Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Lecture Series
Lecture 4: Challenges to Education, Part III, The Narcissistic Culture

I'm struck by the Social Media/Reality TV world in which we live. Everyone thinks his or her life is fascinating. People today are always complaining that they have so little time and yet so many have ample time to nourish an endless vapid preoccupation with emotional narrative for its own sake.

As a philosophy teacher, I'm beginning to wonder what my teaching is going to mean to the increasing numbers of narcissists in my classes. The ideas are king in my class, not personal stories about my life or the lives of my students. Frankly I think that the Trinity doctrine is fascinating (because God is fascinating) and my life compared to the central theological and philosophical ideas is like comparing the scribblings of a child to the genius of Michelangelo. The irony is not lost on me. I'm utterly enthralled with topics like the nominalist/realist discussion while my students are captivated by stories, and stories that aren't even that interesting. They like stories about how funny a movie was, or how militant their parents are, or how another celebrity cheated on his wife. If I were to stop one of my lectures and just share a story about my daughter throwing up on me they would sit at rapt attention, even if the story was utterly unrelated to anything significant.

Some of my complaint here falls into the category of, "the ravings of a cranky, middle-aged high school teacher," and I'm fine with that. But just as teens have so little interest in the things I find profoundly important, so I have little interest in their insufferable preoccupation with the dramatics of high school dating relationships or Instagram selfies. And I'm tired of the excuse that they are immature, and so I should cut them some slack. There are, of course, exceptions to this staggering shallowness, but those few don't constitute a large enough number to challenge the present generalization.

And it is not wholly, or even primarily, their fault. This is a culture that is ideally suited to the production of narcissists. As I understand the term, the modern narcissist is the sort of person so self focused that he simply cannot develop a worldview or philosophy of life. He defaults to a self-view. The world exists as a stage upon which he is the star attraction. Other people exist only as mirrors, reflecting back to him some feedback on himself. In fact, he ceases to be interested in individuals. His interaction with the outside world becomes one unbroken self defining and self promoting exercise. For the narcissist, one is either above this mass of humanity or one is subsumed into it, and the narcissist feels entitled to be above it.

The curious thing about the modern narcissist is that, as students of our culture, they have seen others rise above the mass without doing anything significant. They watch regular people become celebrities on reality shows just because they have abrasive and colorful personalities, and for no other reason. They watch others become fashion experts on entertainment programs. They amass hundreds of followers on various social media sites and write a blog (cough, cough), all because they have come to believe that what they presently are is what the whole world should notice and value. The only problem for the narcissist apparently is being noticed by the right people rather than being the right person to notice. In fact, what I just said is so abstract that the narcissist would think it both boring and unworthy of the time necessary to understand it.

And so the narcissist firmly believes that she is presently a wonder of the world, worthy of a larger share of attention. She need not study, pursue a craft, improve on a talent or be a team player to build something larger than her name or image. All of that is for the nameless, faceless nobodies of society. They may need time for training or improvement, but she is ready for primetime. Just look at how hot her selfies are.

The narcissist is not a listener. She is a commentator... on everything, because she is an expert on everything, including the things that people should or should not be experts about. Anything she doesn't know is deemed unworthy of knowing, of course. Her most devastating attack against anything uninteresting to her is to call it "boring," meaning, in most cases, things she can't understand. What to others is listening to her is only a pause in her running monologue about the world as she sees it. Every story, every idea, every metaphor in literature, every discussion of politics, movies, or any interaction with the outside world is a prompt for her to share some thrilling aspect of her life or perspective to others.

This is why the narcissist cannot understand philosophy. Philosophy has to do with thinking deeply about the nature of the world, how we come to know anything, what is real, what happens after death, what is ethically right, etc. But the narcissist already knows all of this without reference to "other people." Just raise any philosophical question and he'll tell you the answer. His emotions and intuition are sufficient to guide him wisely, and to guide you wisely. If you respond by saying that philosophers have already rejected his rather shallow ideas, he will just stare at you blankly, and up will come his devastatingly bored expression. And the conversation will be over. He need not develop a worldview because the world has shrunk to the narrow circumference of his life and experiences. Anything else is utterly irrelevant. He won't even argue with you about whether your answers are better than his. He will just yawn at you and proceed to the party, where a hundred friends writhe rhythmically to music that blares so loudly that it crushes all conversation, and people laugh at one liners while stumbling in the fog of consciousness brought on by beer, drugs and the role playing world of adolescent thought. Greatness is found there, but it is all make believe; a kind of translation back into reality of the realm of social media. It is a place to be seen and not to find love, truth, humanity or anything of substance. It is a world of walking three dimensional selfies.

The narcissist is dreadfully discontented. Eventually reality intrudes. What is the percentage of people who become even pseudo-famous (reality show famous)? Minimal at best. How many high school narcissists will actually achieve fame and fortune? Precious few! And even the ones that do, if they do so as narcissists, will have won the world and lost their souls. But what about the rest of them? Those who expected the world to rise up in ceaseless applause, and never realize this dream, come to hate the world. And why should they respond any other way? Imagine the poor pathetic narcissist in the winter of her days, having desperately attempted to be noticed only to discover that she remains insignificant, nameless, unknown to the world.

The narcissist cannot even be good at something because she obsesses about greatness. To be good is to be nothing. To be a good mother is not to be a famous mother. To be a good singer, perhaps making a modest living at it and improving one's craft, is to be nothing. To be a good writer or teacher or lawyer is not to be great, famous, noticed, and so to be good is to be insignificant, another member of the herd. If the narcissist discovers that she will never be great--that is, noticed--at something, then she will no longer bother trying to be good at that thing. Only being noticed for greatness matters. She has turned all goods into instrumental goods, in the words of Plato. She doesn't want to be a good mother because it is good in itself. She wants to be a great mother because there will be some personal payoff, some glory, that will belong to her if she works to that end.

Further, the narcissist will never view life as meaningful if it is not noticed on a grand scale. Curiously the narcissist equates meaning with attention. Attention is meaning. Name any person who was significant in your family, who substantially moved your whole family line towards civility, grace, wisdom and happiness, and then consider if they were known. If they were not known, and certainly if we don't know them now, then their lives are without meaning. This is truly how the narcissist thinks. No wonder she responds so easily to half-wit celebrities and responds with vacant eyes to the teachings of Jesus, or even Confucius.

Let us say at the end of this discussion that the quintessential opposite of the narcissist is the humble man or woman, whose life exists for glories beyond himself or herself.

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