Individualism Redux: Authority Part IV

I'm afraid I didn't do quite a good enough job painting a picture of the purely individualist view of the self, the view that rejects all authority other than its own. (Holders of this view would probably use different terminology.) So I can't resist adding a couple quotes from someone who does a much better job. I know there's endless material that would do as good a job or better than what follows, but since I've just shelved the book a week ago and it's fresh in my mind, I'm going to turn again to Cardinal Ratzinger (aka Benedict XVI). These are a couple of his takes on "tyranny of the self" in his book, Salt of the Earth.

"Man is conceived in purely individualistic terms; he is only himself. The relation that is an essential part of him and that is what really first enables him to become himself is taken away from him. This claim to be the ultimate and sole authority over oneself, and the claim to have the right to appropriate as much of life as possible, while no one has the right to stand in the way, is part and parcel of the sense of life on offer to man today." p. 167

"You are built for love, and therefore for giving, for renunciation, for the pruning of yourself. Only if you give yourself, if you lose yourself, as Christ puts it, will you be able to live. This basic option has to stand out in all its starkness. It is offered to man's freedom. But it should still really be made plain that to live by making one's own claims is a false recipe for life. The refusal of suffering and the refusal of creatureliness, hence, of being held to a standard, is ultimately the refusal of love itself, and that ruins man. For it is precisely his submitting himself to a claim and allowing himself to be pruned that enables him to mature and bear fruit. ... Somewhere deep down man knows: I have to be challenged, and I have to learn to form myself according to a higher standard and to give myself and to lose myself." p. 168

If the above descriptions don't hit the nail of 21st century American selfishness square on its proverbial head, then I don't know what would.