Individualism, Time Travel, and Shoes

When I was in high school, the school hosted a kind of art fair.  At least, I think it was an art fair – I don’t remember for certain.  Most of it wasn’t very memorable, but I do remember a particular conversation about shoes.  That conversation occurred before I began my study of philosophy, but the memory of it nagged at me long enough that, years later, I still use the conversation to talk about individualism.

Art fair, career fair, whatever it was, it was one of those events where the school invites a bunch of guest presenters to line a hallway with their booths, and the students are given time to mill about and ask questions or learn from the visitors.  This particular individual – I don’t remember who he was – was located near the end of the hallway, and he was loudly proclaiming that he was an alien time traveler, or something of the sort.  He was there as some kind of artist-philosopher, and he attracted a small crowd with his antics.

My first, thought, naturally, was “hey, that’s my line.”  I don’t remember why I was even in the area, or much else about the circumstances, but I remember him pointing at my shoes in the crowd and asking me why I wore them.  To which, reasonably enough, I replied that they were practical.  I don’t think that he liked that answer, because in rather a non-sequitur, he proceeded to launch into a tirade about how we were all sheep, wearing the clothing that we did because it helped us fit in with others around us, and the importance of individualism.

Now, this probably stuck with me for two reasons.  Firstly, I have never been one to conform for the sake of conformity, and secondly, being accused of such as a mere set piece to someone else’s act without being given the opportunity to engage and respond as a reasoning individual lifeform (of any temporal or spatial origin) is irksome.  Regardless, this encounter was sufficient to prompt my ruminations on individualism throughout my early studies of philosophy, so that years later I realized how I could have undercut this pretender’s arguments in a single sentence: individualism is neither an adequate nor moral pursuit in and of itself.

The United States was founded as a nation that values, uniquely, the individual, with the rights of that smallest minority being enshrined and protected in our founding documents.  Individual freedom is a core of American identity, but the evolution of what that means has unmoored the concept from its moral foundations.  See, individual freedom as a guiding principle offers no morality, no concept of good and evil, and treating it as an end instead of a means leads to decadence and self-indulgence, which perhaps we are seeing today as we shuffle around in our silk slippers and try not to get too near the stairs.

This is the difference between freedom to and freedom for, which is an intriguing lens through which to view many modern debates.  Both are ways of interpreting the purpose to which an individual puts freedom, where freedom to implies a lack of responsibility beyond the passions and wills of the self, whereas freedom for suggests that the purpose of individual freedom is to enable the individual to better pursue a moral and responsible existence.  Arguably, an emphasis on radical individualism divorced from a moral code leads to hedonism, which would be the freedom to interpretation, whilst coupling individualism with a moral code begets human and societal fulfillment, in the freedom for interpretation.

All of this from an idle comment about shoes.  They weren’t remarkable shoes, which is both my point, and my mostly forgotten, pseudo-time-travelling alien debater’s.  It’s funny, sometimes, the minor comments that can prompt the mind to spin out into all kinds of cogitations, and how difficult it can be to find an answer to a seemingly simple question.  In this case, it took me years to answer an unintentional challenge about my footwear.  I was convinced, even at the time, that this man at the booth was wrong, but I did not have the philosophy at the time to express why.  Even when I figured it out, it wasn’t worth the effort of time travelling back.  Shoes, even radically individual ones, aren’t worth starting a paradox over.