(no subject)

[merchimerch]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17349066/?GT1=9033

this is interesting - it is an article about how narcissism is on the rise. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's fascinating. Of course they blame parenting, but I wonder if it is more complicated than that. Modernity brings with it a focus on individuation - if the self is viewed as individual and unique, as well as somewhat isolated from community, of course people are going to feel like they are "unique snowflakes."

Comments

[thunderbox.livejournal.com]

Modernity brings with it a focus on individuation

It does? In the US & UK we've chosen to develop our societies with a marked emphasis in that direction, but elsewhere one can find examples of modernising without consigning the concepts of family and community entirely to the scrapheap of history (here some of us reserve special opprobrium for The Evil Thatcher and her outrageous There's no such thing as society line).

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happiness-Lessons-Science-Richard-Layard/dp/0141016906/) by Richard Layard - which I read yesterday - has some interesting things to say about this.

I do worry, though, how these young people are going to cope with doing OK, or even 'quite well', but not actually coming out on top. It seems to me that they aren't well prepared for outcomes that are statistically highly likely, and which ought to be entirely satisfactory, but which will be seen as failure because of their conditioning. And if they really fail at something, have they been equipped with anything that will help them get back on their feet, or are they just going to scream how they're special and that this must all be someone else's fault (and then run amok with an assault rifle at the local strip mall)?

I'm not expressing it well… there's a passage in Tibor Fischer's The Collector Collector that does a much better job:

The rulers, the flourishing, the superlativists: they're the freaks. It is the also-rans, the unmedalled ice-skaters, the bankrupt philatelists, the embittered inventors, the self-hating civil servants, those with talent and education and determination who potter along; these are the ones who should be made into examples, so that people can see their lives aren't benighted but standard. Beating back your life with drink or drugs shouldn't be a national sport.

For every champion there are a thousand competitors and another two thousand would-be competitors who forgot to turn up, or had a cold, or were sulking over a love affair, or couldn't be bothered to get an application form. It is the champions who know nothing of life. Winning is not life, fighting for third place is. But of course the commissions come from those with brass, the victors, and the losers like to study the victors because they think they might pick up something. What's the difference between the man with millions and the man without millions? Millions.

What should be imbibed is not how to achieve success, which, by definition, is the preserve of a few, but how to see the colours of failure's eyes without flinching, how to tolerate the foul breath of ordinariness. The person on the pedestal should be the unmoaning decorator who has lost his business, who even when he shoplifts a small bottle of whiskey is caught, who after thirty years of work has nothing but mottled overalls to show for it while his daughter, his only joy, is unskilfully tapped by a penniless brute; it is the cleaning woman with children to support, who going home late, exhausted, has her earnings stolen on the underground, who can provide important lessons: how to lose.

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

(sorry my first sentence of my original reply wasn't in English - I'm pretty much mush mentally at the mo)

I'll agree that human nature includes the impetus to compete/individuate as well as to unite/collectivize/create community. However, I think modernity with all its trappings priviledges concepts of the individual.

That said, this:
"Winning is not life, fighting for third place is"
is brilliant and so very apt.