THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM
Rana Bose
[Rana Bose is an engineer and writer]
Modernity and the reproduction of knowledge
Neo-liberals
view it as the next industrial revolution that has already happened -- and
value judgement criteria/systems be damned. In this post neo-paradigm, interpretative
analysis is inconsequential. Those permanently afflicted with neo-conservative
neurosis reject it as a shameful era (or optimistically, as incident only)
that symbolizes the decline of 'classical' human values. The former have 'no
time' except for that which deals in 'futures;' the latter dwell in the past.
Both extremes are reacting to the revolution in the reproduction of knowledge.
Each, in his own fashion, is indifferent to consequences: the loss of culture
and sense of community.
Self-Fulfillment
At the center of this indifference is a malaise that 'modernity' has cultured, whereby the notion of 'self-fulfilment' is either viewed as an acceptable, albeit isolationist exercise in self-achievement, (fashionably inward-directed à la Eastern philosophy) or as vicious, self-referential, individualism in a dog-eat-evolving-dog world.
The innovative urge, once in service of the exalted notions of piety and the common good, is now given short shrift, dismissed like a fashion that has gone out of style. While self-actualization, the accomplishment of which used to serve as an example to emulate in the community context, has become synonymous with self-gratification disguised as personal freedom.
What is lost, or disavowed in the blind pursuit of freedoms, is the sense of community, the commitment to higher values and respect for conventional morality - the bedrock of our humanity. Boring or clichétic as this sounds, these were the sine qua non of all the philosophical achievements of the past. From Plato, Rousseau, de Tocqueville Marx, Da Vinci, Sartre, Einstein to Charlie Chaplin, the notion of community (and society in general) was the necessary ground upon which their development depended and contributions blossomed.
The entrepreneurial spirit's sudden turn to the banal and fatuous priorities of better, faster and more efficient has led to the total surgical removal of soul from the spirit of innovation and thinking. Innovation is no longer seen as a integral facet of our developing humanity, but merely the means to making the largest profit in the shortest possible time, where version 'n' has been rendered obsolete by version 'n-1.' The post modern challenge is how to make a flashy entry, a fast buck, timely exit and on to the next project, while the coffers fill.
With the advent of the knowledge factory that specializes in the mass production of knowledge, the leisure market (targeting the young) is the latest place where fast millions can be shamelessly made. High Schools students in cconomics courses are provided with fake Internet 'money' to play the stock market, trading here-today, gone-tomorrow companies, without ever having to consider the ethics practised by giants such as Monsanto, or arms manufacturers, where making a million in play money translates into high grades and the career of your choice.
And thus, the new age is upon us, with its virtual everything, from privacy paranoia, to early retirement angst, stress busting technologies, mega buyouts and mergers, cyber-wars, cyber-hegemonies, all brought to a boil in the post-modern cauldron of anti-intellectual nothingness. The history of sweat and grime, the sooty factory, the bloody struggle for working people's rights, access to health and insurance has been 'virtually' erased. Forgotten. Replaced by sub-subcontracted assembly lines developed all over the net, exploiting a highly fragmented, disenfranchised workforce totally unaware of the products it produces or assembles. The knowledge revolution has become the perfect justification for the culture of narcissism, the philosophy of self-everything: I-ism, Me-ism. Ann Rand has triumphed beyond her wildest dreams: altruism is dead. And thus the stage was set for the anti-WTO protests, a spontaneous revolt calling for the restoration of the ideals of community and collective conscience.
Until we begin to regard self-fulfilment as a thinly veiled act of narcissism that critically undermines our sense of duty to larger humanitarian commitments, the situation is likely to worsen before it improves. Self-fulfilment, as a viable philosophy, has never been properly interrogated because it continues to be regarded as an isotope of the more acceptable 'eastern' inclination towards withdrawal and personal development, which conveniently excuses indifference to community building.
