , we are meant to be social animals but not to rely on the whole to be whole . I personally don't care what others think , and right or wrong everyone has an opinion ; one must take it for such .

That we are profoundly influenced by where we are is too obvious to be a sensible thesis for this article. In contrast, believing that sensitivity to modern signals of failure is "perfectionism" really requires a sort of willful blindness. The contemporary signals of failure behind the increase in self-destructive behavior would surely include almost four decades of wage stagnation, the decline of industries that used to afford lots of well-paid blue collar jobs, and in general the famous "hollowing out" of the middle class. If I see no way to support a family the way my parents and theirs did, are we really to blame negative attitudes rather than increasing economic inequality?

There are serious flaws of reasoning and knowledge throughout this very incoherent and ill-informed essay. I'll confine myself to two. 1. The cliches about "the Greeks" are worthless (see Foucault's last three volumes of lectures), since developing excellence of the self as a way of educating men to behave well in the polis has nothing to do with what we think of today as individualism (look at who's president of the USA). 2. If the author speculates as to why there are fewer diagnoses of narcissistic disorders today, he [?] and all readers must be made aware that diagnostic codes in the current DSM have been radically rewritten. Such rewritings -- which rule over insurance payments, drug prescriptions, and money-making therapies -- are done in a very secretive fashion (not exactly the way in which science should be debated or conducted), in which huge payments and rewritten diagnoses take place in an extremely obscure fashion. There were a few squeaks from apostates from the new DSM, but the structure held, and is an enormous part of the medical-insurance complex that keeps premiums up and up, USA life span going down, preventable diseases on the rise, and blocks mainstream thinking and action on what a healthcare system (we don't have one) and a just society would look like if they were thought together and well. conclusion. In the cases of both 1. and 2. it is both ironic and sad that the author suffers from the inability to be curious enough to inquire about such things.

I totally disagree with the author, because everything he describes, literally every aspect of growing narcissism and selfishness, is not a global phenomenon but a sad feature of the latter day United States. I don't recognize even one of the highlighted evils in northern Europe, Japan or South Korea, among many. Any nation featuring inequality, political corruption, lobbies, racism, privatized incarceration, as well as good education and healthcare exclusively for the privileged is bound to trigger extremes of greed, egotism and selfishness born of desperation. In fact, Trump is not an exception but the natural result of half the population's disgust with the status quo and the search for extreme solutions. Laissez-faire economics gives rise to the Law of the Jungle where it is everyone for him-/herself. Nobody in their right mind would think otherwise. Those of us who lead a charmed life and obey the law need to read William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" to understand how quickly humans become savages in dire circumstances. The situation in the U.S. is indeed dire, and I see no solution as long as its politicians place instant power and money above the nation's needs. This applies to both parties, who have made it virtually impossible for selfless leaders and visionaries to succeed. U.S. politicians need to turn inward -- No, not MAGA but become introspective -- in order to give their citizens the faintest chance of participating in the mythical 'American Dream'.

Excuse me for being blunt, but this is a silly article. It overgeneralizes to the max. The author is either ignorant of or chooses to ignore the multitude of differences between neighborhoods, ethnicities, classes, regions, education, religion; he ignores whether people belong or not to religious groups, political groups, or book clubs. He doesn't mention the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts or the US Peace Corps or the US Armed Forces. I could go on. He doesn't mention young people's affinity for Democratic Socialists or the fact that more people voted for Hillary than for Trump or the fact that many among Trump supporters have a loyalty to those they live among. I urge Mr. Storr to clear his mind of social science simplicities and realize that people are complicated, often kaleidoscopic. There is, at least for Americans, no single "enormously powerful controlling force" like the shape of the national economy.

The author did not mention the ultimate despair caused by the neoliberal order 70,000 opioid deaths a year. People need communities and purpose .We started as a group of tribes maybe it is time to go full circle.

Painting with a broad brush tends to obscure more than it reveals. Winston Churchill once said (probably apocryphally) that "anyone who is not a socialist when they are under 30 has no heart and any who is a socialist after 30 has no head." So the profound shift he observes has been the aging of that obnoxiously dominant generation of baby boomers. It is their narrative which seems to define every age although Trump may be their last gasp.

Shouldn't this be called the new "neo-conservatives". What's so liberal about Thatcher or Reagan? Words matter.

I take exception somewhat to your characterization of the Greeks. If they were such rabid individualists it's hard to see how concepts such as insomnia - equality under the law - and democratic could have taken hold. Both relied on the collective energies and will of the polis. It also neglects that not everyone hustled - Spartans lived lives of leisure enslaving helots. As for Greece being hard-scrabble, that's why they colonized fat lands such as Italy, Sicily, and Asia Minor. And the earliest (identifiable) Greeks, the Mycenaeans (Agamemnon and other assorted nabobs) lived off of the labor of neighboring civilizations (Hittites, Syrians, Minoans) by piracy. Civilizations in the Near East, esp. Persia and Egypt, had a particularly strong influence over the Greeks. Socrates, for one, was not thrilled with the advent of individual self-worth as it developed in Athens at any rate. The habits of democracy misled people into thinking their opinion on anything was valid - esp. government. But what does a cobbler, or vintner, or fisherman, know of such things? Let those who know government govern. Let those who think they know something not in fact knowing it, stay out of it (I read Plato so you don't have too!)

This article is full of bland generalizations that do not hold up to closer examination. Take the comparison between ancient Greece and China. Any study of Chinese history reveals that it has always been a steeply hierarchical society (like, in fact, ancient Greece), but that not everyone was a team player. For example, the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Taizong, carried out a coup d'erat that resulted in the murder of his two brothers and abdication from the throne of his father, the dynasty's founder. By Confucian standards, Taizong had committed the worst possible sin - a total lack of filial piety. Yet he was one of the Tang Dynasty's most successful emperors. During the reign of his successor, Gaozong, power fell into the hands of his Empress, Wu Zetian, who later proclaimed herself China's only female emperor. Such alpha-dog personalities have been a constant feature of Chinese history right up to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Xi Jinping is trying to emulate them.

