0:03

We live in a world of personal branding

0:05

and sell fees. Encouraged or

0:07

exhorted, To be authentic

0:09

and live our best lives. Doesn't

0:13

it all seem a little bit

0:15

narcissistic? I man, Strange amps. And

0:17

in today's episode, when did it

0:20

become so important to develop a

0:22

unique and authentic personal identity? And

0:24

is there a hidden cost? Miss

0:27

our the cult of the self?

0:29

onto the best of our knowledge.

0:39

Wisconsin Public Radio. This.

0:47

Episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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to the best of our knowledge, I mans

1:22

drain champs. I don't have that much of

1:24

a social media. Presence. Mostly.

1:27

Because it seems kind of stressful. Representing

1:30

years of online carried in

1:32

your image, developing your personal

1:34

brand, But. Then I have

1:37

the luxury of not being a digital native.

1:40

I didn't grow up having to

1:42

figure out who I am online.

1:45

But I know someone who did. Producer.

1:48

Angelo about Easter. Who.

1:52

Are you. Angelo party

1:54

style. date

1:56

of birth august twenty second

1:58

nineteen any five username,

2:02

password, login.

2:09

When I was five years old, I dreamed

2:11

of being in the internet. Not

2:14

on the internet, but inside of it. My

2:18

intro to the world wide web actually was

2:20

not on the computer, but through the

2:22

Japanese animated TV series Digimon, Digital

2:24

Monsters. Where

2:30

a special group of kids get sucked into

2:33

the digital world, discover their Digimon

2:35

companions, use their digivices to make

2:37

them digivolves, become Digimon masters, go

2:39

on adventures and beat up the

2:41

baddies. I

2:46

wanted to be the master of my own digi-destiny.

2:51

The real world just didn't compare. In

2:55

sixth grade, I witnessed the beginnings

2:57

of YouTube stardom. I

2:59

desperately wanted to become a YouTuber with my

3:01

own show. The name

3:03

I came up with was The Random Show because

3:06

I had no idea what I wanted to say

3:08

or who I wanted to be. That

3:10

dream was cancelled before I ever even pressed record.

3:13

But my desire to perform as me on the

3:16

internet never stopped pulling me. In

3:19

seventh grade, like all my friends, I

3:21

ditched my emo-themed Myspace page for a

3:23

shiny new Facebook wall. Every

3:26

day I wrote, hoping to elicit likes. In

3:38

eighth grade, when my parents found out I

3:41

liked a boy I'd only ever met on Facebook, I

3:43

cried in the bathroom and wrote up a coming out

3:46

post. Might as well

3:48

make the personal public. What

3:50

I thought was a liberating act instead

3:53

felt exposing. Without

3:56

A second thought, I shared the part of myself

3:58

that scared me the most with everyone. And.

4:00

I wasn't ready. He

4:02

deleted the post the next day. In

4:05

ninth grade, my tumblr blog became my

4:08

little museum of self expression. My.

4:11

Blog was filled with photos of male

4:13

fashion models, means, and Lady Gaga lyrics

4:15

all adding up to what I thought

4:17

was the coolest version of myself. But

4:20

I had my first taste of internet

4:22

backlash after I made an insensitive post

4:24

complaining about how on some days I

4:26

felt too skinny. And.

4:29

Like my self esteem, I watched my follower

4:31

count plummet. Once.

4:33

I entered college. My over sharing era

4:35

on tumbler came to a close. To.

4:42

Do stayed with me though I

4:44

remember coming across this new word

4:46

from the dictionary of obscure sorrows.

4:49

The word is saw under Fire,

4:51

a noun meaning the realization that

4:53

eat random passer branded passers by

4:55

his living a life as vivid

4:58

and complex as your own. I

5:02

think about Sounder every day. Now

5:08

as an adult, sits on the cusp

5:11

of millennial and Nz I'm torn about

5:13

social media. I

5:16

saw her social media mission to

5:18

connect us in turn isolated s.

5:21

And yet I'm still addicted to the

5:23

scrolling. I'm

5:26

addicted to seeing other people, my

5:28

friends. Posting about their lives

5:31

and being their past authentic selves whatever

5:33

that means. They

5:35

eat it up Eleven. It

5:38

now I can't bring myself to do the same.

5:43

I. Can become alert her. Pre

5:51

Pandemic I used to love going to

5:53

parties. That's

5:55

how social media feels to me. standing

5:58

outside of apart I'm invited to. I'm

6:01

right at the door, looking inside. I want

6:04

to go in. It looks

6:06

so fun. Everyone

6:09

is playing. They're laughing. They're dancing.

6:13

Sharing, commenting, arguing, protesting. Look at

6:15

this. By this. Look at me.

6:18

Look at me. But

6:21

the party is so noisy. And

6:23

the room is so full. Why even

6:25

bother trying to squeeze in? What

6:27

would I add? What difference would I make?

6:31

But if you're not at the party, it kind

6:34

of feels like you don't exist. It

6:37

feels like the absence of

6:39

thunder. Let's

6:44

be real. Maybe you're thinking, I need

6:46

to get off my phone. You're right. I do.

6:49

I could use a break, spend more time

6:51

in the real world. But then

6:53

I remember how bad it is out there. And I'm pulled

6:55

right back in. Real

6:57

life used to be seen as an escape from the

7:00

internet. Now it

7:02

seems the internet is more the escape from

7:04

real life. And I'm not sure

7:06

where that leaves me. I

7:09

don't think the answer to my struggle

7:11

is to just give up, leave social

7:13

media behind and stop trying to project

7:15

this digital self. But

7:17

something's got to give. When

7:21

I was five years old, I dreamed of

7:23

being inside the internet. Today,

7:27

that's where we all are. It's

7:29

where we live. And

7:31

in the internet, if you're there, but

7:33

nobody sees you, do

7:36

you exist? Producer

7:47

Angelo Bautista. Coming

7:51

up, Tara Isabella Burton on the

7:53

religious roots of our obsession with the

7:55

self. with

8:00

Albrecht Durer in 1500, his self-portrait, often

8:03

considered the first selfie, where

8:06

he presents himself as a kind

8:08

of demigod. He sort of portrays

8:10

himself as Jesus. It's

8:13

to the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin

8:15

Public Radio and PRX.

