I think he meant aspirations beyond what you are being sold. I.E. nice home, nice car, nice clothes, nice furniture, perfect job..etc etc etc.
In other words, not a superficial level.
You got me
Our ideals can be upper things, not the new Peugeot or Toyota Corolla. Of course I don't believe that having a car or wealth is a bad thing. I never thought amoral someone that wanted to be rich. I thought amoral someone that wanted to be rich without sweat.
Anyway Sorry for my bad english, I use an electronic dictionary each time I want to express a word or phrase that I don't know.
To the point:
D raised a good point.
Whether our thoughts, our judges, our decisions every day are "ours" and not formed from the society (even family). I think the team we belong(the language we speak, the god we trust, the way we were raised, the job we have) is fixing the way we're thinking. So the values we have are not "ours". Of course, our ego doesn't admit that.
Independent stance is a good myth. In most cases it's where we belong, and that's what shapes our thoughts and our believes. That's the conformism that D refered.
I'll give you an example from something impressive that I red recently.
During the 50s a psycologist (don't remember his name) made a clever experiment.
He gave to 6 people a paper that was asking to match the given line with the correct line (equal size) from other 3 lines above. The answer was obvious. But before that, the 5 people were gathered and the psycologist told them to make a false choice. The experiment happened somehow so the last person was able to hear the other's answers before he delivered the paper. Surprisingly the majority of the people from every experiment were giving each time the other's answer, the false one. When the psycologist was explaining the conspiracy thing, the persons were self-justifying. They were excusing that they weren't careful, that they didn't observe it too much. Noone admitted he was drifted from the other's choice.
When we belong in a mass of people, we can run wild and we don't admit it that it was the mass that made us to act like that.
That's human's nature. Human is a social person. He wants to communicate. He wants to share his moments of hapiness. When he's having fan he wants to be with other people around. That's why young people are behaving the same way. They want to be accepted and they're willing to sacrifice some of their habits in order to be accepted. That's same dressing, same tastes, same interests e.t.c. We all make our compromises in daily life to be accepted. If you don't look like other people, you're considered weird. That's human thing too. Even when we're kids we can act that way. You remember Forest Gump? None of the kids wanted him to sit next to them in the school bus. It's the subconsious fear that makes us reject people. The fear that this person might be dangerous.
We need to be brave and honest with ourselves in order to be individuals and not just another piece of the mass. "Delusion is timidity" Nietztche said. Cravenness to face the truth.
Author