I didn’t explore the idea strongly enough, or readers don’t want to take
seriously the much more (quietly) radical ideas in McPherson’s book: that limits
on our existential choices are part of how we make our peace with life, that
Tyler Harper’s “therapeutic libertarianism” — or what Christopher Lasch, by way
of Adorno, called the “cult of authenticity” — is the default mode of so much
contemporary socio-political discussion, and an active agent that deforms one’s
character. Taking limits seriously is an enormous challenge, one that I assumed
would come across in the piece. But then, it’s easier to domesticate constraints
to the ones we pick and choose, cafeteria-style, for some modest stylistic
innovation.
