'So, What's In It For Me?' ...
- Is the most personally unacknowledged, yet frequent question each of us asks ourselves every single day of our lives.
- Is the existential question which drives our pursuit of Authenticity;
- Authenticity being the virtue that personal responsibility and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of the determination of meaning and purpose in our lives.
- Highlights a modern-day extension of Twain's observation that "man never does a single thing [that doesn't first] secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself", into:
- "This is the law, keep it in your mind. Man is predisposed to come into the world alone and to exit it alone. What he does or does not achieve in between is his individual story; a story knowingly or unknowingly written to answer the question: "
So, What's In It For Me
"
- In America, each of us is born into one of two Stories which guides our pursuit of personal Authenticity! Ken Burns refers to our Story as to where we choose to live: Bedford Falls or Pottersville? George Saunders sets the choice between residing in the United States of Huck or the United States of Tom. The uninformed over-simplify the choice as one between Red America and Blue America.
- Exposes the schizophrenic dichotomization of the American Story and its history - with its odds for success stacked against it from its very inception as one Nation.