“All I can hear: I-me-mine, I-me-mine…
Everyone’s saying it
flowing more freely than wine
I-I, me-me, mine”
– George Harrison, 1970
Forty-one years after “Let It Be,” the late George Harrison got it right. Is there a more apt anthem for our age than this one from the last Beatles album? Start keeping score, and you just might find that “I,” “Me” and “Mine” are the three most overworked personal pronouns in the English language.
You see, even when you think it’s about you, it’s still really all about me — not yours truly, the Narcissist-in-Chief of this essay but all the billions of other “Me”s out there.
Excuse me just a second, I’ll be right back. Just warming up: “Me, me-me-me-me…” I, yi-Yi, yi-Yi… Or as we say here in the USN — the United States of Narcissism — “I, I sir ….”
As I was saying, you have undoubtedly noticed that the Royal Me has usurped the “Royal We” in a veritable bubonic plague of narcissism. And I am hardly the first person to make this case.
Run a search on Amazon.com and you’ll find plenty of help for dealing with all the narcissists in your life — parents, children, lovers and so on.
In these books — as in real life — it’s a tsunami of self-idolatry. We are all the American Idol. But there are not nearly enough record deals to go around. We need a few less idols and a little more idol-i-cide (a la Moses and the golden calf).
Blame it on our doting parents, blame it on the 1960s, blame it on the bossanova (with its magic spell). Or, perhaps more appropriately, blame it on O.J. Simpson–arguably, the first narcissist to have hijacked the American public’s attention, who, along with his two alleged victims, also definitively murdered network news. Post-O.J., cable news coverage has become one sensational siege after another, in a spectacular mudslide. Bumping along the bottom, it’s all Anna-Nicoles and Trumps and Sheens and Palins and Weiners and other scandals, nearly all of the time — or substitute your own overwrought, under-achieving egomaniac of choice.
But in a narcissist’s world, any way you slice the blame, it’s gotta be someone else’s fault. That is, after all, the narcissist’s M.O.: never, EVER take responsibility. And there’s enough blame to go around, to be tweeted or blogged about. Not that anyone else in my generation, or any other, for that matter, cares, because we’re all celebrating our own “I”-ness on our Facebook pages and on Twitter, honing and marketing our own brands.
“You,” you see, are a mere bit player in the all-consuming, overarching drama called “Me.” When I call you on my I-Phone, it will never be about you. Next time I call, note how much time I spend talking about “Me, Me, Me” as opposed to You, You, You — MY yoga class, MY book group, MY organic garden … blah, blah, blah….
And when you tire of listening, I’ll just go online and offload my self-preoccupation into the social networks, or hobnob with my fellow narcissists in “The Association for Justified Narcissism” on Facebook. (“Don’t hate us ‘cause we’re beautiful. And talented. And funny. And charming. And brilliant. And lovable…”)
Not.
If you’re still with me, I’m sure you’ve also noticed the equally huge epidemic of inter-generational finger-wagging about exactly which generation IS, definitively, the most narcissistic.
So, quien es mas narcissismo, to channel Dan Ackroyd on “Saturday Night Live,” circa 1979 (“Quien es mas macho?”)? Is it the Baby Boomers a.k.a. the Me Generation? Generation X (mid 60s to late 70s)? Or the reigning Generation Me?
You’ll have your own opinion, but for complete obsession with self, you just can’t beat the anointed ones born from 1981-1999, say Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, authors of “The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement.” Dubbed the “i Generation” or “i Gen,” that’s ”i” as in the myriad of i-technologies that “profoundly shaped” them or “i” for “individual” (as in their slavish devotion to self).
Doted on by their parents and raised to believe they were special and to “aim for the stars,” i gen, write the authors, suffers from “epidemic self-esteem at a time when it’s harder to succeed.” This clash “between expectations and reality” creates a generation that is “disappointed” by adulthood.
“In Today’s America,” as the late George Carlin once put it, “no child ever gets to hear those character-building words, YOU LOST!…. Everyone is on the honor roll, and all you need to do to stay on the honor roll is to maintain a body temperature somewhere in the 90s.”
Buddhism may offer some hope. Essentially a kind of reverse narcissism, that philosophy eschews the “Me” for the “We,” de-emphasizing the importance of the ego and the illusion that there actually is a separate self.”
And is it any wonder they’re so self-absorbed, say the authors, when from a very early age, they’re taught to speak “the language of the self…as their native tongue.” “Just be yourself;” “believe in yourself;” “express yourself;” “be honest with yourself;” “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else;” and on and on….
My new motto? Never trust anyone under the age of 30!
Honestly, how can we boomers — the original “Me” Generation — even compete? Until now, we have been accused of being the most self-preoccupied generation. What a terrible irony it would be if our lasting legacy is a generation of similarly self-entitled little monsters.
But boomers have made real contributions to our culture, says Leonard Steinhorn in “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy” (2006). In eloquently defending the post-war generation, Steinhorn quotes Muhammad Ali, neatly illustrating the difference between Facebooking, narcissistic social networkers of all generations and their more socially conscious counterparts: “It’s not just what you do when the lights are turned on, it’s what you do when no one is watching.”
