If You’re Gonna Start Pulling That String
We’re living in an age of Hyperindividualism. How’d we get here?
September 2026
(7-minute read)
Keywords: individualism, hyperindividualism, Ted Lasso, Alexis de Tocqueville, self-interest, habits of the heart
My title comes from an episode in the new season of Ted Lasso.
Struggling to tie his necktie, Ted’s son Henry asks him why they have to wear school uniforms. Uniforms, Ted says, “can help create a sense of community and pride, like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself,” and “helps y’all kids not focus on things like social status and, uh, appearances and whatnot.”
Henry notes that uniforms can’t mask individual and social disparities, like “height and bone structure and generational wealth.” Conceding the point, Ted says, “if you’re gonna start pulling that string, heck, they also stifle creativity, self-expression and individuality.”
It is a classic Ted Lasso moment: folksy hometown lore shedding light on the human condition. In this brief exchange, Ted offers a balanced perspective on human identity, treating individuality and a shared commitment to a team, a community, “something bigger than yourself,” as equally important.
AFC Richmond in America?
It’s anachronistic, but after touring the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian and political philosopher, must have been scratching his head thinking, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Unlike older nations defined by geography or ancestral bloodlines, America began as an experiment in pluralistic democracy, testing whether a diverse people could govern themselves without a monarchy or state religion. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835, 1840) is still prized for its insights into the paradoxes of American individualism and equality.
Though the republic was still in its infancy, the French aristocrat observed how vital local communities were to maintaining democratic practices and institutions. Ordinary citizens were actively shaping civic life—reading newspapers, running schools, hospitals, and fire departments—living out democratic values with a profound sense of mutual responsibility.[1] The vigor of American democracy was not only in its laws and government, but mediating structures like families, churches, neighborhoods, and voluntary associations.
The secret sauce was in the American spin on self-interest. Since egoism was an immutable part of the human condition, it was largely futile trying to persuade people to make sacrifices for others simply because it was noble. But, if this “irresistible force” could not be stopped, maybe, just maybe, it could be directed, what Tocqueville called “the principle of self-interest rightly understood (emphasis mine).” As the reasoning went, making small sacrifices for the common good was not merely charity, but enlightened self-interest. Altruism ultimately benefited the individual, and—wait for it, wait for it—had the added bonus of preserving liberty and justice for all. Is this a great country, or what?
Taming of the Shrewd
Far from a clarion call to virtue, this pragmatic channeling of the human ego was built on the precarious assumption that base impulses like greed, avarice, unbridled ambition, and materialism could be leveraged to contain themselves.
It looked good on paper—this not exactly self-evident, but self-regulating system of self-interest (there’s a lot of selfs in there). But Tocqueville was not naïve. He foresaw how the American republic might succumb to a “tyranny of the majority,” collapse into anarchy, or drift into a “soft despotism.” Crucially, he warned that the “feverish” American drive for affluence, though “worthy and legitimate,” could become so powerful that even American religion would be powerless to restrain this “eagerness to become rich.”
Tocqueville believed that “habits of the heart,” he called them—the cultural norms, values, practices, and customs undergirding enlightened self-interest—had to be so deeply ingrained in the American mindset as to make them “constructively contagious” in order to preserve the legal and political structures.
Habits of the Heart
In 1985, a landmark study, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, sparked lively debate about modern American culture. The authors identified four distinct American cultural traditions split into two camps: the community-oriented (the Biblical and Republican tradition emphasizing civic duty) and the individualistic (the Utilitarian and Expressive traditions focusing on autonomy).
The book’s authors argued that the American emphasis on the independent self had “grown cancerous,” and as Tocqueville had warned, was isolating people and eroding the culture and institutions meant to moderate individualism’s “more destructive potentialities.” To remedy the situation, they proposed recovering the strengths of the Biblical and Republican traditions.
When Tocqueville visited in the 1830s, the community traditions were dominant. Individual hard work and ambition were anchored in church and town hall, tying personal success to a higher calling and commitment to the common good. The Industrial Revolution and rise of consumer capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, brought corporate monopolies, massive wealth disparities, and widespread political corruption that began depriving ordinary people of the equality of opportunity.
As the individualist traditions surged to dominance, the Utilitarian strand repurposed life as an incessant, competitive race, equating winning—success—with material wealth. Meanwhile, Expressive Individualism emerged as a counter movement urging people to find their humanity by pursuing raw expression of their “true self” free from any societal restraints.
