Be Nobody (3 page)

Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone.
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Such traits revolve around an all-encompassing fixation on the self:

 The insatiable greed, extravagance, sense of entitlement, and demand for immediate gratification that are the hallmarks of rampant consumerism

 The end of the work ethic and its transformation into an ethic of leisure and hedonism
^I

 The short-sighted exploitation of resources, personal and shared, without regard for future consequences or posterity

 The total dependence on others for validation of one's self-esteem

 The cult of celebrity and our vicarious fascination with the glamorous “lives of the rich and famous”

 The “culture of spectacle” and entertainment that has infected just about everything, from politics to sports to religion

These defining trends, already recognizable in the late 1970s, have been magnified and multiplied in the years since. The culture of narcissism has mutated and grown in all kinds of ways.
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Among
its many other expressions, it now saturates every aspect of popular culture.

We watch television shows and YouTube videos that revolve around the ennoblement of ordinary people into the suddenly famous:
American Idol
,
The Voice
, and the whole array of so-called reality shows on television; or viral YouTube footage that places a previously unknown talent into instant stardom (think Justin Bieber).
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We bob our heads to the lyrics of popular songs, many of which revolve around how totally awesome the surrogate singer is, not to mention the products he or she wears, drives, and consumes. We read magazines endowed with such revealing titles as
Self
(as if we need to be coaxed into thinking about ourselves even more than we already do!).

The narcissistic worldview informs the way we view politics as a popularity contest or “race.” It transforms news into another “show” to entertain us. Journalism today often centers far more on the journalist than it does on the subject matter of the report.

And, of course, many advertisers shamelessly exploit our narcissism when creating our desire for cool new products: iPhones, iPads, iPods—all the “i” gadgets pitched to the “I” and its insatiable hunger for attention.

It is also predominantly the neediness of the self, and not really an interest in others, that is reflected in our present addiction to nonstop communication. There are now 3.14 billion email accounts worldwide, from which we transmit millions of emails each day. We call each other all the time; we send each other nearly 200,000 text messages
every second
from the over six billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide; and half a billion of us worldwide have Twitter accounts.
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All of this emailing, calling, messaging, and tweeting is not so much to “reach out and touch somebody,” as a phone company slogan
once had it. It is mostly about reaching out so that others will acknowledge and affirm us.

And then there's the exponential increase in usage of the social networks, Facebook being the behemoth of them all, with well over one billion participants, or nearly 20 percent of all the earth's inhabitants.
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With Facebook, it's all about the thumbs-up “likes,” isn't it?

Do you like what I just said? Do you like this photo of my cat?

And beneath it all, the real question:

Do you like me?

Social networks are amazing communication tools that can be (and occasionally are) employed for very beneficial purposes. Unfortunately, most often the postings are of the narcissistic order, some more blatant than others. It's sad, but it's also typical of our self-possessed times, staring at our monitors, that we peg our self-worth on how many Facebook friends give us a thumbs-up, with our Instagram hearts throbbing for more notches on the proverbial post. Like Narcissus, we are enamored of our own reflections in the (now digitized) mirror. When will we realize that we'll never get enough thumbs-up to satisfy the ego, no matter how many photos we share, no matter how many witticisms and observations on life we contribute to the Web's global conversation?

Facebook doesn't have a “don't like” option, and that's definitely not an oversight. It's only the “likes” that any of us is really interested in. But it's disingenuous to think that the “somebody self” will ever feel like “somebody enough” by resorting to methods like this.
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Yes, the “Me Decade” has stretched out into what I call the “iEra,” an epoch not just dominated by the glut of information but also by the magnification of the “I” who is situated at the nexus of this flurry of communication. But while we have been encouraged to maintain perpetual self-absorption and are inundated with “iProducts” and “iMedia,” the “iEra” can never wholly satisfy the “I” it ceaselessly entices. We remain unhappy and dissatisfied, now more than ever before.

In light of this unprecedented exaltation of the ego and its insatiable need to be acknowledged, fulfilled, pampered, and “liked,” it's worth reminding ourselves: There is not a single authentic spiritual tradition that enjoins us to be
more
self-preoccupied,
more
full of ourselves, or
more
narcissistic than we already are. When it comes to achieving happiness in life, obsession with the self has traditionally been identified as the problem, not the solution.

As C. S. Lewis wrote way back in 1952, “Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired.”
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Until now, perhaps—and much to our detriment.

Is it just coincidental that, with the narcissism and self-obsession so enshrined in our society, we're simultaneously witnessing an equally breathtaking increase in the rate of mental illness?

Take depression as just one example. Depression is a debilitating disease—I know! I was hospitalized with a clinical case of depression when I was in my early thirties. I was a complete mess, incapacitated by the inner voice that repeatedly told me I was worthless and that there was nothing I could do to change that. And even run-of-the-mill self-esteem problems, as most everyone can attest, are no picnic in the park.

The statistics tracking our current condition are alarming: The US Department of Health estimates that over twenty million Americans currently suffer from depression. Another source claims that 15.7 percent of the population is depressed.
¹¹
Prescriptions for antidepressants have skyrocketed, rising 400 percent over the past twenty years, with more than one out of ten Americans over the age of twelve now taking these medications.
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In many places, depression has now become one of the leading causes of absenteeism from work.

It is not an exaggeration to say that depression has become pandemic. The World Health Organization has predicted that by 2020 it will be the second most fatal illness, trumped only by heart disease.
¹³
Perhaps most shockingly, depression is increasing at astounding rates among young people. In the last thirty years, the United States has seen a 1,000 percent increase in the disease among adolescents.
¹⁴

And it's not accidental that the precipitous rise in depression has occurred concurrently with two other modern trends, which themselves are interrelated: the dramatic increase in material prosperity in the developed nations, and the parallel obsession with the self, which consumerism encourages, aggravates, and excites.

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