Narcissism

Originally, I was going to write about camping, but I realized something else, so maybe I'll come back to the camping thing in a later post.

Here is a quick question for you: How many mirrors do you have in your house? I have a family on the larger side of "normal", so we have more than we would if we didn't have as many people, but still, we have (based off of memory) at least 10 mirrors around the house, not counting any small personal mirrors my sisters and mom may own. Compare that to families around the 1900's. If there were mirrors in the house, there were only one or two per house. Look at many tribes around the world; they have no idea what they look like.

What is my point with this? Am I saying that mirrors are bad? No, but I am putting out there that the abundance of mirrors reflects a shift in society's and individual's perceptions of themselves, no pun intended.

As a culture, we have become obsessed with ourselves. From our music to our advertising, as a culture we are completely infatuated with ourselves.

Most romantic relationships are selfish ones dedicated to making ourselves feel good; the guy wants the image of having a girl and the emotions that come with that, and the girl wants to feel better about herself by receiving any form of affirmation or acceptance by another. This is why we see so many relationships and marriages fall apart; instead of seeking the partner's interests, it is focused on "me". Once "I" stop feeling it, we terminate the relationship and move on to the next thing.

This whole "body image" obsession comes from narcissism. Guys work out, style their hair, whatever, to make themselves feel good about themselves.

Our culture is dominated by a "Get what you want when you want so you can feel like you want" mentality. Many old poems were dedicated to exploring nature and things outside of ourselves; much of modern poetry is dedicated to personal issues.

The whole idea of "passive activism" is highly self-centered. What am I referring to? Passive activism is a relatively new development; you see it on Facebook, for example, and it looks something like this: "Change your profile picture to a cartoon from when you were a child to help stop child abuse."
Does this accomplish anything to stop child abuse? No! No child abuser will stop beatings because someone has Tom and Jerry or SpongeBob as their profile picture. What this does do, however is make the user feel like they have "done their good deed for the day". They have made a difference. It allows us to do nothing, yet receive the gratification of making a change and helping others.

I realize this was a long rambling post, but I needed to get that out. Break out of the narcissistic mindset, think outside of yourself, help others.