Identity Loss and Taking What's "Yours"

According to Jennifer Hecht, William James believed anxiety came from American forms of religious devotion. I think he might have misplaced the blame. Anxiety in America seems to come more from the need to adjust and conform to social norms, whether it is Christianity in the West, Hinduism in India, or whatever. In folk literature, at least in Germany when it was Christianized, always made the outsiders the bad people (Rumplestiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, etc), which is still relevant to the problem during William James’s time, that the anxiety from religious devotion is due to trying not to believe in anything else. The necessity to conform rather than “respecting the sound you produce…as a new power in nature.”

Which brings me to my point: If anxiety is more to do with conforming to the lifestyles of the general public, how will a person be able to trust himself about his goals rather than acknowledge that these goals are probably just products of his subconscious tendency to will what everyone else wills? There were several modernist writers worried about who they were because they believed they were just products of their culture and they were overwhelmed by this lack of identity. This problem is still pretty prevalent. Where’s that unique sound Emerson talks about, if we’re all moving involuntarily to one personality?

Factual question: Why does Marcus Aurelius say life is not like a theater?