Mr. Storr attributes to Reagan and Thatcher the power to “change the (Anglo)-American soul” from New-Deal-hippie-socialist to yuppie-individualist. He gives them far too much credit. Leaders are inspired by latent tendencies in their people. The influence works both ways. Greece and China were not contemporaneous accidents of geography. Chinese culture is centuries older. Greece defined itself as a breakaway from Asia since the time of the first Persian insurrection. European individualism was born out of this fragmentation. Though such voluntary acts of rebellion and self-definition no doubt have deep causes, they are far from being mere accidents of geography. Profoundly influenced by such voluntary acts, history uses geography to advance its purposes, and engenders new economic principles to advance its needs. The inexorable march of history has already made vast changes in Asian character. Movies catering to Asian audiences now compete vigorously in the Western-identitarian marketplace for their individual share of the box office. New Deal proponents wanted to engineer a more competitive society. Hippie flower children reveled in standing out as non-conformists. Eighties corporate achievers were cut from their parents’ cloth. I guess the acorn doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

Instead of propelling ourselves forward with the great ideas from science, art, religion/spirituality, and true self-sacrifice and devotion we have been led by the toxic and retrogressive ideas of the likes of Friedmann and Hayak and their political hacks Reagan and Thatcher. An individualist without a moral and ethical imagination based on the eternal principles of truth, beauty and goodness is a lost soul indeed. And thus we have the likes of Trump, Putin, Erdogan, etc., ad nauseam, 'leading' us backward.

Interesting thought and I can see many of the arguments advanced that apply to our society. Yet if this argument is true, then how do we explain the cult of personality by the leaders of the two opposite poles cited by Mr. Storr? Trump is easy, completely self absorbed, he is the center of his personal universe, the archetype of the West. Yet what about Mr. Xi of China? He is certainly no self effacing bureaucrat, toiling away in modest obscurity. His cult of personality in China is on track to rival Mao's. Perhaps he is the exception that proves the rule?

The Greeks did not develop a sense of an individual self because of what they had to do for a living; what they had to do for a living came from their ideas about a self, their reasons for their ideas. A mind's content comes from the reasons for it; a rocks composition comes from the causes that acted on it. Minds are not like physical things and to believe they are is just superstition.

"The Western self was born in Greece...1,000 city-states,...This individualistic economy created an individualist ideal of self. The Greeks sought singular fame and glory....the Olympics...and...democracy." "Individualism" is a mistake. A gross one for Sparta, but also for Athens. Democracy was hardly individualistic. It was rather rule by the 139 "demes" --like counties or precincts. Athenian citizenship presumed Deme membership. Only adult male citizens could vote--about 30% of the population--outnumbered by slaves--prisoners of war--collective action. Government was highly structured--bureaucratic. Barbarian meant non-Greek. Greeks invented civilization--essentially "cityfication"--high density cooperative living presuming common infrastructure--not just monuments. Slaves should be grateful; they thought. "For Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher, saving ourselves meant rediscovering our individualist roots." Also nonsense. It meant rigging the political system to benefit the wealthy--duping the masses with trickle down nonsense. American "individualism" is a myth--lone rangers in the wild west--a variation on knights errant. The myth is pushed like the freedom drug--to undermine government FOR common people. Your freedom means everyone else is unfree--they must put up with you--individuals with guns or corporations with low pay and few worker rights. Athens made the wealthy pay higher taxes--not lower.

The irony of it all - in the midst of an essay on the rise of commercialism and greed, I am assailed by advertisements. There is the option of clicking on "x" and the ad disappears to be replaced by four options as to why I didn't want to see the ad. The least offensive reason is "I'm not interested in this ad." I am not given the choice of "I don't want to see any ads." Why is this not an option? Could it be the greedy assumption that some people actually want to see ads? It exemplifies the hubris of mega-corporations to only give us choices that we don't actually want. I imagine that someone will create a "result" showing that "most people chose option n" when in fact, people weren't given the option they actually wanted. Rather like elections, don't you think? No wonder society has taken an ugly, greedy turn.

The concept that vast greed in a dynamic and powerful sector of society is a novel occurrence in US and world society is most curious since the rush of Europeans to the Western Hemisphere and the immense destructions of local inhabitants and their cultures after the continents were revealed is not a secret, The USA in particular arose out of the rush for free land and gold and other natural resources. And it has never stopped. It eased under FDR to permit the wealthy to regain impetus out of the wealth gained after the depression but even Truman hastened to contain the advances made under The New Deal and subsequent administrations only increased the pressures to the current very unpleasant condition of the nation.

Mr. Storr seems to be generalizing from the experience of a middle class person of the Boomer generation. In the 1960s, people could afford to be "non materialistic" because the standard of living for the population was so much higher. One could write the great American novel, or painting or play, or rock band or film, while working just a few days a week, if you were willing to live in a beat neighborhood. That is why our culture was so creative then. But in retrospective, the post-war era of 90% income tax on the rich and one third of all workers in labor unions, was the great exception, based partly on the need at that time to compete with the worker centric Socialist societies of the East. Capitalism was not invented by Mrs. Thatcher or Mr. Reagan. But the dismal philosophy of selfishness which Mr. Storr correctly sees as dominant, whether of the explicit Randian version or not, is similarly the product of decades of decline in living standards for most people & a corresponding rise in the power of the rich. The stultifying dullness and ugliness of corporate culture is another.