Sam Koenen

This was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche.  The management of insignificance.  It was the great syncretic bond of US monoculture.  It was everywhere, at the root of everything–of impatience in long lines, of cheating on taxes, of movements in fashion and music and art, of marketing…

And it was also the world altering pain of accepting one’s individual flaws and limitations and the tautological unattainability of our dreams and the dim indifference in the eyes of [others]” (emphasis added).