I think you've strayed to close to religion through Trump. When you need loyalty, confidence and fanaticism it comes from selling sand to the arabs, selling a place in heaven that may or may not exist. Religion wins through the force of its will but it only works on human beings. You've elected a man who can only capitalise on a weakness exclusive to human beings.
Changing your mind every 5 minutes is bound to grind down the virus' sense of self-worth, the virus will surely come to see things as Trump sees them, and then you strike a deal.
Or maybe this is the time to turn against first world Africa. You know that everybody needs work for money but you also know that money does not everybody to work. Why not use the great surplus to keep a healthy population at home instead of sending them out to do something trivial and infectious.
Many of the extant crises in the United States can be traced to some extent to such cultural factors and entitled behavior. The racial and ideological tensions, and consequential partisanship in Washington—which supported the election of Donald J. Trump, have been exacerbated by the self-focused and competitive behavior of separate interest groups in society and politics, with not enough of the requisite empathy to reassess the world from one another’s vantage points. The financial crisis can be explained in part by the narcissistic behaviors of bankers and consumers alike—creating a “time-delay trap” of near-term greed over long-term logic. America’s trade deficit has been exacerbated by debt-financed “conspicuous consumption”—goods purchased to elevate one’s status in front of others, rather than out of necessity. And the crisis of confidence in government can be ascribed in part to the philosophical “hunkering down” and focus on self-sufficiency, rather than on mutual dependence.
Solutions to the dilemma?
It’s critical to recall that across time there’s no single cultural norm for a nation, but rather that the behaviors and customs of a society evolve and change drastically as the experiences and personalities of that nation alter. There are significant contrasts between the America of today and that of the immediate post-war era—whether we recall this or not. In this, not only will the America of tomorrow look different as future generations come, but we ourselves will continue to readapt and change.
Methods to address narcissism are not simple, however, even if society is malleable. During times of economic growth and stability, narcissism tends to grow. This is due to how success and prosperity impacts people, how that then filters to more accommodating parenting norms, and how we’re affected by urbanization and changes to smaller family sizes. Conversely, economic hardship and economic down-cycles tend to support group-minded, non-self-centered people, by enforcing modesty and hard work. In that, there may be both an inherent cyclical dynamic between business cycles and narcissism, and a structural dynamic between economic development and narcissism—with too much societal hubris only correctable in the end through a form of economic or national crisis.
A crisis around the world
The issue has not been isolated to the United States. Rather, the evolution of narcissism has advanced around corners of the world.
In China, there’s been an economic revolution experienced within the span of half a lifetime—with hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty since 1980 and living standards transformed and modernized. But, with the economic miracle has come the sudden upheaval in former collectivistic norms. The rise of the ‘Little Emperors’ and ‘Precious Snowflakes’ is now evident in younger generations that have grown up in only-child households amongst growing economic abundance. Research notes the role of sociodemographic factors in this increase in narcissism. In the decades ahead, societal, political and economic dilemmas could manifest, if such trends in China advance absent pushback.
In 2009, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell published “The Narcissism Epidemic”, a haunting diagnostic detailing a gradual, but seismic shift in the nation’s cultural norm towards self-admiration. Though certainly not all the consequences of heightened self-esteem are negative, this cultural phenomenon was described as destructive to American society at an extreme: damaging the reciprocity that binds families and communities, and encouraging divisive and antisocial, short-term behaviors over long-term, collective decision-making.
Since the book’s publication, further research has supported the referenced increase in feelings of self-worth, with one nationwide data set showing twice as many American college students answering the majority of questions in a narcissistic direction in 2009 compared with in 1982. This was based on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) test, the most widely used metric on the subject in social psychology. Similar conclusions were shown in research that 59% of American college freshmen rated themselves above average in intellectual self-confidence in 2014, compared with 39% in 1966. And, generational increase in symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) was pointed to in earlier research from the National Institutes of Health.
At extremes, narcissism undermines institutions that underpin a strong society, with links to shallow values, less intellectual interest and value on hard work, aggression and relationship complications, and lack of empathy and concern for others. When we consider political or economic dilemmas, we should not avoid discussion of the role that cultural factors and social psychology might have.
A multi-generational change
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a rare consensus within America emerged, the result of existential crises in the form of the World War and looming Cold War. In an era when the United States’ hegemony was unchallenged in the West, a type of groupthink existed within the nation’s borders—the ‘Greatest Generation’ emphasized conformity and discouraged individuality. This was supported by earlier shared struggles and the decline of class differences during the Great Depression and war era. This post-war era of togetherness saw unprecedented economic stability and trust in the state as the steward of the people. The nation backed global reciprocity, exemplified during the founding of the United Nations, Bretton Woods institutions and Marshall Plan.
Authors Twenge and Campbell trace the earliest roots in narcissism back to the 1950s. The Baby Boomers were the first generation to grow up in a post-war era of greater consumer plenitude and less existential hardship. As the Baby Boomers came of age in the 1960s and 70s, the grey society of the post-war consensus had begun to vanish in favor of a more individualistic focus on self-expression and self-identity.
The problem is that this change in the narrative furthered henceforth. It became pronounced enough by the 1970s that Tom Wolfe in 1976 titled this “The ‘Me’ Decade”. The cohorts that were raised in the 70s and 80s—Generations X and Y—continued this trend: to the extent that one study comparing teenagers found that while only 12% of those aged 14-16 in the early 1950s agreed with the statement “I am an important person”, 77% of boys and more than 80% of girls of the same cohort by 1989 agreed with it. This evolution has accelerated since the 1990s and 2000s, with the rise of the internet and social media influencing the social milieu of the Millennials and Generation Z.
