Like most things American, it arrives here a couple of decades later. West Side Story seemed horrific to me, way back in the 1960s - the idea of knife fights and even guns!! Now, such stuff is played out in my back yard on a daily basis.
There was incest in Shakespeare. Do you blame him for present aberrations?
There is a religious fundamentalist self-belief along the lines of the wackoes and Waco, the Hale-Bopp sect and the Jim Jones followers. It's the Columbine-style ego madness which tolerates no opposition.
These are tiny minorities that are produced in any country with 300 million citizens. Absolutely, positively not the norm.
The problem, Mq, is universal. The aberrant will be highlighted everywhere, and a few bad apples will imitate the aberrations. Neither the aberrant nor their imitators are the norm, neither here nor in Kiwiland. They are, however, much more disturbing and noticeable. It's the reason why every older generation since the ancient Greeks says that the youngsters are going to hell in a handbasket. Somehow, we survive and we thrive.
Not that there are a few disturbing trends. I don't like our Attorney General one bit--a pompous religionist zealot who has no respect for the Bill of Rights. He's a temporary fixture, however. The courts can take care of him without too much trouble.
What's so bad about good driving? I like to drive with a bit of a lead foot, and I'm grateful that the rest of the Sheeple are stolid, two hands on the wheel, types.
The conventional wisdom of powerful individuality in the USA more a thing of the past than of the present. Now, life is best represented by the freeway, the mall, the couch, the remote and the cubicle.
I dare say that you are partially correct. A sizeable bunch of the populace fits that description. But that's the case anywhere, though it might be in a different form. The imaginative and creative forces, however, are very much alive. People like Dr. J., Gates, etc., abound, though perhaps they have not achieved the level of success that those two have. And in any event, we're talking about individuality and creativity, not wealth, aren't we?
My favourite example remains the many 'ethnic' women on the Oprah show, primping over how special their wonderful individual cultures were, but they all looked like clones of each other
I routinely comment ot my wife how ridiculous adolescents look. All those attempts to individualize their look through piercings, haircuts, etc., and they somehow manage to all look alike. Ironically, it's all a part of setting oneself apart from the crowd while at the same time identifying with a particular group. This bit is not supportive of your argument. In complex cultures, sub-sets separate themselves from the mainstream. In doing so, they destroy homogeneity and increase individuality even though they look terribly homogenous within their own subset.
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