Yosef Friedman Professor Odom English 101-1804 3 May 2017 [Title]: [Subtitle] The easiest, least controversial stance you can take on our culture today is to that our society has become overwhelmingly narcissistic. In one way or another The armchair psychologist in us has declared the 21st century as the “Narcissist Century”, heralding the fall of society to the mindless me-ism of Facebook and Snapchat. We bemoan the thumbs-up culture and the instinctual checking of how many times our posts have been viewed. We see celebrities, politicians, religious and lay leaders, all taken down by the self-inflicted vanity of heart chasing on social media, and we wonder, how can people who seem to have everything they need or want, money, fame, power, …show more content…
According to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, 5th Edition, Narcissism is defined by, amongst a long list of criteria, a grandiose sense of self-importance, believes that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood or associated with people of higher status, and has a sense of entitlement. Additionally, and perhaps most central to our discussion, it is defined by constant need for excessive admiration. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we need to have a clinical diagnosis of our culture done by a team of licensed psychologists, nor am I saying that when we refer to our culture as narcissistic, we mean it is clinically narcissistic. But we do need to know what it means when we call someone or a culture a narcissist. In other words, a good working definition of a narcissist would be someone who shows abnormal amounts of self-importance, a lack of empathy, and a disproportionate need for admiration. The idea that American culture has developed traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder was first proposed by and popularized by the historian Christopher Lasch in his bestseller The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Tom Wolfe ran with the idea in his now famous write up for New York Magazine, entitled “The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” coining the phrase the “Me Decade” to describe the shift in our society from community and family …show more content…
For doing so turns a blind eye to the root of issue. While, it appeases the arm-chair psychologists within us with 140-character tweet thata blurb-worthy diagnoses of an apparent malfeasance in society, it comes from a deeper misunderstanding of the human beings and the struggles they face in our society. At this point, I’m sure you are wondering why you should continue reading this psychobabble. Why is all this pontificating about the maladies of our culture important. And it’s not like you are the narcissistic one. We are talking about everyone else, and you are clearly above such barefaced attention seeking. The truth is however, that the root to this apparent narcissism is something that we all suffer from in our culture, and by truly understanding the underlying issues, we can understand what drive us and, more importantly, learn how to combat the issues we struggle with. Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly address this issue wonderfully she