There is a kind of thinking going on today that everybody has a right to entitlement, that one's personal opinion carries the weight of a value system. This kind of thinking becomes self-perpetuating by wrapping itself up in the mantles of individual freedoms and rights, where every thought is deemed sacred, to the effect that democracy, as we know it, has been deformed and perverted so that it conveniently corresponds to the impulses of our narcissism.
In this new paradigm, personal freedom becomes the virtual extension of the liberal notion that 'anything goes;' to be democratic is to be (or rather indulge) 'oneself.' Interpretative thinking is denigrated as doctrinaire, out-of-fashion, or from another age that is not hip to the advent of 'the new order of globalized knowledge reproduction.'
Narcissism and self-gratification are not new phenomena, but they have never been so singularly unattractive and callous in their trampling over the notions of ethics, righteousness and the common good. In this godless universe of our own making, the idea of equitable distribution of wealth is anathema.
What has gone unnoticed in our pursuit of 'selfhood,' is the paralysis that has affected our thinking, to the effect that it didn't occur to anyone to take Microsoft and other companies to task for spending billions in public expenditures to deal with the Y2K crisis, which experts acknowledge need not have happened in the first place. That the powers that be were able to slough off the responsibility, comes as no surprise. It is instructive to note that we are living in an era where their apologists live amongst us, and the logic behind the defence of 'indefensible' corporate irresponsibility is rooted in the right of the 'self' to be outside of the constraints of any morality. Is it merely happenstance or a nefarious corporate strategy that we are fragmented into millions of 'powerless' groups, committees, websites and magazines, entitled to the right to self-fulfilment so we will remain permanently divided and dispersed into millions of isolated political causes -- that on their own begin to look like fetishes.
Cost Benefit Rationalism
As a necessary offshoot of the philosophy of self-fulfilment, the vocabulary of 'instrumental rationalism' has now entered the blood-stream of current thought. It takes cost-benefit analysis to a new level of insensitivity where social relevance and real value are regarded as immaterial when new projects or research proposals are being tabled. The 1980s and 90s introduced the concept of 'deficit cutting and balancing the books.' By appealing to pragmatism and common sense, it turned the present generation against the preceding one, blaming it for reckless and wasteful spending. Suddenly, the notion of balancing the budget and cutting the deficit were being applied to the human condition. Poverty, malnutrition, unemployment, education, health, the distribution of wealth and resources were no longer worth debating; cutting was the buzzword, and nobody noticed the bleeding. And yet paradoxically, this was the period that saw environmentalists, gay-rights activists, religious and ethnic fundamentalists and peripheralized artists of all shapes and sizes make the most gains. Why? Probably because 'traditional' rights were easier to discredit through the politics of book-balancing, while the culture of narcissism gave everyone a voice and a global audience. History was pronounced dead. And as encyclopaedias were being rendered obsolete by the Internet and the end of history was concluding its last chapter, the Mannings, Le Pens and Haiders were reviving concepts that had taken over one hundred million people to their graves in the 1940s. Book balancing arrived at a perfect time.
FRAGMENTATION AND LOSS OF POLITICAL ORDER
Which brings us to the third malaise of modernity: the systematic destabilization of the nation state under the auspices of decentralization -- that much ballyhooed bastard child of the common-sense revolution of the 1990s. Federalism and the concept of a 'caring nation' that would 'stand on guard' and preside over the national philosophy was being attacked by both the neo-liberals, who were bent on corporatizing the economy, and the ethno-fundamentalists pursuing the strategy of pitting neighbor against neighbor over perceived differences in language, religion, caste, color and creed.
From all sides, the nation state was being denigrated as an overbearing 'spender' and meddlesome interferer. To no one's surprise, the emerging new order, flaunting its e-frame mentality, could boast that the promise of fiber-optics and a newer and better world were just around the corner, less than a block away from the virtual mall. What the report conveniently neglected to mention were the casualties of 'modernity:' the slow death of communitarianism, the loss of the sense of statehood, and the idea that the surpluses generated by the new technologies belong to human gain.
THE END