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Obsession with the self is the outstanding
characteristic of much of modern American culture. This article
explains why the 1970s have been called .
..
by
Jeff Calkins
T
he banquet hall of the large hotel in downtown Los Angeles is filled
with a certain tension: 249 anxious souls are taking their turns march–
ing up to the microphone and telling the others the one thing in their
lives they would most like to eliminate. Each one is lost in his own deep.
prívate inner space, concentrating on his particular problem: husband, wife,
weaknesses, craven fears, impotence, frigidity, grim habits. primordial hor–
rors. The most prívate, intimate details of 249 individual lives are rever–
berating over the loudspeaker! For one delicious moment, each person
attending this mass confession gets to be the object of everyone's attention.
After concentrating on their own lives, they get to bathe in the intense glow
of the psychological spotlight.
The above sccne, an Erhard Seminar Training (est) meeting, is described
in more vivid detail by journalist Tom Wolfe in his book
Mauve Gloves and
Madmen, Clulter and Vine.
As the lit le of his book indicates, M
r.
Wolfe has a
keen eye for what is culturally avant-garde; as a novelist be has specialized in
the stylistic trends that mark modero society. He chronicles the fashionable
styles and trends which begin with the " Beautiful People," are taken up by
the affluent, upper-middle class, and eventually filter on down to the rest of
us. Mr. Wolfe is a specialist in what's "in." And what's "in," says Mr. Wolfe,
is self. We are living, he says, in the "Me Decade." The 1970s is a decade in
which everyone is "shut deep in their own prívate space," a decade where
everyone is consumed with one solitary notion: " Let's talk about me," an era
dedicated to the cultivation of self.
Mr. Wolfe's characterization has not escaped other observers either. Other
writers have taken note of the "New Narcissism," and the "Great Turning
Inward." The magazines which cater to the affluent upper-middle class,
largely because they themselves must stay on top of "fashion," are a lso
preoccupied with the discovery that the aspect most peculiar to American
culture in the 1970s is selfishness. The staff of
Time,
for example, writes
about the self-idolization inherent in the current crop of "get-ahead" books,
and Henry Farlie in the
New Republic
traces all the seven deadly sins, which
are so characteristic of
our
time, back to our vaunting of the solitary self. To
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