Narcissism Archives
August 28, 2007
Let's live in the past! Yeah, that's the ticket.
Imagine an egalitarian world in which all food is organic and local, the air is free of industrial pollution, and vigorous physical exertion is guaranteed. Sound idyllic?
But hold on… Life expectancy is 30 at most; many children die at or soon after birth; life is constantly lived on the edge of starvation; there are no doctors or dentists or modern toilets. If it is egalitarian it is because everyone is dirt poor, and there is no industrial pollution because there are no factories. Food is organic because there are no pesticides or high technology farming methods. As a result, producing food means long hours of back-breaking physical work which may end up yielding little.
There is - or at least was - such a place. It is called the past. And few of us, it seems, recognise the enormous benefits to humanity of escaping from it. On the contrary, there is a pervasive culture of complaint about the perils of affluence and a common tendency to romanticise the simple life.
"Towards an age of abundance: Ignore the critics of economic growth who claim that prosperity makes us unhappy. We need to win the war against scarcity once and for all, so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of longer, healthier and wealthier lives," by Daniel Ben-Ami, Spiked, August 2007
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August 18, 2007
Apocalyptic environmentalism
So why do so many people in the developed world believe in apocalyptic environmentalism? The attraction of apocalyptic thinking is strong. One self-described survivor of millenarian environmentalism, novelist Eric Zencey, recalled in his 1988 essay, “Apocalypse and Ecology”:"There is seduction in apocalyptic thinking. If one lives in the Last Days, one’s actions, one’s very life, take on historical meaning and no small measure of poignance … Apocalypticism fulfills a desire to escape the flow of real and ordinary time, to fix the flow of history into a single moment of overwhelming importance.”
Daniel Cohen, author of the 1973 Waiting for the Apocalypse, believes that every generation grows up convinced that it is the last generation in history. However, the method by which the end brought about changes. For Cohen’s generation nuclear war was the agent of the apocalypse.“We believed passionately that there would be such a war, and like the early Christians we were sure that this Judgment Day would come within our lifetimes.”
Interestingly, unlike the Millerites, when prophesies of environmental doom fail, ecological millenarians do not experience a "Great Disappointment." As Daniel Cohen noted,"One clearly wrong prophecy, or even a whole string of them, rarely discredits the prophet in the eyes of those who believe in prophecy."
As DiCaprio's new film shows, a lot people still want to think of themselves as living at the hinge of history in which their lives will make all the heroic difference for all the time to come.
But the truth is that our ancestors bequeathed to our generation a world that is immeasurably richer, cleaner and healthier than the one they lived in. I haven't seen The 11th Hour yet, but I suspect that it is not going to recommend those policies that have in fact improved the state of humanity for the last two centuries. Of course, it must be admitted that along the way there were some mostly unavoidable side effects on the natural world that arose as hundreds of millions of people clawed their way out of poverty. That being said, I will be happily surprised if The 11th Hour comes out in favor of strengthened property rights, expanding globalization, increasing urbanization, and spreading modern farming techniques. It is exactly those trends abetted by democratic capitalism that are improving humanity's estate and will help preserve nature.
"DiCaprio's The 11th Hour: We are the Most Important Generation in History," by Ronald Bailey, Hit & Run, August 16, 2007
Posted at 08:27 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ignorance , Narcissism , Nihilism
August 05, 2006
Desperate Grandmas
No, what grates about the Desperate Grandmas is not their optimism. It is not their determination to firm their glutes or to do good deeds in West Africa or, for that matter, to study the Kama Sutra like Orthodox Jews study the Torah. It’s their enthusiastic display of that chronic boomer disease: narcissism. Tom Wolfe once dubbed the 1970s "the Me Decade." Desperate Grandmas seem determined to make every decade a Me Decade. With its consciousness-raising, its denigration of family life, its rejection of the past, feminism has always flirted with excessive individualism, bordering on mere selfishness. Now, as Second Wavers like Steinem and Levine filter out politics, what’s left of graying feminism are the dregs of self-actualization, passionate pursuits, and sexual self-expression.
Not that Desperate Grandmas are entirely without social conscience. As in Juska’s case, blue-state politics seem to go with the territory. It’s a way for women to reassure themselves that they are filled with enlightened altruism, despite all the time and money they lavish on their self-actualization. Jong proudly describes the anger she stirred up when she gave an anti-Bush graduation speech several years ago at a Staten Island college. (The "Boos were honors," she writes. "They meant I was questioning authority, speaking truth to power. They meant I was trying to tell the truth—my quixotic calling.") Margot, the corporate-executive-turned-Peace-Corps-volunteer Suzanne Levine interviews, captures the combination of unapologetic self-absorption and liberal sensibility that characterizes the Desperate Grandma. When asked whether she will go back to work after she returns from Africa, she says yes. "Maintenance is expensive. Being a jazzy older woman costs money. And that includes plastic surgery--when I get back from the Peace Corps." As the saying goes, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
. . .
For these books do not simply recall their mothers’ profound, feminist-sanctioned self-absorption; they are expressions of it. Not all Desperate Grandmas are quite so ready to cross the boundary into Jong’s and Juska’s brand of exhibitionism, but their positive thinking shades easily into discomforting egotism. It’s not just that older women continue to enjoy sex; it’s that it has to be--in defiance of all common sense--Better Than Ever. It’s not that they like working to rescue animals; they’re Pursuing Their Passions. "They are the most amazing women our country has ever seen!" Levine quotes a gerontologist as gushing in Inventing the Rest of Our Lives.
Please. Narcissism is the last thing a society needs from its graying population. Their job is in part to counter youthful egotism, especially in an individualistic society like ours. No one should understand better than those getting on in years our dependency on one another. And no one should have a stronger intuition of our own fundamental inconsequentiality. We "fill a slot for a time and then move out; that’s the decent thing to do: make room," John Updike’s Harry Angstrom muses in Rabbit at Rest.
Desperate Grandmas may not need to move out yet. But it would be decent--quaint word!--if they would make some room.
"Desperate Grandmas," by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal, Summer 2006
This reminds me of Desparate Grandpa Hugh Hefner ...
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