The Modern Age Of Arrogance
THE MODERN AGE OF ARROGANCE
HUMILITY'S STRENGTH IS HIDDEN, OBSCURED BY OUR BLINDNESS AND THE AGE OF ARROGANCE IN WHICH WE
LIVE.
-David J. Bobb, educator
THE MODERN AGE OF ARROGANCE
rmand Nicholi, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has taught a course at the undergraduate level for 35 years, comparing the beliefs of Sigmund Freud with C.S. Lewis. At the beginning of each semester, he asks his students, "What is your goal in life?" Of course, they all respond that they want to be successful. He then asks, "What does that mean to you?" He has discovered that today students want more than just to make a good living—they all want to be famous.
Our perception of success has changed dramatically. In the present world, we not only want to achieve and accomplish something, but we also want to be well-known and admired for it. Because of the power of television and social media, it is easy to understand the modern obsession with our public image over the desire for private character. Making a good impression is now much more important than doing quality work.
The reason we have become so obsessed with fame and recognition is what the noted historian and former Congressional Librarian Daniel Boorstin calls the "graphic revolution." It started with photography and has evolved to include the television and movie industries, the Internet and digital print media, and most recently, social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Boorstin points out that the graphic revolution has created a new kind of power—the power to make even average people doing average things "famous." So much so, he says, that we have now become a culture intensely focused on our becoming celebrities.
BOORSTIN'S PRINCIPLE CONCERN FOR MODERN SOCIETY IS THAT WE ARE BECOMING MORE IMAGE
CONSCIOUS AND LESS QUALITY CONSCIOUS.
In the past, fame was primarily an honor earned, the result of performing heroic deeds or of making significant contributions to the welfare of the community through inventions, the advancement of education, or industrial strength, to name a few. Boorstin says that today, on the other hand, people are often considered famous simply because they have become well-known through the media. Sports stars, actors and actresses, television personalities and reality stars, and children of celebrities famous for just being children of celebrities are included in this group. The power and allure of fame grows stronger and stronger every day.
Boorstin's principle concern for modern society is that we are becoming more image conscious and less quality conscious. We give celebrities and the media more and more power over our lives simply because of the images they project rather than the true values they represent. How has this impacted us, particularly as it relates to how we individually respond to the challenges of this new economy?
I don't believe Boorstin is saying that the graphic revolution has changed our legitimate desires to be successful and to contribute to society. To the contrary, I think the problem he points out and underscores for us is that the standards and measures of what constitute that success have changed. This revolution has so transformed our culture that for many in today's society, success now has more to do with public image and the appearance of success than it does with the quality of our work and our character. Success today is often divorced from real substance.
Many people are no longer concerned with lives of excellence. Instead, no matter how much a person accomplishes, he does not believe he is successful unless others know about it. We now regard success as achievement plus proper recognition of our achievement. The recognition is what makes us feel worthwhile and that we measure up as a success. Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism, has perhaps said it best,
People would rather be envied for their material success than respected for their character.
This is what pride has done to us and it also explains why humility is not of great value in our modern world.
WHERE ARE WE HEADED?
It is hard to believe that 15 years ago, social media was non-existent and yet it now dominates a major part of our lives, particularly with our young people. The great concern is that we are creating a culture of self-admiring narcissists who think the world revolves around them. Social media has become an outlet to self-promote oneself, and its popularity signals that we are becoming a society clearly focused on the glorification of self. For decades people have diligently taken pictures of their loved ones, but in 2013 the word "selfie" was named word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary.
Keith Campbell is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Georgia. He believes social media is turning our children (tomorrow's adults) into narcissists. He says a 2008 study on narcissism and Facebook discovered evidence that the most narcissistic individuals were those who were more self-promoting on Facebook and had more so-called "friends." He goes on to say narcissists thrive in an environment where there are shallow relationships and many opportunities to promote yourself.
A very good book was written about our modern narcissistic culture back in 2010, entitled The Narcissism Epidemic, and was co-authored by psychologists Dr. Campbell and Dr. Jean Twenge. In their extensive research, they compiled evidence that was both compelling and appalling. As you read through the text, you find at the heart of narcissism is pride and arrogance. It is, therefore, not surprising that they recognized a dark side of narcissism that leads to suffering. The symptoms are very destructive to one's own personal well-being and to others as well.
