Since we throw around so many buzzwords without thinking, a little bit of linguistic reverse engineering can tell us a lot about ourselves that we might not otherwise have noticed.  Let’s start with the buzzword “self-expression.”

Dressing, decorating, and defacing ourselves are called self-expression.  So are choosing where to live, enjoying entertainment, playing games, making music, and, for that matter, making noise.  Doing things, and not doing them, are both called self-expression.  It’s self-expression to sleep around, but it’s also self-expression to be chaste.  It's self-expression to go to church, but it’s also self-expression to avoid it.

Is there anything that can’t count as self-expression?  Apparently not.  In the narrow sense, we “express” an idea, a feeling, a judgment, or an opinion only by giving voice to it.  But in the broad sense, we “express” something by manifesting or revealing it, and we manifest or reveal our “selves” in literally everything we do, whether or not we intend to.  The murderer reveals or divulges his character by murdering; the sick person reveals or divulges his state of health by throwing up.

Even so, we don’t normally use the term “self-expression” for everything we do whatsoever.  We tend to use it either for innocent things we expect others to applaud, or for unsavory things we want others to applaud.  For example, most people call writing a novel self-expression.  But people don’t ordinarily call making a pornographic film self-expression unless they want us to tolerate or approve it, and hardly anyone would call a snuff film self-expression.  (Snuff films, if you aren’t familiar with the term, are films which depict real-life murders which are committed just in order to be filmed.  Yes, that’s a thing.)

Logically, then, although everything we do is self-expression, we normally describe an action as self-expression only to say “this is good.”  Used that way, the term is powerful.  For example, foul pictures and language weren’t formerly counted as free speech because they didn’t communicate ideas and arguments.  Today, though, they are counted as free speech, just because we say they “express” the “self.”  And of course, logically, they do.  If I spout a stream of profanities, I may be expressing nothing more of myself than an urge to blow off steam.  But I may also be divulging my desire for attention, my craving to sound tough, my enjoyment of filthiness, or even my inability to express a cogent argument.

But why should the term “self-expression” have such power to connect itself with our approval?  Probably for at least two reasons.  The first is that the idea of expressing ourselves validates our narcissism.  The second is that it shields us from criticism.

As to narcissism, the idea that I am doing something to “express myself” inverts the normal order of my response to the world, turning it into a reflection of myself.  Do I worship because God is great and good, then it’s all about Him, and I am just responding.  But if I worship “because I am a religious person,” then it’s all about me.  Again:  Does my love song only celebrate how the girl makes me feel?  Then it’s all about me.  But if it celebrates the charms of the girl who elicits those feelings, then it’s about her, and takes me out of myself.

Contrast the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend the Night Together with those of Stephen Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer, and you’ll see what I mean.

As to being shielded from criticism, if I merely say “I know what I like, and I like that painting of Prometheus in chains,” my statement isn’t really about the painting at all.  It is only a description of how I feel when I look at it.  As such, it conveys a sort of “So there.”  For you might say that you don’t like the painting -- but you would hardly tell me that you don’t like my feelings about it, would you?  That would be insulting.  But if I say, “that painting of Prometheus in chains is truly beautiful,” then I am not speaking of my own feelings, except by implication.  I am primarily speaking of the painting, expressing the judgment that its qualities make it worthy to be admired.  As such, you can challenge it without insulting me.  For example, you might call my attention to qualities I have overlooked but which detract from its beauty.  Perhaps the figure is rendered carelessly, the composition is out of balance, or the coloring is putrid.

If everything is just self-expression, then I am all that matters.  I don’t have to engage anyone.  I don’t have to take disagreement seriously.  If I see something differently than you do, “Well, that’s just how I feel,” and if you see it differently than I do, “Well, that’s just your perspective.”

In the end, the freedom to express myself means nothing but the freedom not to deal with anything that isn’t me.  It allows each of us to climb into the hole of self and pull it in after him.