8:27

Do you ever worry that you're not living your

8:29

best life? Deep

8:32

down, you know. That inner

8:34

demon we all share. I

8:41

know it's advertising, but there

8:43

is an implicit assumption and a lot

8:46

of what we see and hear online

8:48

today that the most important pursuit in

8:50

life is self-creation. You don't decide

8:52

how your story begins. Even angels will

8:54

call. You do it to decide how

8:57

it ends. Optimizing, curating, branding yourself. That

8:59

boy that told you to stop, you're

9:01

going to defeat him. What's your name?

9:03

All of greatness is for us. Because

9:06

in a crowded marketplace, how else will you

9:08

be seen? There's nothing more empowering than choice.

9:10

We will pay for quality after the minute

9:12

you felt to be just one thing. But

9:17

the construction of personal identity has

9:20

long history. You need a miracle.

9:22

Listen to me, Judy. Just love your god and

9:24

tell it the great good. Tara

9:29

Isabella Burton is a writer and social

9:31

critic with a background in history and

9:34

theology. And to her mind, our

9:36

current obsession with personal identity

9:38

and self-creation actually has

9:41

deeply religious roots. Her

9:43

new book, Self-Made, traces its history

9:45

from Da Vinci to the Kardashian.

9:52

You can't follow. You have to

9:54

find it. I can't what I hear. The

10:02

story that I trace is the development

10:05

of this idea that certain people who

10:07

are able to create their own destinies

10:09

or create their own public personae are

10:12

kind of demigods. And this goes

10:14

from an idea that some people,

10:16

a few of them might be selected by

10:18

God to have this opportunity, they're the exception

10:20

that proves the rule, to

10:23

a world in the present

10:25

day where it's both more

10:27

democratic and also more

10:30

of a prison because everyone is expected to

10:32

create their own identity and shape their own

10:34

destiny. And if you don't do that, it

10:36

means you failed as a human being. You

10:39

over and over again talk about

10:41

this underlying belief in our, in

10:44

a kind of divinity. We're

10:46

supposed to become gods or demigods.

10:48

Can you explain that a little bit

10:50

more? Because I don't think

10:52

that the average person going on social media, trying

10:55

to represent their best self or come up

10:57

with a personal brand online, I don't think

11:00

that they actually think that they're trying

11:02

to become God-like. Yeah, absolutely. I

11:04

think this is a story about

11:06

religion as much as anything else.

11:09

And this idea of self-making and self-creation is

11:12

not specific to the US, but it's in

11:14

the United States, particularly in the second half

11:16

of the 19th century, that it gets fused

11:18

with what I often think is one of

11:21

the most underrated religious movements

11:23

in world history. And that is the

11:25

self-help spiritualist movement known as New Thought,

11:28

which sort of starts out with the faith healing in

11:30

the 1860s. A

11:32

mix of pseudoscience and spiritualism is this idea

11:34

that there's this force, this energy, these

11:36

vibes out there in the universe. And

11:38

if you focus on what you want hard

11:40

enough, you can get in touch with this electrical

11:43

undercurrent of the universe. You can harness

11:45

it. Towards the end of the

11:48

19th century, this starts to be applied not just

11:50

to health, but to wealth. There

11:52

becomes a real cottage industry and

11:54

self-help books, basically proto

11:56

versions of the secret or manifesting

11:59

or contemporary. versions of the

12:01

same thing. Some of those books are

12:03

still around and are still, you know,

12:05

still have cult following. So I'm thinking,

12:07

sink and grow rich. Absolutely. Or there

12:09

are others. Yeah, the power of positive

12:12

thinking, Norman Vincent Peale. If

12:14

you dream it, you can have it. It

12:16

intensifies this idea that what it means to be human

12:18

is to create ourselves and that we are the closest

12:21

thing to God's in the universe. Now,

12:23

sometimes you get people talking about this

12:25

very explicitly. I'm always struck when I

12:27

see like wellness ads on Instagram, oh,

12:30

by my goddess within you, your divine

12:32

power, your divine. I think that it's

12:34

so normal now that we don't think,

12:37

wow, a few hundred years ago, like

12:39

this would have been a really, really

12:41

controversial statement. Yeah, you could have been

12:44

burned at the stake for it. Yeah. But

12:46

now it's just advertising jargon.

12:48

Well, there's also this bedrock

12:51

of fascist ideology. You

12:53

draw out this connection between

12:55

this doctrine of self creation and self

12:57

making on the rise of authoritarian leaders

13:00

in the early 20th century, like Hitler

13:02

and Mussolini. There's two different

13:04

paths that this idea of the self maker

13:06

take in the 19th century, but

13:08

I think are actually more, more similar than they

13:10

appear. And one is the one

13:12

we've been talking about this American idea of where

13:15

it's the good news is anyone can get rich.

13:17

But if you don't, it means it's your fault. In

13:20

Europe, the idea of the self creator is

13:22

a little more fraught. Obviously, we're

13:24

working against the backdrop of a hereditary

13:26

aristocracy and decline. We're working against the

13:29

idea that just some people have an

13:31

innate specialness and it's not money, but

13:33

it's also not thirst. It's the secret

13:36

Thursday, some special again,

13:38

God like quality. And

13:40

people like Nietzsche take this idea

13:43

up. And they again, given a

13:45

more explicit theological cast that God

13:48

is dead, this sort of old order,

13:50

including old values is gone. And

13:53

what we need is in Nietzsche's view,

13:55

it's not weakness or kindness, which he

13:57

sees as sort of Judeo Christian vestiges.

14:00

of this fake religion, but rather power

14:02

and strength. So this is the rise

14:04

of the Ubermensch. Exactly, the Ubermensch,

14:06

just the sort of ultimate

14:08

natural aristocrat. And so the

14:11

idea that some people are just better than

14:13

others and that if you are better,

14:16

the way to sort of express that is

14:18

to wield power over others. And the

14:20

next best thing is maybe attaching yourself

14:22

to someone who can sell you the

14:24

fantasy of being a part of it.