According to Twenge and Campbell,
Narcissists brag about their achievements (while blaming others for their shortcomings), focus on their physical appearance, value material goods that display status … constantly turn the conversation back to themselves, manipulate and cheat to get ahead, surround themselves with people who look up to them (like a "posse" or entourage), seek out "Trophy partners" who make them look good and jump at opportunities to garner attention and fame.
Clearly, this is not the way to make friends and endear yourselves to people, but narcissists are simply not aware of their arrogance or of other people.
APPEARING TO BE PERFECT
People who yearn for validation on social media have developed an obsession to hide all their flaws (which they assume to be unacceptable and unattractive) behind some kind of appearance that will impress viewers and be much more pleasing. In real life, the people who surround you see how flawed and imperfect you are. However, the appearance of perfection can easily be maintained on social media by creating an impressive appearance that is not real.
Sociologist Donna Freitas discusses this in her wonderful book, The Happiness Effect; How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost. She did most of her research through interviewing 200 college students at 13 universities. She concluded that all these students are driven to appear to be perfectly happy, all the time. They all have a compulsion to present themselves as successful people who are totally happy. It is unthinkable for them to appear to be anything else.
PRIDE BEGINS WHEN YOU COMPARE YOURSELF TO
OTHERS.
Freitas sees that their problem is the same one that all people have who are full of pride and arrogance. They cannot be transparent and vulnerable with anyone since they cannot discuss their inadequacies, struggles, and fears. If they did, they would not be a person who is happy and who has their act together. People today are more concerned with appearing to be happy than actually being happy. How you appear is everything.
Freitas states these young adults are consistently comparing themselves on social media. Pride begins when you compare yourself with others. Freitas says it becomes a "24/7 sport, with pictures, profiles and status updates displaying legions of happy people having amazing experiences alongside beautiful girlfriends and handsome boyfriends." Unfortunately,
they are not truly happy and end up suffering alone in isolation, for rarely would one ever post the truth and reveal that they are sad or depressed.
LIVING IN AN AGE OF ARROGANCE
We live in a time where competing, succeeding, and winning the applause and admiration of others becomes all-consuming. Modern culture teaches us to promote and glorify ourselves as we compete out in the marketplace, hardly ever receiving any encouragement to be humble and unpretentious.
Life has not always been this way. In his outstanding book; The Road to Character, David Brooks confronts this transformation that has taken place in our country.
On Sunday evenings my local NPR station rebroadcasts old radio programs. A few years ago I was driving home and heard a program called Command Performance, which was a variety show that went out to the troops during World War II. The episode I happened to hear was broadcast the day after V-J Day, on August 15, 1945.
The episode featured some of the era's biggest celebrities: Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of selfeffacement and humility. The Allies had just completed one of the noblest military victories in human history. And yet there was no chest beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.
"Well, it looks like this is it," the host, Bing Crosby, opened. "What can you say at a time like this? You can't throw your skimmer in the air. That's for run-of-the-mill holidays. I guess all anybody can do is thank God it's over." The mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens came on and sang a solemn version of "Ave Maria," and then Crosby came back on to summarize the mood: "Today, though, our deep-down feeling is one of humility."
That sentiment was repeated throughout the broadcast. The actor Burgess Meredith read a passage written by Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent. Pyle had been killed just a few months before, but he had written an article anticipating what victory would mean: "We won this war because our men are brave and because of many other things
—because of Russia, England, and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature's materials. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other people. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than proud."
I arrived home before the program was over and listened to that radio show in my driveway for a time. Then I went inside and turned on a football game. A quarterback threw a short pass to a wide receiver, who was tackled almost immediately for a two-yard gain. The defensive player did what all professional athletes do these days in moments of personal accomplishments. He did a self-puffing victory dance, as the camera lingered.
It occurred to me that I had just watched more self-celebration after a two-yard gain than I had heard after the United States won World War II.
This incident triggered something in the mind of David Brooks, as he recognized that this shift in reality symbolized a shift in our own culture, a shift from a culture that was once humble and grateful to a culture of arrogance and self-promotion. It made him realize that this "was like a doorway into the different ways it is possible to live in this world."
This realization led Brooks into researching and collecting data that proves we have experienced a broad shift from a culture of humility to what he calls the culture "of the Big Me." He says that we were once a country that encouraged people to think humbly of themselves to a culture that now encourages people to see themselves as "the center of the universe."
This in fact may explain the current state of our nation.