Even When The Attention Focused

America Had Shifted From What Influential Cultural Historian Warren Susman Called A Culture Of Character To A Culture Of Personality, And Opened Up A Pandora's Box Of Personal Anxieties Of Which We Would Never Recover.

We're Told That To Be Great Is To Be Bold, To Be Happy Is To Be Sociable. We See Ourselves As A Nation Of Extroverts - Which Means That We've Lost Sight Of Who We Really Are. Depending On Which Study You Consult, One Third To One Half Of Americans Are Introverts - In Other Words, One Out Of Every Two Or Three People You Know.

We Have Two Ears And One Mouth And We Should Use Them Proportionally

But When The Group Is Literally Capable Of Changing Our Perceptions, And When To Stand Alone Is To Activate Primitive, Powerful, And Unconscious Feelings Of Rejection, Then The Health Of These Institutions Seems Far More Vulnerable Than We Think.

The Pressure To Entertain, To Sell Ourselves, And Never To Be Visibly Anxious Keeps Ratcheting Up.