On Narcissism

Well, as the Lord's providence would have it, as found an absolute treasure in a Newtown 2nd hand bookstore today! It's a book by Christopher Lasch I've heard good things about entitled: The Culture of Narcissism.

In it, he draws two important distinctions: 1) a distinction between the clinical condition of narcissism and the cultural condition of narcissism, and b) a line of distinction between the all-time human condition of selfishness (which I would root in a condition called sin!), and the modern cultural condition of narcissism.

I really believe that this is a serious problem today, and it's that it's important to read the culture today in order to speak truth to it. So, here we go with a few quotes:

"A denial of the past, superficially progressive and optimistic, proves on closer analysis to embody the despair of a society that cannot face the future." (Preface)

"To live for the moment is the prevailing passion -- to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity." (pg 5)

"'Love' as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, 'meaning' as submission to a higher loyalty - these sublimations strike the therapeutic sensibility as intolerable oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurous to personal health and well-being." (pg13)

"The mass media, with their cult of celebrity and their attempt to surround it with glamour and excitement, have made Americans a nation of fans, moviegoers. The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage the common man to identify himself with the stars and to hate the 'herd', and make it more and more difficult for him to accept the banality of everyday existence." (pg 21)

"Theoretical precision about narcissism is important not only because the idea is so readily susceptible to moralistic inflation but because the practice of equating narcissism with everything selfish and disagreeable militates against historical specificity. Men have always been selfish, groups have always been ethnocentric; nothing is gained by giving these qualities a psychriatic label." (pg 32)

"In a simpler time, advertising merely called attention to the product and extolled its advantages. Now it manufactures a product of its own: the consumer, perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored. Its 'educates' the masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfillment. It upholds consumption as the answer to the age-old discontents of loneliness, sickness, weariness, lack of sexual satisfaction; at the same time it creates new forms of discontent peculiar to the modern age. It plays seductively to the malaise of industrial civilization. Is your job boring and meaningless? Is your life empty? Consumption promises to fill the aching void; hence the attempt to surround the commodities with an aura of romance..." (pg 72,73)

"Because the narcissist has so few inner resources, he looks to others to validate his sense of self. He needs to be admired for his beauty, charm, celebrity, or power -- attributes that usually fade with time. Unable to achieve satisfying sublimations in the form of love and work, he finds that he has little to sustain him when youth passes him by." (pg210)

"The best hope of emotional maturity, then, appears to lie in a recognition of our need for and dependence on people who nevertheless remain separate from ourselves and refuse to submit to our whims. It lies in a recognition of others not as projections of our own desires but as independent being with desires of their own. More broadly, it lies in acceptance of our limits." (pg242)

Again, I do want to stress that this is something which Christians should take seriously. Why? Well because we want to share the good news of the one who can restore relation to the ultimate Other, the others around us, the self within, and the other world in which we live. This post is coming!

Youth, Narcissism and Self-Harm

Dave Miers writes a great article on his blog about Self-Harm. Pointing to an ABC article just released, Dave notes that there has been a 43% increase in the rate of youth hospitalisations due to self-harm in Australia over the last decade.

The two major methods of self-harm are firstly cutting closely followed by poisoning. This is a very sad and distressing thing indeed. From my limited experience with those who have cut themselves it seems like it's a common way of dealing with emotions which are quite difficult.

While lamenting this sad thing, and without wanting to be overly analytical about it, I'm curious as to the causes of this rising trend. I'll write some thoughts about the trend in this post, and I'll write a hopeful Christian response in the next.

In the ABC radio interview from the article, one of the contributing factors was described as a "Growth in individualism and loss of connection" and I think this could be onto something.

I've been thinking for a while about the culture of narcissism in which we live. That is, the preoccupation with the self. I believe that self-harm might be one of the outworkings of our culture of narcissism.

If the Other outside of the Self becomes merely a way to reflect the Self, then the Self-Other relationship becomes a Self-Self relationship. This can be illustrated by the modern loss of history, consumerist society and even total subjectivity in art! Ultimate Truth and Reality are totally self-referential. I'm lost inside myself. Trapped inside the cosmos.

What can make the ghost in the machine come alive? What becomes the criteria for what is real? That which impacts me existentially - the criteria of which is the sensational. The intense.

This can be seen in religion. The sociologist, Hugh Mackay writes in Advance Australia... Where?: "While many people express a yearning for clearer articulation of non-material values without resort to institutional religion, the whole idea of spirituality has acquired new currency. This may be an inevitable reaction to an over-cooked materialism, but it has also arisen from our sustained epidemic of anxiety and an associated desire to find a still point in the midst of swirling uncertainty." Is this any clearer than in the rapid growth of meditation, pagan worship, and experiential religion in western society today?

But now, what about self-harm? What is the link between the forementioned 'loss of connection' and self-harm? Well at that very moment of cutting yourself you cease to be a ghost. The intense experience transcends the self. I do exist in relation to something outside of myself. I do touch reality. I am connected to something out there.

Further, I believe that eating binges bring a similar physical sensation in order to bring the ghost alive. Not only that, but drug trips, bringe drinking, danger sports, eroticism, modern film (think Tarentino!) - all new and frightening heights of experience to feel alive. To bring the ghost alive!

Intense experience is something which I believe our narcissistic culture relies on like a positive reinforcement model to find the Self some point of contact with the Other. To be found inside myself and the cosmos.

There is a hope for reconnection to God, mankind and yourself in reality. The disconnection is in all of us, but there is a hope in the Christian cross. I'll write soon about this place of restoration.

The White Horse Inn and NT Wright

Michael Horton and friends over at the White Horse Inn and turning this week's focus to NT Wright and the position known as the New Perspective on Paul.

I'm beginning to come to a better understanding of the issues at stake here, so this week at the White Horse is quite timely indeed.

Michael Horton is an excellent theologian from Westminster Theological Seminary and will certainly bring good light to shed on this important topic. I might even post up a few thoughts throughout the week.

Here's the place to check: http://whitehorseinn.org/index.htm

Things that fill the void of 'secular space'

I simply cannot stand secularism. Nor the neutral, reserved territory that it attempts to carve out for itself. Basically, nothing is neutral and so things always fill the void. Sadly, as highlighted in the UK, pockets of Islam seem to have filled the void and shored themselves up to religious engagement. Here's a sad incident reported yesterday of two Christians who were barred by police from evangelising in a Muslim area:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023483/You-preach-Bible-Muslim-area.html

And this converges with the front page of the newspaper my family brought home a few days ago from the UK. Bishop Nazir-Ali comments that in the face of secularism, 'instead of resisting this phenomemon, liberal theologians and churchleaders all but capitulated.'

The result? Again, Bishop Nazir-Ali, 'It has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves.'

It would seem that now is not the time for timidity. Especially for Australia who walks slowly behind the US and UK. Multiculturalism, 'Australian Value', the Secular State? Do we take these things for granted as good - or see the evil which lurks behind the lie of neutrality?