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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Narcissist Nation


This excerpt from a recent column by Richard Cohen rings true no matter where you are on the political spectrum:

...The Narcissist Nation is all around us. You can see it in the ubiquitous selfie, an immodest photo of the self, or even in the cellphone picture in which the real subject of the photo is not the image in it but the person taking it: Look where I was. Look at what I did. This is also why people take pictures of celebrities. Gotcha! It makes them important. Once, people asked for an autograph. Now, they take a picture. Even-steven.

The Narcissistic Nation watches Fox News or MSNBC. This way it gets nothing but affirmation and is never challenged. It has its own blogs and tweets to the like-minded, is followed and friended by virtual clones, denounces and dismisses those of different opinions and demands that they be fired. The need is for a world much like themselves. How comforting. How gratingly bland....
Are technology and the Information Age rewiring brains so as to make those brains more prone to narcissism and rigidity?

It seems to me that attention spans have become dangerously shortened  perhaps, in part, due to multi-tasking.

15 comments:

  1. Liberal Emperor's Uncle Stinky Makes The News Again.
    Barry 0bama's uncle Stinky got lucky again. This past month, the INS judge has given 0nyango 0bama a pass for "good behavior" and the path for citizenship.
    So now, Uncle Stinky gets to keep hanging around the liquor stores in Framingham Massachusetts and his favorite diner "The Chicken Bones, Pigs Feet, and Watermelon" blue plate Special.
    Word is out that Uncle Stinky has asked Hos Holiness Emperor Obama for a position in the administration. I say Why Not? He’d fit in perfectly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No Further Words Needed, Thank You For That

    ReplyDelete
  3. American Jihad,
    Thank you for posting the link to that video. I hope that all who stop by this thread take a few moments to watch it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ellie Rosenfield said

    What Mr. Cohen wrote seems far more true of Democrats than it does Republicans. MSNBC should not be mentioned in the same sentence with FOX News. The latter does have a more conservative orientation than any other TV news channel, but it deserves to be taken seriously. The reportage there is far fairer to Democrats than MSNBC is to Republicans. I may be a liberal, but I am able to tell the difference between a sincere, fair-minded evaluation of current events and something so nakedly partisan it borders on farce or self-parody.

    I agree people are more "into themselves" today than ever before. I blame advanced electronic technology for that. People tend to go where they are led. Technology has become the leading trendsetter.

    Can anything be done about it? It seems doubtful. There's no going back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And remember .Bengazhi !
      Don't be. Distracted by Bridgegate

      Delete
  5. "in the cellphone picture in which the real subject of the photo is not the image in it but the person taking it"

    OK, but I not sure that the concept is anything new. Does anyone remember those mass mailed, nauseating Christmas letters?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Christopher Lasch defined this shift three decades ago in The Culture of Narcissism.

    As I recall he placed the blame on a generally weak sense of self which required constant confirmation.
    The book was criticized but maybe deserves a reevaluation and a cover blurb by Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber.

    Myself, I believe we've become good little consumers and the social media have become genius at marketing while we have lost our ability to create.
    So long as students never really experience the aesthetic experience of creating we will continue to slide.

    ReplyDelete
  7. From Cohen's shallow column:
    "We have seen the alienated man in countless movies, and he either goes on a killing spree or discovers the joys of a loving relationship."

    I suggest this guy give Antonioni's Alienation Trilogy a look . If either of those endings occurs in L'Avventura I wasn't attentive.
    Great films for study of this topic and they spawned quite a few others.

    Cohen really is a stiff.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ... it also manifests itself in the prosperity gospel and the destruction of religion.

    The roots of this issue go back a distance. It isn't caused by the technology but the technology has advanced so quickly as a facilitator that we haven't had time to assess the costs.

    E. F. Schumacher made a pretty convincing point in Small Is Beautiful that unchallenged technological advances will inevitably generate social dislocation if we don't manage them.
    In effect, we sell our birthright for pottage and a Walmart gift card.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Al Terego says;

    Get your own blog, pintail, and quit clogging up other peoples' bandwidth with your crap.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Obama makes more threats
    Obviously this man has an ego the size of Minnesota because he stated today that "I have a pen. And I have a phone"..
    Obama is threatening to bypass Congress and legislate from the Oval Office by use of executive orders.
    This president believes he above the law. His attitude is "I don't care what the law says. I am the president God Dammit and that means I should be able to do whatever the hell I want. let them take me to court."
    And you people who voted for this guy thought you were electing a president.
    Obama is a de facto dictator.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? ...

    The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What! will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting. ...

    Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh! [moaning piteously] ...

    Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on ’s grave. ...

    To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed. ...

    ReplyDelete
  12. Obama is threatening to bypass Congress and legislate from the Oval Office by use of executive orders.
    This president believes he above the law. His attitude is "I don't care what the law says. I am the president God Dammit and that means I should be able to do whatever the hell I want. let them take me to court."
    And you people who voted for this guy thought you were electing a president.
    Obama is a de facto dictator.

    Obama is a hypocritical lying POS. I saw the entire exchange. He stated this as a threat to Congress to basically comply with his wishes regarding a budget or he would ignore Congress via executive orders. That isn't governance. That is a bully and a dictator.
    He called Bush using executive orders an abuse of power but he does so with impunity. Everything about Obama are lies and hypocrisy

    ReplyDelete
  13. Obama is making more threats. Why should he stop now? This punk-assed, third-world-style, dictator-in-chief has operated thus far with impunity. Congress hasn't the balls to call him on the carpet, to initiate impeachment proceeding for his many transgressions. It cannot simply be because they fear being labeled 'racist'. There is more here than we have clear knowledge of. Certainly, this megalomaniac is running out of control and total disregards this Nation and the Constitution on which it was founded

    ReplyDelete

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