14:26

You can't be Mussolini, the next best

14:28

thing is being a follower of Mussolini.

14:30

And that's very powerful as

14:32

a political force in the early

14:34

20th century in Europe, the

14:37

same way as it becomes in a very different way,

14:39

very powerful as an economic force in America in the

14:41

sort of heyday of advertising.

14:43

If you're a normie, you've

14:45

failed. And that's true today as it

14:47

ever was. So this is

14:49

why you call capitalist consumption in

14:52

America, you call a warped mirror

14:54

image of the fascist cult of

14:56

personality. I don't think I'll ever

14:58

pick up a copy of Vogue and look at it the

15:00

same way. I mean,

15:02

I think that what unites these two seemingly

15:05

disparate worldviews is a sense that

15:08

there's sort of three kinds of people. There's the sheep who

15:10

don't know their sheep, there's the

15:12

specials, and then there's the

15:15

sheep who maybe would buy products

15:17

that make them feel special. I

15:20

feel like there were

15:22

early ads, I don't remember if they were for

15:24

cold cream or what, but say things like all

15:27

around you, people are watching. Oh

15:30

yeah, I think that's Woodbury's shaving

15:32

cream. Everyone

15:34

is judging you, everyone is watching you. There's one for

15:36

like writing paper that's like your friends are all judging

15:38

you because you're not using the right writing paper. But

15:41

my favorite ad from the 20s that I think gets at the

15:43

heart of a lot of what we're talking about from around 1928,

15:47

it's very correspondence course called personal

15:49

magnetism. Though, our advertisement reads,

15:52

you have it, everyone has it,

15:54

but not one person in a thousand knows how

15:56

to use it. And that's

15:59

a really interesting. reframing of these

16:01

tensions, hard work, inateness, authenticity, which

16:03

is that everybody

16:05

sort of has the capacity

16:07

to unlock some inner power.

16:10

But only people who want it badly enough and

16:12

are willing to buy this book or this correspondence

16:15

course are going

16:17

to be able to have the kind of it

16:19

that it takes to get ahead, whether it's

16:21

to become a then nascent Hollywood star or

16:24

become a successful businessman, that

16:27

it's about cultivating your innate

16:29

unis by wanting it

16:31

badly enough that makes you one of

16:33

the specials. Right. And so this is

16:36

where I think we've arrived today at

16:38

this particular place in our culture where

16:40

the tension between authenticity

16:43

and inauthenticity, reality and

16:45

unreality, it's like the

16:47

substrate we swim in. I think

16:49

Donald Trump is the apotheosis of this, right?

16:52

But I feel like this question about

16:55

what's real and what's not real is

16:57

just there everywhere today. Absolutely.

16:59

There's a deep nihilism in it that's only

17:01

intensified by the fact that social media and

17:03

the Internet more broadly means that more and

17:06

more of us live our lives in realms

17:08

that do change depending on what we want.

17:10

You know, the algorithm shows us different

17:13

news headlines depending on what we click on.

17:16

Different advertisements depend on what we already like.

17:18

That becomes the truth. It affects how people

17:20

vote. It affects how policies get made. There

17:23

becomes a sense that truth is what you make

17:25

it and whatever one might make

17:27

of Donald Trump. He's very explicit about that.

17:30

He's very influenced by Norman

17:33

Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive

17:35

Thinking, was his family pastor. I

17:37

did not know that until I read your

17:39

book. I find that just astonishing that direct

17:41

he's in the direct lineage of new thought.

17:43

Oh, absolutely. Norman Vincent Peale officiated,

17:45

I believe it was his second wedding, Trump's

17:48

second wedding. Trump's even written

17:50

explicitly about this, spoken explicitly about

17:52

this. Yeah, you know, it's

17:54

what you do. You massage the truth a

17:56

little bit. You say that you're a bazillionaire and then

17:58

you become a bazillionaire because every Everybody gives you

18:00

money to invest. That's how

18:03

it works. What does he call it? Truthful hyperbole.

18:05

Truthful, exactly. I mean, that's the idea

18:07

that if you convince people of stuff,

18:10

it becomes real. And so I have

18:12

always understood that about Donald Trump. I

18:14

think most of us have. What I

18:16

have struggled to understand are the authoritarian

18:19

tendencies. Yeah, I think he kind

18:21

of combines imagery from the Nietzschean tradition of

18:23

the Uber mensch with this kind of P.T.

18:26

Barnum humbug, because if power is

18:28

making people think stuff, true

18:31

power is convincing people of things because that's

18:33

how reality gets made. Then he

18:36

is one of the ones who, according

18:38

to this logic, is one of the specials at the top

18:40

of the heap. And so

18:42

I see him very much as an inheritor of both

18:44

of these traditions. He is not

18:46

an anomaly in American culture at all.

18:49

So given this historical

18:52

backdrop, what's your take

18:54

on the influencer economy today?

18:57

It's the natural extension of the fact that we all

19:00

have to build our own brands, that self-creation is not

19:02

just something we do, it's something that

19:04

we sell and that one of our jobs is

19:06

not just to work hard and be

19:08

virtuous and make middle class money.

19:10

Our job is to use everything

19:13

at our disposal to create ourselves

19:15

as brands, as commodities. And

19:17

the influencer whose authentic lifestyle is

19:19

an excuse to sell products is

19:22

like the apotheosis of that. And

19:25

I believe something like 80% of

19:27

members of Generation Z in one poll said that

19:29

they would be willing to post on social media

19:31

for money. And actually, I recently, last week,

19:34

I was teaching a college class on self-made to

19:36

18 to 22-year-olds, and I did quick show of

19:38

hands. Pretty much everyone in the room said

19:40

they would post BonCon for $1,000. It's

19:43

even now gotten to the point where there was

19:45

an article in The Atlantic a couple of years

19:47

ago that people were pretending to be influencers when

19:49

they weren't. They were pretending that things were constant

19:51

content when they weren't because it was cool. They

19:54

wanted their friends to think that they were someone who

19:56

got brand deals. So they were pretending

19:58

to be influencers saying like... to spawn

20:00

con when it wasn't. So that's

20:02

so interesting that it's

20:05

not enough just to have an

20:07

identity to quote unquote, know who

20:09

you are or have things that

20:11

you like. Now

20:13

it's fundamentally about selling. You're

20:15

not a good enough person somehow if you're

20:17

not selling yourself. Absolutely,

20:19

because you're not cultivating yourself, you're not making the

20:21

most of what you have, like that personal magnetism

20:24

adds to the 20s. You're

20:26

not using the power you have.

