Lonely Heroes

The culture of individualism and its impact on people's lives and politics

We are all special. When we find our authentic self, we will finally be happy. We have to make our own success and life satisfaction, no one will do it for us. We have the right to live our lives in our own way.

How many times have we heard such lessons and we hear them every day... They are all good-sounding advice, but like a lot of good advice, they have a catch: we'll be on our own in the end. In his book Lonely Heroes, Pavel Pospěch focuses on the increasingly important phenomenon of individualism and searches for its social roots and its impact on our everyday life. The explanations he offers are not generational, psychological or technological, but sociological. The rise of self-obsession is not the fault of the spoiled young generations, nor of the ubiquitous social platforms. Individualism is a product of the specific culture we are brought up in from childhood and we are more deeply trapped in it than we would like to think. The culture of individualism makes us the lonely heroes of our own lives and increasingly prevents us from living a meaningful life with the people around us.

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In his book essay, Pavel Pospěch touches upon things and problems that we only distantly suspect in our own lives and sometimes do not even want to admit: even if we reach all the ideals and standards that contemporary society sets before us, we may not be happy. The point, however, is not to blame yourself, but society. Haste offers a much-needed critical look at the culture of our everyday lives, from work to relationships to consumption.

The culture of autonomy is the value framework of the individuation process - it is the packaging that sells individuation as a valuable and worthwhile product. While individualization makes us overburdened managers of our own lives, who must continually seek private solutions to mounting societal problems, the culture of autonomy dresses up this uncertainty in a jubilant wrapper: you have the freedom to choose, you can do things your own way, don't be afraid to be special. Let ordinary and conventional people dream of ordinary and conventional lives. That this culture corrodes social institutions is obvious: ordinary schools look like they're not creative enough. Ordinary political parties look like disciplinary structures that do not respect the individuality of their members.
— excerpt from the book