Society of Yertles

In an essay on marriage and the construction of reality , Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner observe how the modern “crystallization” of the public/private divide has affected the pursuit of identity and reputation:

“It would . . . seem that large numbers of people i our society are quite content with a situation in which their public involvements have little subjective importance, regarding work as a not too bad necessity and politics as at best a spectator sport . . . . The individual in this situation, no matter whether he is happy or not, will turn elsewhere for the experience of self-realization that do have importance for him. The private sphere, this interstitial area created (we would think) more or less haphazardly as a by-produce of the social metamorphosis . . . of industrialism, is mainly where he will turn. It is here that the individual will seek power, intelligibility and, quite literally, a name – the apparent power to fashion a world, however Lilliputian, that will reflect his own being: a world that, seemingly having been shaped by himself and thus unlike those other worlds that insist on shaping him, is translucently intelligible to him (or so he thinks); a world in which, consequently, he is somebody – perhaps even, within its charmed circle, a lord and master.”

Berger and Kellner don’t belittle these aspirations. On the contrary, “to a considerable extent these expectations are not unrealistic.” In the private sphere, “the individual can take a slice of reality and fashion it into his world.”