The controlling force

Between 1965 and 1985, the Western self was transformed. We turned from anti-materialistic, stick-it-to-the-Man hippies into greed-is-good yuppies. We would be surprised if an individual went through such an extreme metamorphosis. But an entire culture did. What could have caused such a dramatic shift?

While the origins of such changes cannot be reduced to a single source, I believe we can point to a dominant one: the economy. In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rewrote the rules by which we had once lived. And that, with stunning rapidity, changed who we were.

Psychologists attest to the enormous power of environment over culture. Many focus on differences between the individualistic West and