People have always sought one form of freedom or another, it seems: freedom from oppression of various kinds, from injustice, from abuse and danger and so much more. But Rowan Williams singles out something more fundamental: freedom from self-orientation.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury is quoted by Richard Rohr, whom I quote: "You can have political or economic freedom, but if you are not free from your own ego, from your own centrality inside your own thinking, I don't think you're very free at all. In fact, your actions and behavior will be totally predictable. Everything will revolve around your security, survival, self-protection, self-validation, self, self, self."
That this is the great age of self-centeredness and narcissism is seen in the rise of Donald Trump, who thinks that, as long as the world revolves around him, everything will be fine. Truth, facts, knowledge, taste--none of these matter.
As Michael Sean Winters writes today in NCR, toddlers can get away with combining viciousness and feigned innocence when they are caught in lies. Apparently, many American voters see their own self-interests mirrored in the narcissistic Mr. Trump. The consequences are alarming.
The mature person knows that if we think only and exclusively of ourselves at the expense of others, we diminish our own humanity.
Showing posts with label narcissism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label narcissism. Show all posts
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The ideology of self-absorption
I was glad to see that Frank Bruni, writing last month in the New York Times, agrees with me (just kidding). His article, "Individualism in Overdrive," complements nicely some of the remarks about the new narcissism I have written about here as the pervasive evil underlying our culture and political life.
I refer to the Tea Party belief that taxes are not needed because each of us is meant to help ourselves rather than ours. This, after all, is the basis of the extreme indidivualism that has moved the country so dangerously to the right, even in the name of Christianity, which is about loving thy neighbor.
Bruni describes the new Johnny Appleseed of Hypernarcissism, the personal improvement guru Tim Ferris, who suggests putting an unloaded starter pistol in your luggage to make sure that the TSA people at the airport won't lose it. You get peace of mind that way; no matter that government time and money is wasted, which is our (collective) money.
I hope Ferris, a best-selling author, is only joking. Bruni is not when he zeroes in those who try to "game the system" to advance their own cause at the expense of the common good. "Selfishness run amok is a national disease," he writes; too many people act as if they live in a civic vacuum, with no responsibilities to others.
Consider the huge increase in Social Security disability applications, many by people who don't need such assistance, based on the view that the federal treasury is too big to be affected. But isn't that treasury the sum of us? And cheating it is to cheat your neighbor. Looking out for No. 1 may sell books and get you on TV, but it is immoral and destructive of the social fabric.
How many fundamentalist Christians, voting for Republicans, subscribe to the anti-government, me-first principle without seeing that it contradics the Gospel? There is no reason to be surprised by this since there is nothing new under the sun. Selfishness, sometimes called pride, has been, for about 2,000 years, the chief of the deadly sins, and anyone who has read Dante or other earlier authors knows that the avarice of earlier times is little different from that of today. It is always rooted in the self at the expense of the other.
This brings me back to selfishness as the essence of evil--and to its opposite, love, which brings compassion and whatever justice we deserve on this earth.
I refer to the Tea Party belief that taxes are not needed because each of us is meant to help ourselves rather than ours. This, after all, is the basis of the extreme indidivualism that has moved the country so dangerously to the right, even in the name of Christianity, which is about loving thy neighbor.
Bruni describes the new Johnny Appleseed of Hypernarcissism, the personal improvement guru Tim Ferris, who suggests putting an unloaded starter pistol in your luggage to make sure that the TSA people at the airport won't lose it. You get peace of mind that way; no matter that government time and money is wasted, which is our (collective) money.
I hope Ferris, a best-selling author, is only joking. Bruni is not when he zeroes in those who try to "game the system" to advance their own cause at the expense of the common good. "Selfishness run amok is a national disease," he writes; too many people act as if they live in a civic vacuum, with no responsibilities to others.
Consider the huge increase in Social Security disability applications, many by people who don't need such assistance, based on the view that the federal treasury is too big to be affected. But isn't that treasury the sum of us? And cheating it is to cheat your neighbor. Looking out for No. 1 may sell books and get you on TV, but it is immoral and destructive of the social fabric.
