Insteadness sometimes we focus on this instead of that

Most especially in US culture, it seems like we focus on ourselves as a kind of insteadness rather than the larger forces and structures that define our existence.

For example, even when we engage in practices, such as Buddhism, where the self is supposed to be deemphasized, people in the US seem to manage to find a way to make it all about themselves and their own personal fulfillment/extension.

It often seems to me like a holdover from an earlier US culture of the "self-made" individual. Part of the US imagined community is that the individual is paramount, and not created/organized by outside forces.

We are often blinded by ourselves when we seek answers to large questions.

We are each our own insteadness.