"The British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn has highlighted the striking difference between the myths of American and Canadian frontiers: ‘One is a myth of a Hobbesian state of nature mitigated only by individual and collective self-help: licensed gunmen, posses of vigilantes and occasional calvary charges. The other is the myth of the imposition of the government and public order as symbolized by the uniforms of the Canadian version of the horseman-hero, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.’
The logical end point of the idealized individualism of the Westerns genre was The Man With No Name, a character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in three films directed by Sergio Leone in the 1960s. This character was admired by the audience because he was so isolated and unattached to the community that he didn’t even require a name. Like so many twentieth-century icons, his isolation was the cornerstone of his appeal." John Higgs
A very good review of this book is following...
"The thesis of the book is that the two biggest defining movements of the past century were individualism and relativism. Those two broke apart long-established social institutions and mores. But the networked world is joining us back together, informed by the concept of the individual and better than we were before.
Higgs compares it to the alchemical concepts of solve (taking things apart, reducing them to indivisible components) and coagula (putting things together, making them whole).
The individualism of the twentieth century can be likened to the process of solve taken to its logical end. Everything was isolated, and in isolation it was understood. The network allows the process of coagula. Things are being reconnected, but with transparency and understanding that we did not have before the process of solve."
From this blog by Peter Gasson
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