American-isms: The Many Masks of Maya

Every civilization falls victim to its illusions. In America, these illusions have taken the shape of –isms—belief systems that promised progress but delivered fragmentation. Each –ism is a mask of maya, offering the appearance of meaning while leading us further from it. What follows is not an exhaustive list, but a map of the forces that have quietly re-written the American soul.

The Illusions of Wealth

Wealth was meant to be a tool; instead it became our altar.

• Consumerism taught us that happiness comes in a box, delivered by truck. It turned citizens into customers and reduced life to a shopping spree.

• Materialism insisted that possessions define worth, drowning out questions of character, wisdom, or soul.

• Capitalism, unchecked, converted every relationship, every art, every breath into a commodity to be priced and sold.

• Corporatism blurred the line between governance and marketplace until democracy itself became a subsidiary.

• Neoliberalism transformed freedom into deregulation, declaring the market not only efficient but divine.

• Globalism, exploitative in form, hollowed out towns and shipped their livelihoods overseas for profit margins.

• Classism quietly codified the lie that the wealthy are virtuous, the poor deserving of shame.

Wealth, in this form, did not build character—it eroded it.

The Illusions of Power

Power was supposed to protect; it became a theater of domination.

• Nationalism seduced us with myths of chosen-ness, blinding us to the suffering inflicted in its name.

• Exceptionalism whispered that America was beyond history’s laws, immune to the cycles of rise and fall.

• Authoritarianism promised relief from complexity by offering strongmen and simple slogans.

• Militarism reduced diplomacy to firepower, teaching us to worship the machinery of destruction.

• Partisanship and tribalism turned politics into war by other means, where winning eclipses truth.

• Algorithmism—a new idol—outsourced attention, truth, and even memory to opaque systems that shape us more than we shape them.

Power, in this form, no longer served the common good. It served itself.

The Illusions of Self

The self was meant to be known; instead it became an endless performance.

• Anti-intellectualism scorned wisdom, mistaking thoughtfulness for elitism and leaving us defenseless against manipulation.

• Individualism, radicalized, cut us off from community and dharma, reducing freedom to “my rights” alone.

• Narcissism inflated the ego into a brand, chasing followers instead of integrity.

• Celebrity-ism mistook fame for virtue, confusing notoriety with wisdom.

• Escapism offered endless distractions—screens, drugs, spectacle—leaving reality itself neglected.

• Relativism dissolved truth into “my truth,” creating a vacuum quickly filled by propaganda.

• Pragmatism, distorted, asked not whether something was true or beautiful, but only if it “worked” or “sold.”

The self, in this form, no longer sought knowledge of itself, but only its reflection.

The Illusions of Nation

The nation was meant to be a shared covenant; instead it hardened into mythology.

• Frontierism taught us that expansion equals progress, sanctifying conquest and endless growth as destiny.

• Meritocracy assured us that success was purely earned, disguising structural privilege as personal virtue.

• Technocratism promised that data and innovation could replace wisdom, reducing governance to engineering and empathy to analytics.

• Optimismism—a peculiarly American faith—insisted that the future is always brighter, leaving no room for introspection or decline.

The nation, in this form, has confused myth for meaning and motion for direction.

The Vedantic Diagnosis

Vedanta teaches that the world of appearances—maya—seduces us with half-truths. The –isms of America are nothing but these appearances, collective hallucinations mistaken for reality. Wealth, power, self, nation—none are wrong in themselves. But when absolutized, they bind us.

The task is not to destroy them, but to see them clearly. To remember that true wealth is not possessions but contentment; true power is not domination but discernment; true self is not ego but awareness; true nation is not myth but shared dharma.

Until then, America remains a civilization adrift in illusions, confusing the masks for the face.