Bissa, Ama saw people operating from what she termed Insular Individualism. She defined this as “the ignorance of and disinterest in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one’s own experience who live insulated. She would say they lived in a “fashioned” world based on them as superior without evidence or merit.” This creates an individual who believes they are correct at all costs. Yet what this reflects is disempowered individualism. Here, the person had no place to safely express and therefore identify as who they are. They are operating only from a fixed-point system where new ideas, particularly ideas that challenge this insular individualism, are considered bad.

Ama could see that people at the time who exhibit insular individualism do not know who they are, and these same people vilified those who did by stating or acting out in some way as to say, “If I can’t have it, neither can you.” Therefore, expressing oneself was the villain and judged, which only built a movement of resistance away from freedom and further into suppression through control.

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