20:29

That I think is very dangerous. I think fewer

20:31

and fewer of us have a really robust conception

20:33

of a private life because all

20:36

of our lives are reimagined as content.

20:38

And I do see, I live in New York City and

20:41

there's so many places, including

20:43

restaurants, bars, that very

20:45

obviously exist for social media. You

20:48

hear restaurants talking about how they don't

20:50

focus on the taste of the food

20:52

anymore. What really matters is a really

20:55

visually exciting meal that will play well

20:57

on TikTok. The

20:59

idea that experiences exist in

21:02

order to create content rather than the

21:04

other way around, to me is

21:06

very frightening. It's interesting.

21:09

I think everybody feels like they do have a private

21:11

self, but now you're

21:13

responsible for creating a narrated

21:16

self. I guess going back to

21:18

your idea that we are as gods, yeah, we've

21:20

made a creation and now we're

21:23

populating it with narrated

21:25

versions of ourselves. Very

21:27

unsettling. I do think

21:29

sometimes that the only people who

21:31

can be offline are the truly

21:34

wealthy, for the

21:36

truly successful. I feel like I'll

21:38

know I've made it when I don't have to have

21:40

a smartphone. When

21:43

I'm fancy enough that I don't need to chase reviews, I

21:45

don't need to promote my book because I know it'll sell

21:48

anyway, where I have a flip phone, my assistant will read my

21:50

emails and call me on my flip phone. I

21:52

think that privacy and being offline are

21:55

gonna become luxury goods, that the

21:57

wealthiest and most successful among us can afford to

21:59

have. and the rest of us can't.

22:01

So maybe the next ethos of the

22:03

specialness will be the people who unplug,

22:05

who become invisible. Thank

22:08

you so much. This was chilling and fascinating.

22:11

Thank you. Dara

22:19

Isabella Burton is the author of Self

22:21

Made, creating our identities

22:23

from Da Vinci to Kardashian.

22:26

Also check out her new novel here

22:28

in Avalon. America

22:35

has been an individualistic nation pretty

22:38

much since its founding. Personal

22:40

identity is enshrined in our Constitution

22:43

and Bill of Rights, part of

22:45

what it means to be American.

22:48

But social criticalness accord has come

22:50

to think that the American ideal

22:52

of the self-reliance, self-made, rugged individual

22:55

is in fact a lie. In

22:58

her book Bootstrapped, she argues

23:00

that even the people we associate most

23:02

with the gospel of self-reliance didn't

23:05

live up to it themselves. If

23:07

you go back to Little House on the Prairie

23:09

Rider, Laura Ingalls Wilder, or to

23:11

the transcendentalist icons Ralph Waldo Emerson and

23:14

Henry David Thoreau, Alyssa

23:16

says they're not who we think. Shannon

23:19

and Rick Gleiber wanted to know more. I

23:23

really like how you trace this

23:25

through history, this idea of individualism.

23:27

And let's go back to

23:30

Emerson and Thoreau and your trip to

23:32

Walden Pond. When you imagine

23:35

transcendentalism, it sounds pretty

23:37

good, right? I mean, simple living, nature,

23:39

spirituality, it sounds like a good life.

23:42

But even that wasn't quite true, the story

23:44

of Emerson and Thoreau. And tell us a

23:47

little bit about why that is, you know,

23:49

why Walden was not quite the way we

23:51

might imagine it in the gloriousness and why

23:53

does that matter? To

23:55

me, it was really important when I started looking

23:57

into Emerson and Thoreau's biographies.

24:00

because Emerson came

24:03

from relative wealth. He depended on the fortune

24:05

of his first wife, Ellen, for much of

24:07

the funding that allowed him to work on

24:09

his life of the mind. So

24:11

after she passed away, he was able

24:13

to support his family and on occasion,

24:16

his friends after suing her people for

24:18

his share of her largest state. And

24:21

yeah, there's no shame in that. But the

24:23

idea of self-reliance and some of the language

24:25

that he came up with to

24:28

describe how people, individuals need to

24:31

place themselves on their own petard, etc.

24:33

He was not quite doing right. And

24:36

neither was Thoreau who was dependent on

24:38

Emerson and also dependent on

24:40

a whole social circle. So one of the

24:42

things that was kind of amusing about reading

24:45

Walden again, if you thinking, actually, the guy

24:47

was hanging out with

24:49

his friends constantly. And he

24:52

had like, I read all this stuff during COVID,

24:54

when we were actually isolated, I was thinking, no

24:56

way, like, he had a community.

24:58

He had totally had a community and it was

25:01

kind of a righteous one. And, you know,

25:03

there's the famous thing that his mother, you know, helped him out.

25:05

His mother was doing his cleaning for

25:07

him. And he saw Emerson

25:10

all the time. And he was in

25:12

constant exchange, both Emerson and he that's

25:14

part of the transcendentalist, that's their circle

25:16

was that they were in constant contact with each other.

25:18

And they put out

25:20

famous magazine, the dial and the

25:23

opposite of this isolated existence. Alyssa,

25:26

you take aim at Laura

25:28

Ingalls Wilder and the rugged

25:30

individualism of her books

25:32

and the show that followed the

25:35

self-made pioneer, the iconic self-made pioneer.

