Review
THE REBEL SELL: WHY THE CULTURE CAN’T BE JAMMED
by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter
HarperCollins, 358 pp.
Review
HELLO, I’M SPECIAL: HOW INDIVIDUALITY BECAME THE NEW CONFORMITY
by Hal Niedzviecki
Penguin Canada, 254 pp.
I think I’ve now experienced Kurt Vonnegut’s concept of "coming unstuck in time." In one moment, I watched novelist and meta-zinester Hal Niedzviecki probe his growing dissatisfaction with his countercultural beliefs; further down the same path, I saw philosophers Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter attempt the beginnings of answers to what they see as the failure of the countercultural experiment.
The shared complaint of these Canadian authors is that the me-centred "rebellion" of the past half-century has neither changed the world at large nor made us happier individuals. The purpose of attempting to avoid the mainstream bears different names: for Heath and Potter, it is "cool," while for Niedzviecki, it’s "I’m-Specialness." Their notions of this purpose are somewhat different as well. Heath and Potter describe cool as an elusive commodity that only a few can attain; achieving it results in the highest status possible in contemporary Western society. On the other hand, Niedzviecki believes that I’m-Special-ers are searching for a promise ostensibly made to each of us: that we are all entitled to be unique superstars in a heaven of unique superstars. However, neither book suggests that this goal is actually achievable.
In both cases, some of the blame for this misguided quest is placed on the baby boomers, particularly the hippies-turned-yuppies who seemed to mistake not being like their parents for changing the world. But while Niedzviecki points another unwavering finger at a mass-consumer pop-culture industry which, he feels, claims anyone can get in while keeping most of everyone out, Heath and Potter claim that status-seeking – be it for riches or cool – is simply a time-honoured human pursuit. Both admit, though, that this quest isn’t actually helping to make a better society, either in the West or in the rest of the world.
It’s tempting to say that The Rebel Sell is cynical and even treasonous to the forces of the progressive left, or that Hello, I’m Special is naïve and navel-gazing. I’m not sure this is fair to either work. Niedzviecki is clearly struggling with his new-found revelations, as evidenced by his frequent ranting against the left’s favourite bogeyman, "the system," which he claims enslaves us to a pop-cultural ideal of "special" (although he’s no longer sure that "special" is what we need). But he knows that something’s not right, and he’s trying fairly desperately to articulate it to people who find themselves in the same position he’s in.
Being farther along on the ride, Heath and Potter are rather smug in their enlightenment, constantly ridiculing the self-styled "rebels" for believing in outdated countercultural dogma (like changing the world through socially conscious shopping). Academic snobbery aside, their conclusion is worth considering: that as long as we live in mass societies, it will be more productive to find solutions to our common problems within those societies rather than hating society’s existence, and to work through tangible, incremental change rather than self-centred consciousness renewal and deviance passing as dissent.
Maybe I’ll try to get unstuck again to see how well (or poorly) these ideas mature in the next few years.
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