HIPsters and HIP trouble?

a mystical möbius — curating facts, ideas, text, and media to create a contemplative space.

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So: what is HIP?

So, in “ay, there’s the rub” [8/15], and “How do you know?” [8/22], we found that the ‘rub’ was (and still is) American hyper-individualism, and its politically leverageable artifact, i.e., a hyper-individualized perspective [HIP]. 

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Vax… “a shot to restore our freedoms”

A WaPo story last week on the vax situation ties into ‘HIP,’ and makes an alarming illustration. The article, “Telling conservatives it’s a shot to ‘restore our freedoms’: How online ads are promoting coronavirus vaccination,” aims to increase vaccination acceptance. We read, “Targeted ad campaigns, long criticized as invasive and divisive, have become powerful tools for health officials.” Further, not mincing words, Jeremy B. Merrill and Drew Harwell write:

“But public health officials say the widespread use of microtargeting reflects the recognition that groups with different values, motivations and personal tastes require more than a one-size-fits-all approach amid the country’s polarized political debates.”

 

“Health groups also have paid for ads that show up on sites popular with conservatives. On Breitbart, the far-right news blog that has called refusing coronavirus vaccination a “perfectly reasonable choice,” one ad called the vaccine ‘a shot to restore our freedoms,’ alongside a photo of children walking into school.”

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Do HIPsters simply cost us too much?

Does our HIPster-laden context mean that appeals to ‘the common good’ no longer have the power to advance public health policy?

I mean, that’s exactly how “the common good” worked; i.e., it provided: “a one-size-fits-all approach.” When rightly identified by consensus, ‘the common good’ effectively served as a check on the HIP approach, and moved public policy forward. A combination of post-truth [P-T] and *political technologies* [PT] have compounded the difficulty of these already troubled dynamics.

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Now, I readily grant this hyper-individualized epistemology problem is a human one and, intrinsically, nonpartisan. However, I can’t help pointing out that a majority of this narrow-epistemology fruit falls in a partisan way. We can thank Ayn Rand et al., I suppose, not to mention the later P-T and PT factors. I mean, I imagine that one could try to argue that Democrats are just more conformist in nature, or some such; but the fact that the majority of the HIP problem falls within Republican ranks is rather plain.

“The common good” is toast, then?

In the United States, individualism became part of the core American ideology by the 19th century, incorporating the influences of New England Puritanism, Jeffersonianism, and the philosophy of natural rights.

 

“Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom have been deemed by Americans not only their choicest, but [their] peculiar and exclusive possession.” —James Bryce

tl;dr,

Déjà vu, all over again, again

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Next week: Come and see.

[this post approx. 850 words (about a 3 min. read)]

Your thoughts? 

I never know what I’ve said till I hear the response. What did you hear me say?

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