I've been reading The Fractured Republic and I was stunned at how astute this observation is. I had never really thought about it but Solipsism aptly describes the Philosophy that we're all encouraged to embrace in this culture. Some quotes:
The ethic of our age has been aptly called expressive individualism. That term suggests not only a desire to pursue one’s own path but also a yearning for fulfillment through the definition and articulation of one’s own identity. It is a drive both to be more like whatever you already are and also to live in society by fully asserting who you are. The capacity of individuals to define the terms of their own existence by defining their personal identities is increasingly equated with liberty and with the meaning of some of our basic rights, and it is given pride of place in our self-understanding.
That appeal also motivates some of our nostalgia for midcentury, since Americans in that period could revel in the unquestionable satisfactions of the same kind of liberation without yet really having to endure, or even acknowledge, its costs. Those costs have emerged slowly as the logic of liberation has driven further and further toward the core of our culture. Inevitably, the loosening of social strictures and the blurring of moral boundaries unleashes not only gentle toleration but also harsh chaos. Liberation is meant not to sow disorder, but to free from oppression and conformity. But the moral consensus it breaks—with the best of intentions—was itself well-intentioned. It aimed not to deny freedom to the individual but to provide the order and structure often essential for thriving, and indeed for freedom. This paradox of liberation, a tragedy of good intentions, plagues all modern societies.
Ironically, this profusion of personalized options has therefore in some ways slowed rather than hastened cultural change. As journalist Kurt Andersen has argued, American culture in the second half of the twentieth century saw a seemingly unending procession of innovations, so that from film to fashion to books, music, design, and art the public’s basic cultural environment and experiences changed quite a bit over the decades. But today, an extraordinary number of our most prominent cultural creations are homages to the experience of the past two generations. Hollywood producers remake the movies of their youth, clothing fashions offer a parade of throwbacks, the worlds of art and design seem stuck. If you were shown photos of Americans on a city street in 1955, 1975, and 1995, you would have no trouble telling which was which. But distinguishing 1995 from 2015 by looking at clothing, art, music, or design would not be easy at all. “Even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new,” Andersen wrote.
The solipsism inherent in our expressive individualism propels this culture of nostalgia: if everything is set up to give us what we want, it will all tend to give us what we already know, since our desires often just aren’t very imaginative. Our culture as a whole will, like each of us, tend to become more like what it already is. Ironically, less uniformity and fewer common experiences mean that the power of innovators to introduce new strands into the fabric of society may be diminished.
