The Dangers of the New Narcissism

Are we experiencing an insurrection of the loudmouths, the haters, the egotists, and the bullies?

(HUDSON, N.Y., Friday, June 21, 2024) -- Have you noticed that people are not interested in what you do or what you have to say, to the point that after asking you a question about yourself, they interrupt you and derail the conversation – typically toward themselves -- before you have even had a chance to finish your first sentence, much less to complete the thought?

This has become a cultural plague. A social pandemic.

WAS IT ALWAYS LIKE THIS, or is this a relatively recent development? I have seen it increasingly play out in my cohort, my generational group, but I also detect it in all generations, those older and those younger. All share a relative disinterest and a lack of curiosity in others – what they think, what they do, what they have to say, what they might have to illuminate one aspect of the world, something that could shed light on their own lives even. I can still quote – and often do – things that teachers, relatives, friends said when I was in my teens and twenties, things that have stuck with me all these years later – in some cases 40 or even 50 years later. I can’t imagine that happening going forward, given the prevailing selfishness running through the greater body politic and especially through individual relationships.

Once upon a time ideas were tossed around, shared, explored, and modified in civil and even fun ways. Friendships and relationships were often built upon an edifice of the ability to share thoughts, ideas, and realizations much more so than on whether two people agreed on everything.

But those days are long gone, and I don’t know or understand why. But I have thoughts.

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PERHAPS WE ARE EXPERIENCING the long tail of Christopher Lasch’s “culture of narcissism,” first explicated in his 1970s book by that title. Has narcissism become the default character of our age? Is social media to blame – with its implicit assumption that every individual’s thoughts and actions are equally worthy of public broadcasting? With the near-wholesale disappearance of cultural arbitration and the adoption of the assumption that everyone is an expert – even when in the company of a genuine expert – the playing field of conversation and achievement has lost all sense of relativity. “My” ideas are as smart or as “valid” as yours, in which case, why should I even bother to listen to what you have to say?

Social decorum, whatever remains of it, is lagging a bit, so you still have well-mannered attempts to inquire of others about themselves. But that’s all it is now – just manners. There is no real desire behind it to learn anything from or about your interlocutors, and why should there be when our prevailing culture puts the “I” at the center of all things? There is no more “you” in the social dynamic, other than you “liking” my posts on the perversely named “social media,” which should really be called “antisocial media,” since it rewards arms-length participation and presents the user with a fixation on the self, and otherwise steers users into the dopey, useless “like” behavior, encouraging pig-piles of empty reaffirmation. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down. That’s the extent of it.

Maybe people were always like this and I just never noticed. But I don’t think that’s the case. The public square has become a platform favoring resentment, and that resentment has invaded and infected real-life interactions – a lot of questions and answers and bloviating that basically amount to “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down.” Our culture favors extroversion against introversion – whose main characteristics are quiet, thoughtful consideration, where deep listening is an art form and where authentic I-Thou relationships build friendship, comity, and even shared spiritual experiences. Thus, the culture is primed for the insurrection of the loudmouths, the haters, the egotists, and the bullies.

Considered thought is no longer a value. The marketplace of ideas has succumbed to the very same ills of the marketplace itself – where popularity and the bottom line and serving the stockholders are the measures of success, discounting creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and the ennobling of the citizenry. Always in search of the lowest common denominator, the industry controlling culture favors the mediocre, the cheap, the quick and efficient. When was great art produced with the latter as the utmost in values?

And when this dynamic infects personal relationships to the point that they are as shallow and selfish as social media, that they devalue the good and the great and the community, the ground becomes fertile for fascism in all forms: cultural fascism, emotional fascism, political fascism, and spiritual fascism.

And that, my friend, is the equivalent of hell on earth.

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Roll Call: Founding Members

Anne Fredericks
Anonymous (7)
Erik Bruun
Nadine Habousha Cohen
Fred Collins
Fluffforager
Benno Friedman
Amy and Howard Friedner
Jackie and Larry Horn
Richard Koplin
Paul Paradiso
Steve and Helice Picheny
David Rubman
Spencertown Academy Arts Center
Elisa Spungen and Rob Bildner/Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook
Julie Abraham Stone
Mary Herr Tally