25:37

What problems do you have with

25:39

that? Well, part of

25:41

the problem was her family were

25:43

beneficiaries of the Homestead Act, which was an 1862

25:46

huge land giveaway. And this

25:49

idea that they were doing this all

25:51

on their own is truly false. And

25:53

the number of adult

25:55

descendants of the original Homestead Act recipients

25:58

has been estimated to be 40,000. 6

26:00

million Americans and they have gone on

26:03

to benefit from this giveaway

26:05

and they're almost entirely white. They

26:08

were able to often to get this land through the

26:10

dislocation of indigenous people. So

26:12

this idea that this text is

26:14

all about like plucky Laura, Pa

26:17

who's this great farmer, all doing

26:19

it themselves, moving to the West,

26:22

he rested on a lie. And I think we

26:25

need to look at that lie because otherwise we'll

26:27

believe the propaganda. And the reason that

26:30

I say propaganda is it was. I

26:32

mean, Laura Ingalls Wilder published eight books

26:34

between 1932 and 1943. He

26:39

sold 60 million copies roughly. And

26:41

that period was the depression. She

26:43

was a conservative leaning

26:46

person. Her daughter was a

26:48

rabid libertarian, Rose, and it

26:50

was aimed at FDR in the New Deal.

26:53

These books were a critique

26:55

of whatever they call

26:57

it handouts and they were who

27:00

very and they were in praise of

27:02

Hoover who promulgated the term rugged individualism.

27:04

So they had a political function. So I think

27:06

we need to focus on that, especially when

27:08

we have our seven, eight and nine year

27:10

olds reading it still to

27:12

recognize that they're getting this ideology fed to

27:15

them. I loved Laura

27:17

Ingalls Wilder growing up. We're similar

27:19

age, we're Gen X and it

27:21

was part of my memories of

27:23

childhood. But then when

27:25

I had daughters and you have

27:28

a daughter, I started to read

27:30

the little house books to my

27:32

daughters and I found myself skipping

27:34

passages. When you

27:36

were growing up, were you like me where you

27:38

thought it was wonderful? And then it took parenthood

27:40

for you to change your view on it. Oh

27:42

my God, completely Shannon. I had

27:44

this, you know, romantic view of it. Yeah, when I

27:47

was reading to her the books in which she was

27:49

reading them herself when she was like six

27:51

or seven or eight and they

27:53

had slurs against indigenous people. They

27:56

were clearly propagandistic.

28:00

And I watched the show with my daughter and I

28:02

was like, how do I let

28:04

her enjoy this yet? Tell her

28:06

that these messages are kind

28:09

of false. And so by the end of that

28:11

chapter, actually she had gotten the memo. I

28:14

mean, the things I loved when I was looking

28:16

into, again, with the biography was that Pa was

28:18

a terrible farmer. And when

28:20

I found that out, I was like, oh

28:22

my gosh, I love this because he got

28:24

every benefit, homestead act, got land, but his

28:26

neighbors were helping him farm. When

28:29

we look at rugged individualism, why would

28:31

you say that's not a good thing

28:33

for Americans? If it

28:36

was in a vacuum and we were told

28:38

to pray to the God of rugged individualism,

28:40

I'd say fine. But the problem

28:42

is it sort of incentivized voters

28:45

to believe in the self-made man myths.

28:48

And the latest result of that was

28:50

in part the election of Donald Trump,

28:52

who voters believed was a self-made man,

28:54

which is very interesting. Obviously he wasn't.

28:58

It's allowed for social

29:00

programs to be gutted, for people

29:02

to have difficulty accessing everything

29:05

from Medicaid to SNAP.

29:08

So that story is part of the thing that permits

29:11

lawmakers to do these things, because they know

29:13

that the voters have been inculcated in this.

29:16

And it's in our human nature, right?

29:18

And in biology, to be social

29:21

creatures who rely on each other, right?

29:23

And what happens if we don't do

29:25

that? I mean, during the

29:27

pandemic, there was a split around that, right? Because

29:29

we were both incredibly dependent in new ways. There

29:31

was a rise of mutual aid. There was a

29:33

rise of other kinds of

29:35

care vehicles within communities. But at the same

29:38

time, there was a ton of isolation. And

29:40

if you look at the depression and anxiety

29:42

levels, that's like a huge sample group

29:44

of what happens when we're not interrelating.

29:48

You quote the poet Adrienne Rich in your book. And

29:50

I know she didn't mean it for that time, but

29:52

it struck me as that time you say, in

29:55

those years, people will say, we lost track

29:57

of the meaning of we, of you.

30:00

we found ourselves reduced to I.

30:04

And it really struck me as caregiving,

30:06

mental health. Is

30:08

that how you meant that to resonate? Oh,

30:11

completely. I read this poem over and over

30:13

again during the pandemic because I felt like

30:16

that's what was happening. We were being

30:18

reduced to I, and I wanted

30:20

to, just personally, I wanted to be close to

30:22

the we. If I had a

30:24

religion, it would be the religion of

30:26

this kind of care and willingness

30:29

to be visibly dependent oneself and to

30:31

respond to other people's dependence and not

30:33

to shame them or blame them for

30:35

it, not to stigmatize it as codependence.

30:37

I think that would be an article

30:39

of faith for me. That's

30:46

Alyssa quart, the author of

30:48

Bootstrapped, liberating ourselves from the American

30:51

dream, talking with Shannon Henry

30:53

Clyburn. So

30:57

I don't know, is focusing

30:59

on yourself really such a terrible thing?

31:02

Does it have to be? Maybe

31:04

we need to go back to the origins of

31:07

individualism because there was

31:09

a time when placing yourself at

31:11

the center of the universe was

31:13

liberating, even thrilling. And

31:15

believe it or not, we can pinpoint

31:18

the precise moment, even the place where

31:20

that idea was born. How

31:23

we are today, you know, from taking selfies

31:25

to self-fulfillment as this kind

31:27

of aspiration or mantra, I think it

31:29

all comes from these very short years

31:31

in Yena at the end of the

31:33

18th century. Meet

31:35

the scandalous band of rebel poets

31:38

and philosophers who created modern identity.

31:41

Next. I'm Anne Strangamps.

31:43

It's to the best of our knowledge. From

31:46

Wisconsin Public Radio, S-E-R-S.

