An Alarming Purpose [Total Pages: 4] Page 1 Listen to an audio reading of this piece ". . . to nail reality to the wall."     The purpose of Caveat Lector has always been subversive -- not only of the forces of political and social reaction that continue to make headway in our time, but also of the palliatives and misguided policies, slogans and shib-boleths of the liberals, who often seem just as misguided, staggering toward the edge of a precipice just opposite that of their equally wrong-headed fellows to the right.      So maybe it is time to lay out our purposes, as we see them, more clearly, our positions on social and cultural and political reality unambiguously, so neither our friends nor our critics will mistake us.      Caveat Lector, like everything in this world of ours, is a perpetual work in progress, subject to change-even of direction, sometimes to the point of subverting its own most cherished goals. Such is the price of the free imagination. Our own aims have long been both critical and creative; where critical, to critique and where necessary help undermine three cornerstones of contemporary American life: 1. Our culture of unreflecting individualism (which in recent publications has been called "the new conformism"), an individualism that in more candid cultures than ours is usually called selfishness, and that has devolved into a sometimes virulent narcissism that undercuts a sense of social and cul-tural responsibility by consistently rewarding their opposites;