One is a lonely number

I was watching a TV show on public television, all about the New Jersey Turnpike. The narrators and the various experts reflected on how the turnpike somehow represented an American ethos or something. They blathered on about how there was a code of the highway and the egalitarian nature of this project made America strong and crystallized the identity of the New Jersey psyche.

One thing they said was that part of that code of the highway dictated that the truck lanes were for real men and only less-than-real-men use the "cars only" lanes. Now I have driven (and been driven) on the turnpike for 35 years and I have never heard that line. I live in New Jersey as do all of my neighbors here in New Jersey and none of them had ever heard of that. It got me thinking, and that's never a good idea.

And another thing...when I listen to the radio business reports the reporter tells about "the market" and what "it" does as if the traders all get together and vote on a course of action and a reason for it, then act in unison and file a report. It just doesn't happen that way.

You see, there is no singular collective voice that can be caught and printed on bumper stickers. The mass consciousness is really all about a bunch of individuals none of whom has an opinion that anyone would care about were anyone to speak with this individual one on one. All of these phantom groupthink ideas are the projected ideals of the sociologists who report on them and the wishful philosophers who need to claim they have their fingers on a pulse which doesn't really exist. We can't know what we all think because we don't all think and if we did we wouldn't all share what we think or even get any sort of summary of all the things we think. And we certainly don't agree.