4000 years ago a poet wrote the Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh, a tale that offers advise of the relationship of two world views or perspectives, meditations on the individual and the community. Basically, the story plots the development of the animal self, the individual and the desires of the ego arriving at emptiness and the realization of surrender, the integration of the individual as a transient being who only has meaning in relationship to the community in which he or she has his or her being.
American culture and Western culture generally is all about the individual and the struggle of the ego to become. It is a path that leads to tragedy and emptiness, full of fools who see the wearing of a mask as an insult to their personal dignity, the community be damned. Four thousand years ago wise people contemplating the meaning of life figured out these individualists were fools. The type was present then and is still here. Theirs is the tail of tragedy and suffering, like the man who said before he died, "I should have worn the damn mask." He left behind a community, a wife, and five kids, infecting God only knows how many before his passing.