Individualism

When a person has moved beyond a few pieces of body art and a piercing or two to actually tattoo their face, this really makes a statement to the world. In no uncertain terms, they are clearly indicating that they are fully committed to an alternative lifestyle. A person can have Okuza style full body ink and several pounds of surgical steel jewelry hanging from their nipples and genitalia and still pitch an ad campaign to Proctor and Gamble for Huggies with no one the wiser. However, permanently add a few tribal symbols to your face and you have dramatically limited your employment options.

My wife has said on occasion referring to clients and employees, “I wonder what they would think if they knew I was pierced and tattooed.” Let me give that statement some perspective, my wife has a really cute belly button ring and a teeny tiny ankh tattoo on her hip that actually looks more like Munch’s painting The Scream in crucifixion pose or if she is lying on her side it appears to be a robed alien directing traffic. Both are a far cry from having the ability to put an actual bone through your septum.

But we Americans really like to consider ourselves individuals, outside the box thinkers and terminally unique despite wanting to be accepted and loved by all. The US more than any other sovereign state claims to be the home of the individual this is of course not really true but we have brilliantly branded ourselves as such with “The American Dream” platitudes and cowboy images and therefore own rights to all contemporary claims on individualism. This owes more credit to Leo Burnett than Thomas Jefferson. What is certain is that no other country settled itself and built a subsequent media and marketing empire to promote itself better. Americans will suffer many things from bad food to poor service but we will not suffer a dearth of media choice or poor production values. No, despite our affinity for Dame Judi Dench we will limit our casting of her to no more than two media vehicles annually, we will not have her playing simultaneously on 3 of only 4 channels we broadcast.

The peopling of this land brought legions of folks fleeing all varieties of unpleasantness or just wishing a clean slate. They came to the shores of this beautiful new world leaving all that they knew to start fresh and kill the other people already living here. The mostly poor but also the wealthy, the religious, the criminal and anyone looking for the newer trendier thing, like the Mormons with their hipper latter day deities, all got pretty entrepreneurial pretty darn quick, because dying was a very real possibility in the absence of quick thinking. Just ask anyone from the Lost Colony.

It was how the West was won. These rugged individualists, although producing this brand label would require a Swiss psychiatrist not Ogilvy, setting out for unchartered territories, sometimes a wee bit later in the season than they should have, eating each other and dying anyway. Or killing each other for gold, oil rights, land, etc. But these greedy cannibalistic trailblazers were fulfilling a greater destiny and proving that only the strong survive or the smart ones who wait until spring to attempt the pass. Those folks only lose 30-40% of the family due to starvation and cold, which is infinitely, better than a washout like those impetuous Donners. Of course those 30-40% percent were the weak, the sickly or the ones that just got tired of eating salt cod and hay.

I would rather die than eat salt cod; this is also key for me to proving the coexistence of the evolutionary cycle and fate or the presence of a divine being. It was clear for me to be born into a condition worthy of…well me, it had to come after all this land settling, indigenous people killing and general living in mud, constraining one’s sartorial selection all the time stuff. No my hardship was to be limited to pulpy juices, poly blends and general anxiety and my anxiety is only because I'm not distracted by basic survival needs eating salt cod or a delicious relative.