Richard J. Severson

Am I naïve in singing the praises of individualism?  Carl Elliott has written many thoughtful essays about why we use self-enhancement technologies to take the edge off some uncomfortable aspect of our social lives.¹ He thinks there is a gap between how we feel on the inside and how we are perceived by others that we try to resolve through medical interventions.  Taking Prozac to feel more comfortable in our own skin is one example.  In Elliott’s view, enhancement technologies are tools that we use to lighten the burdensome obligations we feel to be happy and self-fulfilled.  In that sense, individualism is a curse that we must bear, and trying to find self-fulfillment by standing out in the crowd is a grandiose delusion.  Does the dark side of our individual experience outweigh its transcendental aspirations?  The answer to that question is both yes and no.  Certainly, the potential for petty self-absorption grows stronger as we pursue the perquisites of our own needs and desires with single-minded devotion.  To become addicted to food, drugs, sex, shopping, etc., is all too common.  The tragedy of the consumer society is that we enjoy the consumption of everything far too much than is good for us.  Is self-indulgence an unsavory perversion of individualism as a form of life freed from many prior constraints, or is it an essential ingredient of it? 

I think self-sacrifice comes closer to the biological purpose of individuation than self-indulgence does.  To be free to set aside one’s own well-being for the sake of someone else is a moral expectation that is praiseworthy in any human society.  Only an individual is free to make that kind of judgment about what to do with him/herself.  I watched an Icelandic movie recently about a man who was stranded in the Arctic after his plane went down.² He proved to be very efficient at finding food and staying warm in his damaged plane. It was a minimal existence bereft of any higher purpose than to survive.  Then one day he saw a helicopter, and he assumed his troubles were over.  But it also perished in the harsh conditions.  When he reached the helicopter crash site, the pilot was already dead, but not the copilot.  He pulled her from the wreckage and took her back to his makeshift home.  Nursing her back to health became the whole purpose of his life.  He built an improvised sled so that he could pull her over the ice to a Russian outpost where she could get medical treatment.  It was an arduous and dangerous journey, but he was willing to risk everything to save her.  This film is a metaphor for what matters most to us.  It is in helping someone else that we find the reason to live.  Life only makes sense when we are willing to risk everything to save somebody from harm. 

To expand the circle of our cares is our spiritual quest. 

Notes:

1. Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (Norton, 2003). 
2. Joe Penna, Arctic (Armory Films, 2018).