(This essay is an application of David Reisman’s analyses in The Lonely Crowd and Faces in The Crowd.)
“We pretend no liability for future risks because we’re comfortable knowing we won’t have to pay for them and we allow development without regard for consequences. This view underlies the economics of industrial urban societies.”
The hero stands on the old high wall of the ancient city, speaking to the gathered multitude, who have come there with their hopes and dreams. More about them later, you know who you are.
“It is supported, not only by the rewards of distributed profits for those engaged in damaging enterprises, but also by propaganda that instills values at an early age that equate peer approval with material symbols of economic power. Some choose between starving or taking the only employment available, while others have the temporary illusion of success by choosing employment that allows them to acquire trappings of success: things and relationships based on values they’ve internalized from advertising, video games, narratives. Yet, besides these middle classes, there are countless others without even these choices: those who can’t spare a thought to virtue; little more to life.”
The mainstream personality is today a product of ubiquitous public education in the United States. Social scientists have produced studies that show not only that people today are driven to feel they must survive economically, but also, they must be able to afford to consume things as promoted in media narratives and ads. To feel successful, the industrial urban man or woman anywhere on the globe must be able to display material symbols of power but to act or speak powerfully requires discretion. The mainstream personality type is discrete and though not defined by traditional values as they were in the 19th century, they may only be characteristically revolutionary: Don Quixote, not Ché Guevara.
We mainstream people are Buddhists, Confucian, Christian, Islamic or Humanistic or even engaged in fringe cultures, S&M or evangelical creationism. We are interchangeable in terms of lifestyle and economic choices, equally led by material ambition, whether sex-workers, communication consultants, bankers, engineers, priests or rabbis. We may espouse progressive or liberal, authoritarian or democratic political views, but our lifestyle reflects subordination of inconvenient ideas about environmental stewardship whenever in conflict with material needs, ambitions and fears of loss.
Consuming permeates mainstream culture everywhere. The more self-willed and autonomous are more likely to develop antipathy toward environmentally negligent activities but they are also less likely to carry placards or be activists within a system they may see as absurd. On the other hand, a self-willed, anti-establishment sex-positive person could be just as compelled to material ambition and just as likely to ignore negative impacts of their lifestyle choices, while seeing themselves as anti-establishment. Whether on the fringe or in the center, self-willing or more externally influenced people must equally come to terms with the fact that they are surrounded by people who are self-destructive in their environmental views, guided by desire for peer approval while seeing themselves as conscious and responsible.
Mainstream personality types, who must depend on media to determine their values, are confused when values are inconsistent with their own logic, more so as they age and learn that they are “in the way”. Some, who are frustrated early on by the dichotomy of choosing while not choosing, consult doctors who prescribe medication that attenuates emotional responses, and many others drink alcohol or use marijuana and street opiates and as time goes on, they attribute their predicament to those choices, having forgotten entirely the stress that initially induced them to become users.
Externally directed people, who are comfortable in authoritarian societies and uncomfortable with autonomous freedom, frequently join small social groups–like street gangs and service clubs, and many of them are also drawn to join larger sub-cultural groups that share common values, such as, the law enforcement officers’ professional associations, Scientology and other demi-religious sects. In a more general way, they may identify with sport franchises and their counterparts in the worlds of popular music and video games. In each case, they seek to limit their personal exposure to external direction to specific adopted views and values.
Whether the individual is more self-willing and autonomous or more influenced in their choices by peers, ads and trends, the cost of escaping from the responsibilities of freedom for individuals is a diminution of the capacity for experience with a correlated insulation from nature and reduced quality of intimate connection with others, including members of their own families. While they are certainly not zombies in the classic, physical sense, at the end of the day, based on their actions, their experience of life is somewhat like that of a zombie.