The Contemplation of a Puny Subject

On the “ribbon of highway” that stretches “from California to the New York Island”—the great American Main Street—the mass of people seem completely self-absorbed. One hundred and fifty years ago Alexis De Tocqueville visited America from France and wrote: “Each citizen is habitually engaged in contemplation of a very puny object, namely himself.”

In a century and a half things have not improved. For all the diverse and attractive, buzzing and mysterious reality that is everywhere evident, no one and no thing interrupt people more than momentarily from obsessive preoccupation with themselves.