Narcissism
As anyone who knows me understands, I have a huge fear of where our culture is going. I think we are creating, and nurturing a culture of victims and wimps. Until yesterday, I really failed to wrap my arms around my feels, but then it was brought to me by an article about narcissistic people.
I love hyperlinks.
I love the idea from the Slate Article to make birthday cards that say "I can't believe your birthday is so close to mine" because that sums up SO MANY people that I know. Everything has to be about them. You know the people I am talking about. The people that want you to come to their party (and bring a gift), but when it comes to your party they have 'something else going on.' Crap like that drives me crazy. I have seen a lot of this with my wedding. I have gone to and been in many weddings over the past half-decade. Now that it is my turn, people are remarkably absent. Why? Well what is in it for them?
This also true when you drive. People have become (not sure if they always have been) the most narcissistic drivers. They drive to get where they are going-- to hell with everyone else on the road.
With Twitter(which I just joined) and Facebook, we have sites now to route our narcissistic ways through. Part of me loves it, and part of me wants to cry.
I fear we cannot overcome any major obstacles in our world anymore because we always need to know what is in it for me first. If World War II happened with this generation, I fear that we wouldn't win because we wouldn't have enough people that would sacrifice to win.
I don't disclude (is that a word?) myself from this, so don't think that. I feel that one difference is that I understand that I am pretty narcissistic. That being said, I think we need to fix it. We need people to do things even if they don't benefit personally from it.
I love hyperlinks.
I love the idea from the Slate Article to make birthday cards that say "I can't believe your birthday is so close to mine" because that sums up SO MANY people that I know. Everything has to be about them. You know the people I am talking about. The people that want you to come to their party (and bring a gift), but when it comes to your party they have 'something else going on.' Crap like that drives me crazy. I have seen a lot of this with my wedding. I have gone to and been in many weddings over the past half-decade. Now that it is my turn, people are remarkably absent. Why? Well what is in it for them?
This also true when you drive. People have become (not sure if they always have been) the most narcissistic drivers. They drive to get where they are going-- to hell with everyone else on the road.
With Twitter(which I just joined) and Facebook, we have sites now to route our narcissistic ways through. Part of me loves it, and part of me wants to cry.
I fear we cannot overcome any major obstacles in our world anymore because we always need to know what is in it for me first. If World War II happened with this generation, I fear that we wouldn't win because we wouldn't have enough people that would sacrifice to win.
I don't disclude (is that a word?) myself from this, so don't think that. I feel that one difference is that I understand that I am pretty narcissistic. That being said, I think we need to fix it. We need people to do things even if they don't benefit personally from it.
posted by Phillip @ Tuesday, March 24, 2009
3 Comments:
At 6:58 PM ,
The Big said...
So... what is in it for me?
At 5:28 PM ,
Anonymous said...
I'm helping develop this motivational interview thing for people with schizophrenia. Anyways, so in doing so, I've been doing a lot of reading on research regarding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Problems that we've run in to include that it is REALLY difficult to suss out intrinsic from extrinsic motivation. One woman in my lab asked if it is possible that truly intrinsic motivation even exists, citing that if anything exists it must be measurable in some form. Seeing as measurements of intrinsic motivation are highly flawed, perhaps it simply doesn't exist.
Not saying that I disagree with the narcissism blog, in fact I agree with it being a HUGE problem in our society. I see people wanting to know what's in it for them all of the time. I think that it's important to assess this at some level. Even when doing philanthropic things (building for Habitat for Humanity, for example), people do get some rewards (increased positive affect, decreased negative affect, etc.). Though I do think it's useful to assess "what's in it for me" at some level, I think what our society suffers from is that people focus on this question as the ultimate decider or motive for action. When we focus on the 'what's in it for me" question is when we get into trouble.
And there is my two cents.
At 5:30 PM ,
Anonymous said...
I actually meant, there ARE my two cents.
And to think, one of my undergrad majors was English... yikes.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home