31:54

S-E-R-S. Two

32:04

hundred years ago, a group of

32:06

renegade German writers and philosophers came

32:08

together in a small town and

32:11

forever changed who we think we

32:13

are. That's the

32:15

story Andrea Wolf tells in her book

32:17

Magnificent Rebels, the first romantics and the

32:19

invention of the cell. So

32:22

it's not often that you come across a

32:24

work of intellectual history with a plot like

32:26

a Netflix series, but Magnificent

32:29

Rebels is a rare and riveting

32:31

book. Steve Falson for one

32:33

couldn't put it down. It's

32:35

the story of the birth of an idea that

32:37

changed the world, a new vision

32:39

of what it means to be a self,

32:42

to have a unique individual personal

32:45

identity. But it

32:47

reads like an 18th century bachelorette

32:50

with a bunch of charismatic geniuses hopping in and

32:52

out of bed with each other. And

32:54

it all begins, as all good stories do,

32:57

with a remarkable woman, Carolina

33:00

Schlegel. She

33:05

was a woman who really refused

33:07

to be restricted by the

33:09

role that society

33:11

had intended for her. She

33:14

spoke several languages fluently. She

33:16

was beautiful. She was witty. She

33:18

was educated and she was

33:20

fiercely independently minded. And

33:23

she married young, but she was widowed

33:25

by the age of 24. So

33:28

she hung out with German revolutionaries

33:30

only to be then imprisoned by

33:33

the Prussians for being a

33:35

sympathizer with the French revolution. So she

33:38

and her seven-year-old daughter, Auguste, ended

33:41

up in prison for several months. And

33:43

not only that, in prison,

33:45

she discovered that she was pregnant

33:47

after a one-night stand with an

33:49

18-year-old French soldier after a while,

33:51

ball night, which was

33:54

quite something at a time when it was seen

33:56

as being pretty scandalous just to

33:58

be on your own. with a man

34:00

in a room. She was not

34:02

really deterred by these obstacles. So

34:05

after her imprisonment, she zigzagged through

34:07

Germany. She was treated like an

34:09

outcast. She was called a revolutionary

34:11

whore. So then the

34:13

young writer August Wilhelm Schliegl came

34:16

to her rescue. So he married her,

34:18

gave her a new name and weather, a new beginning,

34:20

and then took her in 1796 to Jena, which was

34:22

this small

34:26

town in Germany, about

34:29

150 miles southwest of

34:31

Berlin, where she became

34:33

the heart of the Yina set. Just

34:36

an amazing story. And I get the sense

34:38

from what you write that you

34:40

yourself identify quite strongly with Carlina,

34:42

I mean, partly because of your

34:44

own personal history. Is that fair

34:46

to say? Yes. So I was

34:49

a single mom. I think I

34:51

have a quite fierce sense

34:53

of independence, which sometimes kind of

34:55

turned into something slightly more egotistical.

34:57

I'm not sure if I identify

34:59

with her, but there was definitely,

35:02

I sympathize with her. Let's say it like this. There's

35:05

one line that you say in your prologue,

35:08

maybe some of my choices were

35:11

reckless, but they were mine. And

35:13

this strikes me as basically the

35:15

credo of the romantic movement, this

35:18

belief in self-determination that you are

35:20

going to create your own destiny

35:22

and not bow to outside pressures.

35:25

Yes. So I think at the heart of

35:27

this book is really the tension

35:30

between the breathtaking possibilities of free

35:32

will and the pitfalls of selfishness.

35:36

And it's a balancing act, which I

35:38

think we all to different degrees

35:40

have to negotiate. So I'm interested

35:43

in history in order to

35:45

understand why we are who we are. So we

35:47

live in a society that's obsessed with the

35:49

self. I mean, there's a whole generation called

35:51

the me generation. So for me, it

35:54

was a way to ask questions such

35:56

as when did we become such a

35:58

selfish species? When did we... expect

36:00

that we can determine our own lives.

36:03

When did we first ask how to be

36:05

free? And the answers really

36:07

I found in this town,

36:09

Jena in Germany. So the

36:12

premise of your book is that the

36:15

idea of the self was basically

36:17

invented in this university town of

36:19

Jena, Germany in the 1790s, which

36:22

is a very audacious thing to

36:24

say, really. Obviously

36:27

it's not invented, invented, but

36:30

I think it is put at the center stage

36:32

of thinking. What happened

36:34

there is that we have this

36:37

group of rebellious thinkers, poets, philosophers

36:39

and writers, which although

36:41

most of their names are not very

36:43

well known to the English speaking world,

36:45

are the literary superstars in Germany, kind

36:47

of names school children grow up with.

36:49

And one of them was the

36:51

philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichter, and he

36:53

was quite a character, I think.

36:55

So he was feared for his

36:58

volatile temperament. He

37:01

gave his lectures at the

37:03

university dressed in riding

37:05

boots, spas, and his whip in

37:07

hand. And there was nothing gentle

37:09

about him. So he stomped, he

37:11

insulted, he shouted, he ate his

37:13

snuff tobacco rather than inhaling it.

37:16

And you say his lectures were packed.

37:18

He was the superstar of the university.

37:20

Yes. So Jena

37:34

is a small town of about four and a

37:36

half thousand inhabitants, and there were almost 900 students.

37:38

So they very much dominated the small town

37:41

and half of them, or more than half

37:44

of them went to Fichter's lectures. So

37:49

they were spilling out into the corridors, they were

37:51

standing on the benches at the back of the

37:54

room, they were standing sometimes

37:56

on ladders outside to look through the

37:58

windows. of

38:00

the Bonner-Pater of philosophy because

38:02

he revolutionized the way we

38:04

think about us. At

38:14

a time when Europe was very

38:16

much in the iron fist of absolutism,

38:19

he said there were no God-given

38:21

or absolute truth. The source

38:23

of all reality is the self, which

38:26

for us might not sound that

38:28

extraordinary because we are so used to

38:31

understanding the world around us through the

38:33

prism of our mind. But

38:36

at that time it was

38:38

a radically new idea because for

38:41

centuries philosophers had said that the

38:44

world was ruled by a divine

38:46

hand. And Victor had

38:48

a word for this, I mean the ich. I

38:50

mean that was his word for self. It's

38:52

the German word for self, the ich, and

38:54

then the external world he called the non

38:56

ich, so the non-self, so everything that was

38:58

not the self. But what it meant is

39:01

that he gave the

39:03

self the power to be

39:06

really the supreme ruler of the world,

39:09

not God, not kings or queens.

