How To Be an Individual; D. G. Smith

A lot of people see individuality as a surface thing and try to establish a unique identity by buy ing a personality at the store. They wear garish clothes, dye their hair strange colors, wear head lamp jewelry,and decorate their skins with tattoos to make some kind ofsocial statement. It is a case of "Hey, look at me!" and is attempted in a way that just doesn't get the job done. An ordinary per son who has dyed his hair purple or orange is noth ing more than the same nonentity with a funny looking head. The belief is that mediocrity will somehow gain new credentials from exterior cos metics. It is much like trying to make one's car go faster by painting it red. The whole purpose of individuality is excelMr. Smith is a writer living in Santa Maria, California. He has been a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal lence-being better at something than other peo ple. Those who had the pleasure of seeing Benny Goodman at his work saw a rather ordinary look ing man in rimless glasses and a conservative busi ness suit, but they also saw a human being who could play the clarinet like no one before or since.

This made Benny Goodman a unique individual. Among other Americans who stood out from the flock, we·can look at such varied examples as Joe DiMaggio, Clarence Darrow, Beverly Sills, ErnestHemingway, and Jonas Salk. Each did something extremely well and thus became out standing. Yet none of them felt the need to dress like a clown to be noticed. They were all recog nized, and honored, for no other reason than excellence. It is the people who comprehend this simple principle of being unique through performance who make our entire political-economic system work. Those who invent, who improvise, who know more about a subject than other people, and who take something that doesn't work and make it work-these people are the very soul of capitalism. Charles Kettering didn't like the idea of crank ing a car to make it start, so he invented the electric starter, making it possible to start the car from the driver's seat. This meant that mobility was no longer the silent partner of brute strength, and as such it did more for the cause of women's libera tion than the entire feminist movement.

Henry Ford figured out the assemblyline tech354 THE FREEMAN • SEPTEMBER 1991 Benny Goodman at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 1938. nique and made it possible to mass produce an automobile. Lewis Waterman saw no need to go on dipping a pen into an inkwell, so he put the ink into the pen. George Westinghouse told the world how to stop a train, and Elisha Otis indirectly invented the city skyline. These people, and thou sands like them, have made the system work. They understood that individualism, to have any impact at all, meant working at the top of one's capacity. It is only a concept, a good idea, until someone does something with it. Fortunately, enough Americans have been inspired to do something with their uniqueness that we have developed in less than three cen turies from a frontier outpost to become not only the citadel of freedom but a country strong enough to protect that freedom. These have been the people who prized the individuality excellence pairing above all things and thus kept the great machine functioning. The ones with the purple hair and the funky jewelry are just along for the ride, trying to be "different" and not knowing how to go about it.

The student who earns ~s on his report card has grasped the idea and has found the real meaning of individuality. So has the youngster who has designed his own space ship, who gives piano recitals, who paints pictures of the world around him, or who can name all the states and their cap itals. Benny Goodman understood it too. This is why he was at his best in a blue suit and black shoes. D 355 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK The State of the Union by John Chamberlain I n the Thirties, reviewinga book by Albert Jay Nock for The New York Times, I twitted Nock for referring to Thomas Jefferson reverential ly as "Mr. Jefferson" where, often in the same paragraph, it was plain "Mencken" or even plain "Lincoln." A couple of days later I received a one line letter from Nock. It read "Young man, know your betters." I never could quite puzzle out Nock's reproof, for I considered Mencken, with his American Mercury, and Lincoln, with his Emancipation Proclamation, just as worthy of special salute as Jefferson. Incidentally,I loved every line of Nock's little biography of Jefferson, so there was no prej udice involved in anything I had said.