Young Boomers are always remembered in crowds—overcrowded classrooms, antiwar demonstrations, en masse streaks, Woodstock and Altamont, communes, cults, lined up around the block for the premieres of Jaws and Star Wars. But they are not remembered for community. Boomers venerated self. They were surrounded by others but joined the crowd in order to pursue their own individual bliss. In the midst of others, Boomers were utterly unto themselves.
The primacy of the indulgent self at the beginning of the 1980s intensified this thoroughgoing self-absorption. As part of the New Realism, the focus on self became more aggressively competitive and selfish. Today, the imperative of self-invention ratchets up this insular focus yet ...