Tumultuous Times
Over the course of the twentieth century, a profound cultural transformation marked the triumph of the individualistic strands over community values turning America into “a soulless chaos.”[2]
Extreme individualism rose. Concern for the common good fell. Trust in democratic institutions eroded. Self-reliance, competition, personal advancement, profit margins, and the acquisition of wealth and power took center stage.
This cultural shift happened alongside sweeping changes, especially social fragmentation, the rise of new media technologies, and last, but not least, neoliberal policies begun in the Reagan era.
Never heard of neoliberalism? You’re not alone.
Neoliberalism is a lot like a character in Ted Lasso. “He’s here, he’s there, he’s every-f**king-where, Roy Kent!” Maybe a future blog post. Neoliberalism, not Roy Kent.
An Age of Hyperindividualism
To be clear, individualism has undeniable virtues. We all need personal boundaries, a measure of independence, and self-governance. Individuality, as Ted Lasso noted, encourages creativity and initiative. And of course, safeguarding personal liberty ensures equality.
Hyperindividualism—the prefix hyper- meaning “overly” or “excessively” —describes an ideological extreme that fosters a culture obsessed with self-reliance and personal autonomy. People become wrapped up in their own desires, success, and viewpoints, often disregarding the well-being of others in favor of self-interest, thereby abandoning communal obligation. In this hyperindividualistic world, the individual’s voice drowns out all others.
We are expected to think of ourselves and others as transactional and competitive, fully responsible for our own success of failure, a mindset furthering isolation and deepening distrust of social institutions. Needing or asking for help is branded as weakness and often used to justify dismantling social programs, need-based financial aid, or diversity initiatives. Success, according to this “bootstraps” myth, is dictated by individual grit alone.
In Tocqueville’s framework, American ambition was held in check by tangible community mediating structures. In the Age of Hyper, those physical communities are as likely to have been replaced by virtual enclaves built on consumer tastes, income brackets, and social media algorithms. What began as lifestyle enclaves have morphed into hostile political echo chambers isolating like-minded people from opposing viewpoints.
There is no lack of illustrations for American individualism run amok.
Meta’s own research showed the tech giant choose corporate self-interest over social responsibility, maximizing ad revenue while knowingly exploiting user attention at the expense of children’s mental health.
As the New York Times editorial board noted, the president routinely “prioritizes his own interests over the national interest” and is “willing to defy bipartisan traditions and even act illegally.” When a leader defies the law for personal gain, public office ceases to be a civic trust and becomes a vehicle for raw, unchecked personal power.
Kowtowing to the ruling elite threatens journalistic integrity—the duty to tell “the best obtainable version of the truth” in providing citizens with reliable information.
Political parties abandon the common good when, instead of negotiating broad public policy, they prioritize the consolidation of their own power over voter representation.
Among college students, when success is measured strictly by winning the competitive race, ethical cheating is rebranded as a pragmatic survival tool for personal advancement.
American culture is not automatically self-correcting. We cannot simply sit back and wait for a natural pendulum swing to bring us back to community-oriented values. But reality does have a way of making itself, well, real, and of forcing our hand. Today, a growing swell of collective action is rising to confront these excesses, aiming to safeguard the foundational promise of the American experiment: life, liberty, and justice for all.
The Richmond Way
American individualism rests on the profound belief that each person has a
right to think and live as they choose—provided they do no harm to others. That qualifier points to a perennial tension in America life between self and the community. If overly simplistic, I hope this brief summary helps make sense of the rhetoric and values defining contemporary culture.
In the third season finale of Ted Lasso, journalist Trent Crimm writes a book documenting the transformation AFC Richmond’s football team and shares the manuscript with Ted. Consistent with his philosophy of prioritizing personal growth over individual credit and winning, Ted makes just one suggestion: change the title from The Ted Lasso Way to The Richmond Way because, as Ted notes, it was never about him. It was about building a culture of mutual support, believing in yourself, each other, and being “part of something bigger than yourself.”
Alexis de Tocqueville would have been impressed.
Footnotes
[1] Jean-Guillaume de Tocqueville, “The Essence of Equality,” The Catalyst: A Journal of Ideas from the Bush Institute, Winter 2026, https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/the-american-idea-turns-250/the-essence-of-equality. The author of this article is founder and chairman of the Tocqueville Foundation and the great-great-great-grandnephew of Alexis.
[2] F. Ernest Johnson, “The Teaching of the Protestant Church,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 103 (1922): 85.
 | Drawing on a career spent exploring the intersection of history, culture, religion, and popular entertainment, William D. Romanowski is bringing that same curiosity to the complexities of human experience, trading footnotes for fiction. Now he is using historical fiction to enter the lives and choices of people caught in consequential moments of the past. |
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