39:12

And that was an absolutely thrilling

39:14

idea. So from then on

39:17

these young men and women kind

39:19

of experimented with this idea. So,

39:27

to connect us to what's happening today, I

39:30

think it's fair to say that we are

39:32

obsessed with ourselves and self-expression and

39:35

self-fulfillment and maybe the modern version

39:37

of this is the

39:39

cult of authenticity. Is

39:42

that all kind of an updated version of what

39:44

Fichte was talking about more than 200 years

39:46

ago? Yes, I think so. So

39:48

I think it began in Jena. So

39:51

I think underpinning all of this are two questions, two very

39:53

crucial questions. Who am I as an individual and who am

39:55

I as a member of a society? So how can we

39:57

be a part of this? And I think that's really important.

39:59

How can I live a meaningful,

40:02

self-fulfilled kind of life in

40:04

which I pursue my dreams, but be at

40:07

the same time a good member of society?

40:10

So this is this balancing act, and

40:12

it all started in the

40:14

last decade of the 18th century in Jena. Yeah,

40:16

and to set the context for this, I mean, this

40:18

happened within 10 years

40:21

of the French Revolution,

40:23

which really had just turned Europe upside

40:25

down, and then immediately following the French

40:27

Revolution, Napoleon seized power in France and

40:30

was marching across Europe, conquering one country

40:32

after another. And these writers

40:34

and philosophers in Jena seemed to be just

40:37

thrilled by all of this, by the

40:39

French Revolution, by Napoleon. He seemed to

40:41

be kind of the embodiment of the

40:43

romantic ideal. Yes. So

40:46

I think in order to really understand

40:48

how extraordinary it was, what these

40:50

guys and women did, is to

40:52

understand the world in

40:54

which they were born into was one

40:57

of despotism, control, and inequality. So this

40:59

was a time when monarchs could pretty

41:02

much decide about everything in their subject lives,

41:05

from refusing marriage permissions to

41:07

selling their subjects as mercenaries to

41:09

other nations. And then

41:11

the French Revolution happens in 1789,

41:14

and it's an event that's so dramatic

41:16

that it really affects everybody in Europe.

41:19

And when the French revolutionaries declared

41:21

all men as equal, they promised

41:23

the possibility of a new social

41:25

order based on the power of

41:27

ideas. So this is the moment

41:29

when philosophical ideas kind

41:31

of leave the ivory

41:34

tower of rarefied thought and arrive in the

41:36

minds of ordinary people. So fait

41:39

de vous et de philosophy is very

41:41

much lit on the spark of the

41:43

French Revolution. Yeah. So we

41:46

should talk about some of the people who are

41:48

part of this group that you call the Jainist

41:50

set and much more than just Fichte. And it

41:52

was not just their ideas that were so exciting.

41:54

I mean, they had large

41:57

lives, scandalous lives. Tell me about some

41:59

of these. these people. So

42:01

maybe the most famous man to

42:03

the American audience is Goethe,

42:06

who was Germany's most

42:08

celebrated poet. But

42:10

by the time the younger generation

42:12

arrived in the 1790s, he was

42:14

very much part of the small

42:16

Dutch government. And he had run

42:19

out of kind of his creative juices, really.

42:21

So he was struggling. And the

42:23

younger generation came and their radical ideas

42:25

really rejuvenated him and he

42:27

felt very much inspired. But he, for

42:30

example, lived with his mistress,

42:32

who was also the mother of

42:34

his son. It's really one

42:36

big soap opera. So there's,

42:38

for example, Friedrich Schlegel, who's

42:40

the brother of Karolina's

42:42

husband. He lived with his lover together

42:45

with his brother and Karolina in their

42:47

house in Jena, which I think is

42:49

really the first commune in Germany.

42:52

And they all had lovers on

42:54

the side. He also wrote an autobiographical

42:56

erotic novel in which he

42:58

invited his readers to his

43:01

bedroom, watching him and his lover making

43:03

love in quite explicit detail. And

43:06

it's worth pointing out, I mean, this is the

43:08

1790s. I mean, it's just like, wow, this

43:10

is amazing that they would be writing about

43:12

these things. Although I will say

43:14

that the 1790s were definitely

43:17

more sexually liberated,

43:19

say, than the Victorian times, because

43:21

you have, for example, Wilhelm von

43:23

Humboldt, who's Alexander von Humboldt's older

43:26

brother. He lived with his wife

43:28

and her lover together in their house

43:31

in Jena and very openly joining into

43:33

all of the social activities. And then

43:35

you have Karolina, who gave birth after

43:37

her one night stand to a child

43:39

who married August Wilhelm Schlegel, but his

43:42

brother Friedrich was in love with her.

43:44

She then took Friedrich Schelling, who was

43:46

a young philosopher, who was also part

43:48

of this group as her lover. He

43:50

was 12 years younger and a very

43:53

close friend to her husband. But her

43:55

husband didn't mind because they had come

43:57

to the unusual arrangement of an open

43:59

marriage. And it just kind of goes on and on and

44:01

on like this. It's such a

44:03

confusing mess who's sleeping with whom that

44:06

one of the friends calls the Schliegle

44:08

household a big pigsty. So

44:10

there's a lot of kind of fun going

44:12

on on the side. So big ideas, but

44:16

quite inflated eagles also and a

44:18

lot of fighting. Let's talk a little

44:20

bit more about one of these

44:22

people you've mentioned, Friedrich Schelling, who

44:25

became the superstar after Fichte, this

44:27

brilliant young philosopher who became what,

44:29

a full professor at the

44:31

age of 23. So everything that

44:33

he did, he did young. So at the

44:35

age of 11, he informed his teachers

44:38

that they couldn't teach him anything anymore. So

44:40

he's years ahead of his peers. He

44:42

wrote his first philosophy book at the age of 20 and

44:45

then followed it every year with another one. So

44:48

by the age of 23, he was so

44:50

famous that he was made professor of philosophy

44:52

at the university, the youngest

44:54

professor at the university. He

45:06

was hugely popular with his students,

45:08

so much so that people of Jena could

45:10

tell when his lectures were about to start

45:12

by the number, the great number of

45:14

young men rushing across the market square.

