You Are Not An Individual
At least not in the way that you imagine
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Individualism is a core American value. It goes hand in hand with a belief in freedom and self-reliance. One of the most desirable things that anyone can be by these standards is a self-made millionaire. It speaks to the almost religious belief that the high calling of individualism will be justly rewarded if undertaken seriously enough.
The only problem with this is that hardly anyone in America is actually an individual. Most people have not done the intentional and laborious work to separate themselves out from their cultural programming and unexamined wounds; merely unconsciously acting out scripts that have been written for them by others. You think you are an individual, in part because that is a highly prized thing to be, but almost certainly, you are not. You are more than likely a meat-puppet driven from behind the scenes by narratives that you have never even given a second thought to.