How many fundamentalist Christians, voting for Republicans, subscribe to the anti-government, me-first principle without seeing that it contradics the Gospel? There is no reason to be surprised by this since there is nothing new under the sun. Selfishness, sometimes called pride, has been, for about 2,000 years, the chief of the deadly sins, and anyone who has read Dante or other earlier authors knows that the avarice of earlier times is little different from that of today. It is always rooted in the self at the expense of the other.
This brings me back to selfishness as the essence of evil--and to its opposite, love, which brings compassion and whatever justice we deserve on this earth.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Civility Revisited
Above the steady beat of the treadmills and exercise bikes, above the music and the whirring of two fans, above the other sounds, human and mechanical, of the fitness center where I was trying to exercise yesterday, I could not escape the loud voice of a man on his cell phone, talking non-stop. Perhaps the volume of his conversation, which lasted more than fifteen minutes, as documented by my treadmill monitor, was due to the competing sounds around him. Maybe he thought that it was too hot for him to go outside for his call or, more likely, that doing two things at once made good sense.
In any case, he was in violation of the center's policies. When the manager finally went over and gently suggested something about not talking so much, the man, a big guy in his late twenties, kept on talking, telling his listender about the many great restaurants he liked in various cities, as if I and my fellow patrons were non-existent, as if the policies were for others. He showed no awareness of the center as a public place where private conversations are inappropriate.
I was not about to confront this guy, who was built like a linebacker, but I wanted to tell him that civility--something increasingly lacking in our time--means some awareness that others have the right to have their own privacy respected. That he was not exercising on a desert island. But he would have seen me as an old crank.
As I plodded away on my treadmill, before finally giving up in disgust, I recalled having recently written about the lack of communal awareness so apparent in our culture, as evidenced in the ongoing health care debate. The common good is, for more and more people, never considered: only the individual's freedom, needs, problems, and tastes. Yet reasonable thinkers know that restraints on individual freedom are often necessary for the good of the whole society to function.
What is apparent on the moral and political level is also seen in everyday life, in what Christopher Lasch once called The Culture of Narcissism. He first published that book in 1978; he is no longer around. I wonder what he would say about the way the social media (texting, I-pods, etc.) and the cell phone (in use even when some people drive) have exacerbated the social problems he isolated, the culture of "Me first." Which is now quite often "Me Only." If Lasch were to re-issue his book, he could call it "The Culture of Hypernarcissism."
Rabbi Hillel said long ago: "If I don't think of myself, who will? Yet if I think only of myself, who am I?" Without such a balance, we are doomed.
The young guy talking on the treadmill has never heard of this, or if he has, he has dismissed it, since he apparently thinks only of himself. Very sad. We all suffer--not just those of us in the fitness center.
In any case, he was in violation of the center's policies. When the manager finally went over and gently suggested something about not talking so much, the man, a big guy in his late twenties, kept on talking, telling his listender about the many great restaurants he liked in various cities, as if I and my fellow patrons were non-existent, as if the policies were for others. He showed no awareness of the center as a public place where private conversations are inappropriate.
I was not about to confront this guy, who was built like a linebacker, but I wanted to tell him that civility--something increasingly lacking in our time--means some awareness that others have the right to have their own privacy respected. That he was not exercising on a desert island. But he would have seen me as an old crank.
As I plodded away on my treadmill, before finally giving up in disgust, I recalled having recently written about the lack of communal awareness so apparent in our culture, as evidenced in the ongoing health care debate. The common good is, for more and more people, never considered: only the individual's freedom, needs, problems, and tastes. Yet reasonable thinkers know that restraints on individual freedom are often necessary for the good of the whole society to function.
What is apparent on the moral and political level is also seen in everyday life, in what Christopher Lasch once called The Culture of Narcissism. He first published that book in 1978; he is no longer around. I wonder what he would say about the way the social media (texting, I-pods, etc.) and the cell phone (in use even when some people drive) have exacerbated the social problems he isolated, the culture of "Me first." Which is now quite often "Me Only." If Lasch were to re-issue his book, he could call it "The Culture of Hypernarcissism."
Rabbi Hillel said long ago: "If I don't think of myself, who will? Yet if I think only of myself, who am I?" Without such a balance, we are doomed.
The young guy talking on the treadmill has never heard of this, or if he has, he has dismissed it, since he apparently thinks only of himself. Very sad. We all suffer--not just those of us in the fitness center.
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