I should say too that this whole attitude is older than the 60’s; the original Jeffersonian American vision was the self-supporting yeoman farmer. And right no

I should say too that this whole attitude is older than the 60’s; the original Jeffersonian American vision was the self-supporting yeoman farmer. And right now today you have evangelical Christianity and new age spiritualism, which both promise self-actualization in one form or another. In evangelical Christianity you have a personal relationship with god- god talks to you individually and it’s up to you to interpret his wishes. There is no priest or community to tell you what god’s will is. That’s why the evangelicals and the new age people hate each other so much- they’re contesting the same turf. And the thing is- it worked, for a really long time. You can deny collective interests and make everything personal, if you can hand out free land like it’s candy. And then we had the period in the mid 20th century when all Europe was destroyed, and profits were so high that conflicts could be again papered over by crazy fast economic growth. It’s only now that cracks are finally starting to show, now that the economy has globalized and the free stuff is running out. If I’m right about this, then we will see the re-emergence of collective struggle in the next few decades and the decline of the self as the center of all effort and struggle.