Modernity & Narcissism

Mirror, mirror, on the wall…who’s the fairest of them all…

In the late 1970s, a prophetic writer named Christopher Lasch wrote a ground-breaking book.

The Culture of Narcissim: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations flew onto the scene and gained almost immediate attention and praise. In the book, Lasch illuminates the parallels between the breaking down of traditional, social structures (religion, marriage, social norms, fidelity, play) and a growing sense of narcissism.

He writes that as these traditional social structures broke down and the ‘free love’ and political movement of the 60’s were ushered in, we became more and more individualized. Therapies sprung up to address the individual as he or she saw themselves…the focus came more and more into the Self.

How I feel, my path, what is important to me, my desires, my relationship to life, my existential angst….All of these became the central focus of both society and therapy.

We somehow got the brilliant idea that the more my life became about ME, the happier I’d be.

Lasch writes, “…people have convinced themselves that what matters is psychic self-improvement: getting in touch with their feelings, eating health food, taking lessons in ballet or belly-dancing, immersing themselves in the wisdom of the East, jogging, learning how to “relate,” overcoming the “fear of pleasure.””

The 60’s saw the birth of casual sex, open marriages, pleasure for pleasure’s sake, drugs, gurus and rock and roll.

Lasch goes on to describe a contemporary culture that departed from religion and turned instead to therapy. He says, “The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.”

We thought if we made it more about us that we could be saved.

But that backfired.

We now seem to be in the last gasp of this ill-fated attempt at ‘selfing’ ourselves to death. We know we’re in its death throes because of its obvious and insistent outcomes: We’ve never been more anxious, depressed and isolated.

Peter Marin, a writer, philanthropist and cultural commentator wrote of the Human Potential Movement (the original ‘self-help’ movement) that “…the individual will is all powerful and totally determines one’s fate”; thus they intensify the “isolation of self.””

After all, if we are to see the world through a lens of self, without a larger community or to a relationship with God, than we have backed ourselves into a small corner, claimed victory over oppression and called it a day.

But that’s not what has happened.

This ill-conceived attempt at controlling everything…my path (I and only I determine my significance, my fate and my future), my psychology (it’s not what happens, it’s how I choose to respond!), and my life as a project (I am both the project and project manager) is, as Peter Marin writes, intensely isolating.

At one point, people lived in respect and response to generations who came before them AND in anticipation of the generations to come.

It was sacrificial.

Ohhhh…that dreaded word.

A word we’ve come to detest and demonize. “Put your own oxygen mask on first!”

But here is what no 10 Steps To Personal Freedom or New Age grift on Discovering Your Purpose through Primal Screaming in the Woods, will tell you.

That submerging our identity in something bigger, more transcendent…community, family, dare I say, God…is the very thing that seems to calm our broken hearts.

The relentless self-focus and ruminating that we not only do but are encouraged to do is what keeps us miserable. Jordan Peterson has often said that there is no difference between self-consciousness and misery.

They are the same thing.

And let’s not betray the true meaning of narcissism. It is not simply incessant self-focus with a side of grandiose contempt. It is a deep-seated feeling of never enough. It is an unmoored personality that constantly looks for approval and adulation from the other. It is totally dependant on an audience.

And this is why Lasch’s work was so prophetic. His book was published in 1979, before social media eclipsed the scene. He was already sensing the moving landscape of “we to me” and our growing and almost desperate need to be special…celebrity…individual.

So what do we do with this? How do we course correct? How do we ameliorate our own self-obsession and move into a saner landscape?

2 years ago, I would not have been able to tell you. I was still gulping back the kool-aid. I still saw myself at the centre of this story.

It’s still hard for me to put into words what has changed because I don’t totally understand it, intellectually.

But something radical has shifted. My husband tells me with decent regularity that he’s never seen me more at peace. One of my best friends keeps commenting on how I seem like I’m newly in love.

And I think that’s such an apt description. We’ve all be there. Newly in love with someone. It’s such an incredible feeling because we’re not actually thinking about ourselves much. We’ve moved out of our regular ruminations…we’ve suspended our negative self-focus (as almost all self-focus IS by definition, negative) and we’ve moved into relationship.

And there it is.

Relationship.

That seems to be the way out of the madness. And of course there are different kinds of relationship. There’s the relationship with your spouse, your kids, your parents, your siblings, friends, your community…before the movement of ME came onto the scene, this was just how we lived.

In community.

But the relationship that not only transcends but informs and imbues all other relationships is the one with God. And this is where I can’t quite explain why. This is where anything short of experiencing it for yourself will fall short.

Religion, for me, is not so much a practice but an encounter with a long, lost Unconditional Love. It has restored my heart to a place that I didn’t know existed. I could never, in a million years, have done this on my own. And perhaps you’re wondering if you can do this without religion. Perhaps you’re wondering if you can do this with God, on your own.

Maybe? I couldn’t say. But I know that for me, religion has provided the community, the support, the commitment, the pillars and the structure that I really never wanted but obviously needed so badly.

It’s been life-changing.

The most revolutionary insight has been that without a direct and ongoing relationship with God, I was simply spinning my wheels.

I think Fr Jean d'Elbee said it best: “We have been trained in the habit of looking at our dark side, our ugliness, and not at the purifying Sun, Light of Light, which He is, who changes the dust that we are into pure gold. We think about examining ourselves, yet we do not think, before the examination, during the examination, and after the examination, to plunge ourselves, with all our miseries, into the consuming and transforming furnace of His Heart, which is open to us through a single humble act of confidence. I am not telling you, 'You believe too much in your own wretchedness.' We are much more wretched than we ever realize. But I am telling you, 'You do not believe enough in merciful love.' We must have confidence, not in spite of our miseries, but because of them, since it is misery which attracts mercy."

Did you read that? “…it is misery which attracts mercy.” Much as I tried to be my own Saviour, it was a fool’s errand. I was never going to get there. And no one tried harder than me.

It’s been an incredible relief to lay that expectation down; to fall into Grace.

I couldn’t tell you yet (and maybe I’ll never be able to) how or why this has moved the needle. I just know that it’s changed me. This weary heart is no longer broken.