We can argue over what men and women are when we're Martians. Celebrate diversity when we have the technology to replicate completely on our own like a single-celled organism. What's weird about the future needs to be met with what's wonderful about it - it's not just revising Star Wars as a homage to strong woman.
Fasting goes down to the same level of cleansing wars and battling serious diseases. You hear of older men recovering from corona and saying that now it feels like doing things for the first time all over again. The absence from life makes the heart grow fonder for life.
Fat fools the mind into believing it is successful in its environment and consequently adapt or die fails.
Fasting is the opposite of comfort zone it leads to bright-eyed, bushy tailed and fertile. You get younger for hunger and youth is still that time where you're growing up into the world i.e. changing in yourself to meet the world as opposed to changing the world to suit you. You're still evolving not because you possess plenty of resources, but because you don't. The onus on a youth is to become someone that can acquire resources adapting to his environment to get them, and fasting returns you to this youth and state of nothing.
Telescopic philanthropists violate the rule of charity begins at home because they're motivated by prestige rather than empathy. And when prestige is unchecked by empathy it becomes virtue-signalling: to help those you know least in the way that can be seen most.
But maybe that would change because corona effects the whole world. You can't help Africans without also helping Americans more like Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine. What's good for the goose is good for the gander in a corona-stricken world.
You're much happier to eat meat when there's a chance that the shop has no meat. Absence makes the heart grow fonder that's why choice is next ingratitude - the meaningful life doesn't happen on your terms.
You have to worry about the riff raff because there'll never be a hospital ward overflowing with elites. Money is the whole basis for the lockdown: if we are wealthy enough to swan around the world, we are wealthy enough to swerve the consequences.
The irony being that you wouldn't be in any rush to tear down his wall.
Lockdowns are only realistic if you can afford the time it takes to clear out your own backyard and then build a fortress. You can't mix it with desperate backward people where $10 is the difference between life and death.
With enough faith and belief you can sell sand to the arabs. Trump encapsulates the idea that if you believe in something then it is true, but we need more medicine than the placebo effect. Confidence isn't enough. The coronavirus doesn't have feelings, it's not human.
What you could try to remember is that you don't want to see the doctor and the doctor doesn't want to see you. It shouldn't be selling a service to raise GDP, get away from thinking like a capitalist the aim in healthcare is prevention in a sense it would reduce economy activity - for the greater good.
You'll teach all the kids to read because kids are cute and it doesn't matter what colour they are.
Universal healthcare is a bit different especially for those watching themselves and everyone else like a hawk. I think America is simply too private to capitalise on the selfless things people might do.
And Trump agrees that the poor and vulnerable can find a better life in heaven. This is how the Trumpian life is cheap ethos and this life being a dress rehearsal for the next have combined forces - with the help of those with nothing to live for.
Fundamentalists will terrorise you when it's fine and tell you it's fine when it could kill you. Oblivion in the face of comfort and the comfort in the face of oblivion.
In science the most confident you can ever be is less wrong. Now Trump believes you can defeat corona in a triumph of the will way, that you can will it into non-existence like a human enemy when it's not a human enemy. The virus is entirely insusceptible to confidence.
Socialism needs to be reserved to academic, emergency and humanitarians occasions where people might think like a scientist. Doubtful instances where human intelligence is primed by competing against something beyond the species be that a plague or the frontier of our knowledge. Science is not default behaviour like capitalism and religion.
It's easy to help a neighbour when you know that other neighbours would have given their life for you. Doing someone's big shop is the least we could do and that's the message from a hero. You might do your duty having seen those who go above and beyond.
A civilisation gets developed by forming an orderly queue, but it won't form a queue because everybody is entitled to be first in line. The irony is that it is the Ritz psychology of the late-stage civilisation(the customer is always right)that leaves the civilisation collectively too weak to develop or defend itself. Everything that survives in a state of nature rests upon teamwork.
You live in a society where chefs become celebrities - celebrity chefs have always spelled the end for a civilisation they are what arise when it grows beyond spoilt - and order clashes with the levels of autonomy, leisure and inheritance inherent to the late-stage civilisation. The end times for each civilisation have been this permissive bubble that suddenly bursts. It can't deal with inconvenience or stress.
Being suspicious of everyone you meet is that curious product of luck beyond your wildest dreams. Like lottery winners or Marilyn Monroe. Lonely at the top isn’t only at the top and I think that’s the difference that generation never had it so good made.
We remember the bad things particularly when they’re shocking to us therefore never had it so good comes with a type of evil eye. A hugely lowered survival stress post-war created a lifelong boom in cynicism. There are none so suspicious as those born and raised in the garden post-war. We call them the fall.
It does happen. But I would say that most people decide to have fewer, better friends because they make the reliable witness. Not all feedback is equal.
You do a wonderful job perhaps our lazy cynicism could learn something from you. People don't risk their lives to save lives because they're corrupt, because they've got skin in the game. Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice the glory of mankind will be born again.
ChesneyChrist Blog Comments (1,393)
RE: How it could happen
I think you've strayed to close to religion through Trump. When you need loyalty, confidence and fanaticism it comes from selling sand to the arabs, selling a place in heaven that may or may not exist. Religion wins through the force of its will but it only works on human beings. You've elected a man who can only capitalise on a weakness exclusive to human beings.