That's much better. Didn't I tell you that you'd enjoy them? If you didn't take my advise, well, the rest of this page won't make quite as much sense as it could. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Little wonder that the "eat, drink, be merry" school of cynicism has become so popular. Why pursue what one author called "the hundredth dream" -- the one that actually comes true -- when you have to endure the painful failure of the other ninety-nine? Why be a minority of one in a world that condemns individual thinking and contrary ideas as much as did Orwell's Big Brother, although more insidiously? Why live life when it is so much easier to just get by?

Society, no matter how much lip service it may pay to liberty and individualism, tends to level a heavy penalty on dissenters: the condemnation of the majority. Neighbors, friends, workmates, acquaintances, relatives, and especially advertisers promote the One True Way, the implication being that anyone who disagrees must be crazy. Against such overwhelming complacent mediocrity, dreamers often break down and lead miserable lives; it is a strong-willed (and fortunate) individual who can achieve at least moderate success without compromising his ideals.

When Emerson said that "whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist", he was detailing the formula for greatness; to be an average ordinary person, little more is needed than the ability to live according to the morals, tastes, and ambitions of the majority. For those who would be great, or who have greatness thrust upon them, however, it is impossible to live others' lives unless they want them for their own. This is not to say that many do not try; Willy Loman desperately clung to the rules for success in the 1940s and 50s, even when it was painfully obvious, to the detached observer, that they were no better suited to him than polar bears to New Zealand. Willy Loman was not cut out to be a salesman, save only for having sold himself on the idea, and so many others; his dreams were far grander than a widget-seller on commission from an insensitive lout of a boss in a selfish, competition-mad world could reasonably expect. Consequently, when he failed to have people smile and notice him and buy his products, and failed to ever reach any of the myriad castles in the air that he had spun for himself, he imploded. Unable to deal with his failures, and unable to recognize that society had failed him, and that he had failed to rise to the challenges of non-conformity, he lost his will to live, and stopped living.

Willy had the misfortune to be skilled at carpentry and working with his hands in an era that scorned manual labor and hard work, and thus spent his time, energy, and soul trying to conform to an ideal he could never reach. Gatsby tried to become a careless phony idle rich man in a society that scorned the nouveau riche and rejected everyone who did not show the proper levels of indifference, nonchalance, and utter carelessness that Gatsby could not and would not completely affect. Daring to show genuine character and desiring to be genuinely liked in their turn, both Gatsby and Willy allowed themselves to be used by uncaring society, drained of their resources, and finally discarded when they were no longer useful. Holden Caulfield rebelled against this sort of nihilistic, uncaring world; he choose to avoid growing up so that he would not have to join it. Cathy fought against the female version of a slightly earlier time; she renounced her humanity so that she would not have to play her segment of humanity's games. They all wanted something better out of life, something that society could not offer them; they ignored it, they actively fought it, they used it, they believed in it -- and all of them suffered for having neither the character to rebel while remaining human nor the ability to play the game and not dream.

Why dream, why dissent, why risk death and destruction and disillusion, when it is possible to get by on a carefree, selfish, indulgent, life with no dreams and wild hopes for the future to come crashing down? Willy's younger son Happy took this attitude, and for this he lived a far lesser life than his father did, and one that belied his name. For all of Willy's vices and problems and childish attitudes and moral uncertainty, he still maintained for many years an uplifting vision of a better, if unattainable, future; Happy had the same problems but no attempt at a solution, and is ultimately the more pathetic character. Willy dared to live and dream, and lost; Happy never bothered to try.

There will always be a complacent majority, who try to lead their lives with minimum trouble and friction, who believe that society and the major precepts of human civilization as we know it are perfectly sound. If their society is worthy, then so be it: more power to them for having found or made their utopia. It is also certain, however, that there will be some who cannot buy into the current values, and cannot believe in their society, and who will challenge it somehow, and in their non-conformity seek greatness. Gatsby, Cathy, Holden, Willy, and many others were brought down by their own fatal flaws; it was not so much their reactions against society as the ways in which they reacted that are deserving of pity or contempt or revulsion. They were not crazy to dissent, only in what they chose as their goals; significantly, only Holden Caulfield, who did not pin his hopes on any particular goal, survived his brush with disaster, and showed signs of being able to take another try at dreaming and dissenting and finding real meaning in life.

If society is distasteful, we must disagree, dissent, dream; for then if we fail we shall at least be able to say that we tried to life. Besides, it sure beats being the millionth lemming to forget to think for himself.