On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Brian Siano wrote:
> This is one of the most truly exasperating aspects about the Left in the
> U.S. It's this insistence that we live under a dictatorship so
> extensive, so all-controlling and pervasive that _nothing_ can truly be
> said to be personal, private, or individual.
The truly exasperating aspect of the U. S. today is the myth that there is a private, personal realm safe from social influence. In fact, this myth of "private space" is itself a product of social relations! --Even something so intimate as your own self-concept has been shaped through social interactions (Cooley, Looking glass self: we internalize how important others see us).
> I wonder if there isn't a weird paradox at work in this sort of
> sentiment. The massive variety of clothing styles available to nearly
> everyone-- a variety that's pretty much unparalleled in human history,
> by the way-- is derided as just another corporate yoke, just another
> variety of Mao jacket or prison oranges imposed by malevolent corporate
> masters to enforce conformity. This means that the mass of citizens can
> be ridiculed as mindless, conformist sheep, unaware of what's _really_
> going on. But, if they are so blind as to unquestioningly wear what's
> given to them, then why expect these mindless cattle to develop their
> own styles at all? Doesn't this indicate that some kind of snobbery is
> at work behind this "corporate yoke" theorizing?
>
Again, the individualist assumption: social influence = mindless, conformist sheep. Do you see that social relations influence and structure our lives without anyone being mindless sheep? Your interpretation of W.'s argument above as "ridicule of the masses" is one of the best examples of naive individualist ideology I could think of.
Miles