Well, even I-Me-Myself have to wonder if any of us is blameless when we see our collective, overwhelming narcissism reflected back to us everywhere we look in the culture — not only in our progeny, but also in the way our technology reflects our self-centeredness, on TV, in films and even in the funnies. Rat in “Pearls before Swine” wants the world to stop revolving when he dies.
A sense of entitlement and an overarching self-absorption are also predominant features of what currently passes for pop music. Little Jackie raps: “There’s only one me in the galaxy, I am an endangered species… I know I rock and what I got is hot… the world should revolve around me.”
But guess what, LJ? Narcissism may just arguably be the predominant psychological malaise of our time, but we hardly invented it. It goes all the way back to, well, Narcissus, of mythical fame. Freud was already talking about it back in 1914.
Regardless, we took it and ran with it. Take national “Madly in Love with Me Day,” first held Feb.13, 2010, and now an annual “holiday,” invented by Christine Arylo. And surprise, surprise, she’s written a book and started her very own (gag) movement, “Madly in Love with Me,” spawned from her “Choosing Me Before We,” preaching that “for today’s woman, self-love is hip, hot and hers.” (Before she sold “me” to you, she was selling us all Gap ,Visa and other post-modern essentials.)
So, at the risk of repeating myself, surely someone bears responsibility for this rampant narcissism? Dr. Drew Pinsky, of VH1 fame, fingers celebrities. In “The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America,” Pinsky posits that the current generation is simply identifying with the self-absorption of the rich and famous. “Dancing with the Stars,” indeed. Celebrity dysfunction is “spreading to the culture at large — with young people simply mirroring their bad behavior, including such expressions of clinical narcissism as vanity, entitlement and superiority, among others.
More horrifying: The real celebrities are now spawning a sub-species of faux celebrities who are garnering almost equal — and sometimes more — attention: quasi-criminal elements, such as the infamous Casey Anthony, more notorious than notable.
These celebrities are not nearly as accomplished, talented and successful as they pretend. At heart, narcissists are fundamentally insecure, covering their poor self-esteem with bluster, ego and a compulsive need to prove themselves.
As for Pinsky, he has benefited from celebrity narcissism and our reflected (OK, mirrored) collective narcissism as a nation. Our co-narcissism, as it were, keeps us reading books such as his, and addicted, excuse the expression, to such cable fare as “Celebrity Rehab.”
So, just to recap here: First it was Freud’s fault, then it was the Boomers’ fault, then O.J.’s. But what about San Andreas? When I lived in San Francisco and there was an earthquake, it was often San Andreas’ fault.
Our current state was foreseen by Christopher Lasch in his 1979 book, “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations.” Thirty-two years ago he predicted that pathological narcissism would go mainstream, “normalizing” in 20th and 21st-century American culture. This exceeding preoccupation with “issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity” is caused by either overpraising by parents or its opposite, emotional abuse.
So let’s face it, we’re all narcissists.The culture enables us, technology enables us, and it’s no use arguing we’re not. Vanity, thy name is Me. Back in 2006, in a spirit of “community and collaboration on a scale never before seen” “Time” named “You” person of the year. This year, my money’s on “Me.”
Feel like you need a radical intervention — or at the very least, a shower?
Buddhism may offer some hope. Essentially a kind of reverse narcissism, that philosophy eschews the “Me” for the “We,” de-emphasizing the importance of the ego and the illusion that there actually is a separate self. The root of Narcissus actually means asleep or numb. And the root of Buddha actually means “Awake.” Case closed, the Dalai Lama would say.
Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself” (from “Leaves of Grass”), which belies its title, also makes this point. It’s not a celebration of self but rather all our selves. Whitman inhabits and celebrates all walks of life in a detailed portrait of his times, 1900:
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise… a southerner soon as a northerner… At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine… Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion; A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker.
The takeaway: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” (the Beatles again.) In the poem, Whitman channels everyone but the eggman and the walrus, goo goo g’joob…
If narcissism is like one giant cosmic snake bite, then we need the antidote — fast — before our moral fiber is further eroded, and unprotected social intercourse becomes all but impossible. (Quick, I bet you can name a half-dozen self-centered people in your circle who drive you crazy, in a passive-aggressive sort of way. Easy, huh?)
And while some of you may STILL be asking, well, sister, what’s wrong with a little healthy self-esteem, let me remind you of the mythical Narcissus. His story is nothing so much as a cautionary tale. In it he literally meets his first Nemesis, the Greek goddess (as in “Bitch set me up”) who enabled him to helplessly, hopelessly fall in love with his own image. Which leads him, of course, to his ultimate nemesis — himself — pathological self-love, paralysis and his demise.
We have met our nemesis, and it is us!
Editor’s note: Barbara Ann Curcio is a former reporter and columnist for The Washington Post. She is now a columnist for VTDigger.org.
