That’s narcissism. But it is a strange brand of narcissism, a new version of it. And we have it in our culture by the boatload.
Did you ever wonder where this idea that “everyone is a winner, and everyone gets a prize” comes from? I remember when I was a kid, and that was a long time ago, some neighborhood mother suggested to my mother that she should give a little gift to her other two children while celebrating the birthday of the third one. I don’t think she ever did such a thing, at least I don’t remember my jealous crying being calmed with a gift when my sisters got wonderful presents on their birthdays, while I got nothing, but I could be wrong. Still, you get the point.
This narcissist feeding and prepping started a long time ago. It is probably a by product of the Second World War when the United States, as well as other nations, came home to lick the wounds of physical and psychological rape in Europe and the Pacific. Long gone was the “let’s toughen them up for a cruel world” parental mantra of previous years. It was replaced with the sappy, “Let’s go easy on them, poor dears.” The 1950’s saw the start of walking the path toward opulence and well being, which was paved with good intentions. The world was still tough, but no need to grind it in.
This process started slowly, but eventually began to pick up speed. We still heard a lot of this: “my kids are going to have a better life than I did,” and what better way to lavish on the “you are so special” conviction than with providing everything that kid could possibly want or need (what do kids need other than love, shelter, food, and maybe a hand carved toy to play with when bored?) The “consume until you die” nature of the culture was certainly happy to oblige.
Soon, all this was cranked up to include not only material justification but emotional validation as well—such as never being on the losing team in sports and other competition. “There is a prize for everyone! No child is forgotten!” Kids never learned the agony of defeat, and consequently learned there is no reward for working hard and actually developing any sort of skill or know-how—or character, God forbid. Yes, it created a mess.
I won’t go into any detail about other stuff, like the whole gender craze, the demand that everyone in the world kowtow to what the kids want (adults too, of course) with regard to pronouns, the selfie craze, the TikTok “look at me” craze, etc. (Are you aware of the thousands of TikTok videos of young, scantily dressed, girls doing solo dances in front of the selfie cam?)
For example, if a person doesn’t acquiesce and start memorizing every sort of craziness in sexual preference, they will then be accused of committing a hate crime. What more entitlement could anyone place on themselves? We see this in racial issues as well, no one seems to be able to look at anyone even sideways without being called a racist, or a white privileged asshole, or worse. The problem pervades the culture so deeply and so persuasively that it is impossible to not be confronted with it in nearly every situation.
So what happened to relationships where each participant has some obligation and duty to the other? What has happened in families where there used to be tolerance for differences, and flexibilities regarding each member’s needs? What happened to communities where people all work together for common goals in decency, character development, moralities, and good citizenry? (And I don’t mean common goals such as mask wearing, social distancing, or vaccinations.) It’s all gone, or so it seems.
And is this all in the name of diversity? Individualism? Uniqueness and specialness? In fact, as much as they tout diversity, there actually is no tolerance for it any more, everyone is “equal”—remember? Individualism has become narcissism and self-absorption, with the requirement that everyone else verifies and defines the individual. Uniqueness and specialness has been squeezed into a strange form of “treat me like everyone else or you are going to get in trouble.” In a very odd and strange way, the very thing people are claiming they want is the exact opposite of what they demand they get. No one wants to be seen as unique, they all want to be the winner. No one wants to be an individual; they want to be identified as something with a rigid and dogmatic definition. No one certainly wants to be special because then they might be treated differently, and besides, being unique and special requires hard work, sacrifice, and discipline.
In my very humble opinion, we need to return to a culture where people define themselves, and as long as they are not hatefully labeled as something denigrating and derogatory, others need not define them. We need to learn to love one another as of equal value, but not equal in what makes us unique. We need to allow others among us to excel in certain skills that we admire, and reward them for, and what we may personally be deficient in. We need to understand the value of hard, decent, work to better ourselves, to better the family we belong to and the tribe we call our own. We need to understand it isn’t always about ourselves, but about others around us as well. We need to understand that the skills we develop are skills we personally will benefit from as well as benefiting the partner, the family members, and the community to which we belong. What we develop as a human being is a personal accomplishment as well as an accomplishment for the entire human race.
A tall order, eh? Yeah, I don’t expect anything like this to change all that radically any time soon. And, again, the slow indoctrination into a self-absorbed culture was intentionally implemented primarily through our education system. Our work must begin in the home and in our communities. It is “bottom up” work, and is essential in bringing back any semblance of normalcy into an impoverished humanity.