45:25

Schelling arrived in 1798 and he

45:27

really knew how to stage himself.

45:33

So there are wonderful descriptions by

45:35

his students how he entered

45:37

this packed auditorium. Slowly

45:39

and deliberately, he would kind of light two candles

45:41

at the lag turn, leaving

45:45

the auditorium in the dark. But

45:48

his students could kind of see him

45:50

lit up in the candlelight like

45:52

a halo around his head basically and everybody's

45:54

really quiet and they were waiting for him

45:57

to talk. And

46:05

a lot of the students describe it almost

46:07

as religious epiphany by

46:09

listening to these ideas because what

46:12

he did is he said that

46:15

the self and nature were identical.

46:23

So instead of dividing the

46:25

world into mind and matter as many,

46:28

many philosophers had done

46:30

for centuries, Schelling insisted that everything

46:32

was one. So the living

46:34

and the non-living world, according to him,

46:37

were ruled by the same underlying things.

46:49

And that is such a modern idea, this

46:52

idea that the human mind,

46:54

you cannot separate it from the natural world,

46:56

that we are part of all this interconnected

46:58

web of life. I mean, that is the

47:00

foundations of modern ecological thinking and here was

47:02

Schelling talking about it 200 years ago. Exactly.

47:05

So as Schelling basically said, everything's

47:08

kind of interconnected in one big

47:10

living organism. It

47:12

means that being in nature, be

47:15

it walking through a forest or

47:17

climbing up a mountain or

47:19

wandering along a meadow, was

47:21

always self-discovery. And that was

47:24

an absolutely thrilling idea. And this

47:27

is this philosophy of oneness. And

47:29

that becomes very, very important then

47:31

for the American transcendentalists and the

47:33

English romantics. This idea that we

47:35

can discover ourselves in nature. So

47:38

you have say, Coleridge and Wordsworth,

47:40

for example, who are these walking

47:43

poets who literally found their

47:45

voice in nature

47:48

because they had kind of stripped nature

47:50

of wonder and awe. So

47:52

I want to bring these ideas up

47:54

to the present. We already talked

47:57

about how our modern obsession with

47:59

self and with nature. self-expression is,

48:02

at least in Western culture, kind of describes

48:05

much of what seems to make

48:07

us flourish or tick in the

48:09

modern world. And I'm wondering how

48:11

much of that comes from the inner set and also

48:14

is there a problem here? Are

48:16

we too obsessed with the self and do we

48:18

need to somehow rethink some of these ideas? So

48:22

I think there's a direct line to the

48:24

inner set from how we are today and

48:26

that we are such a society

48:28

that's so obsessed with the self.

48:30

But what I will say is I don't

48:33

think that's the selfishness that they intended.

48:36

Quite the opposite. They

48:38

liberated the self with the intention

48:40

of creating a better society. So

48:42

this is very much against the

48:44

backdrop of absolutism and

48:47

despotism. And

48:49

Fichte always said that

48:51

freedom is always tightly

48:53

interwoven with our moral duty.

48:56

So freedom gives

48:58

us the choice how to act and how

49:01

to behave. But it always comes with its

49:03

twin, moral duty and moral obligations. And

49:05

I think that is the problem that

49:08

we have. That's the piece that we've

49:10

lost today. Exactly. We celebrate

49:12

freedom, but that sense of moral duty has

49:14

kind of disappeared. Exactly. And I

49:16

think that's the problem because there

49:18

is nothing more exciting than free

49:20

will and self-determination. But obviously, it

49:22

only works if we also

49:25

take other people into consideration. It can't

49:27

be that I'm only concerned about that

49:29

I'm free. We are only free if

49:31

also others are free. Then we are

49:34

a free society. I want

49:36

to come back to what happened

49:38

to these remarkable people in Jena.

49:41

This whole movement, this flourishing

49:44

really only lasted about 10 years. With

49:46

that, it sort of seems like they

49:48

were so tempestuous, so

49:50

brilliant, so creative, and

49:52

so fragile in some ways as well.

49:55

Everyone was sleeping with everyone else. It

49:58

all kind of fell apart rather quickly. Yes,

50:00

it did, very sadly. But

50:03

I think very often these

50:05

revolutionary ideas or revolutions collapse

50:07

very quickly. So what

50:09

happened is they experiment with this

50:12

kind of free will and freedom

50:14

and the pendulum swings too

50:16

much into the extreme. So they all become,

50:19

not all, but some of them become a little bit,

50:21

you know, too egotistical and have inflated

50:23

ego. So they all fall out with

50:25

each other. So they turn into what

50:28

Friedrich Schlieger's lover calls a republic

50:30

of despots. So you have these

50:33

friends who had relentlessly

50:35

attacked the literary establishment,

50:38

feeling quite invincible, then began to

50:40

turn against each other. So

50:43

you have Friedrich Schlieger, for example,

50:45

writing savage reviews about Schiller, you

50:47

have Schiller calling Karolina Badam-Lütsefar. Their

50:50

enemies quite like it. So there's a wonderful quote

50:52

where one of them says, isn't it fun

50:55

watching these philosophers kind of attack

50:57

each other? It's like seeing starving rats

50:59

eating each other. So

51:02

they all fall out and go

51:04

there different parts. So they leave, you know,

51:06

they go to Paris, to Rome, to Berlin.

51:10

Some of them remain in continue to

51:12

correspond and some of them never, never speak to

51:14

each other ever again. Well,

51:17

this is such an amazing story. Thank you

51:20

so much. It's been fun. Thank you

51:22

for having me. That's

51:29

Steve Paulson talking with Andrea Wolfe,

51:32

the author of Magnificent Rebels, The

51:34

First Romantics and the Invention of

51:36

the Self. To

51:41

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51:43

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51:46

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51:48

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51:53

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51:55

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Hopfel. week

52:00

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52:02

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52:04

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52:07

Paulson is our executive producer, and I'm

52:09

Ann Straychamps. Be well, and

52:12

thanks for listening.