The part about narcissism
Diana made me go to church on Sunday. Gasp, I know, church isn’t Jonathan’s idea of a great time, but when I’m absolutely forced to go, at least we make it to a local Presbyterian outfit whose minister has had some impressive things to say in past sermons.
Except for this time.
At some point the minister started comparing today’s narcissistic society and the good ole days – and used our “selfless” and “prideless” victories in World War II as an example. Culture in the 30s and 40s, our minister said, was not personally prideful and people carried on with the larger benefit of mankind as their reward.
I wasn’t sure who was more upset at his oversimplified and obviously contradictory statements – me or Jesus. From what the history books have told me, the early/mid part of this century hosted McCarthyism, women’s suffrage, segregation and gross war-time cultural stereotypes. How did any of those benefit mankind?
Of course, I can’t argue against how personally narcissistic society has become, but I do have an idea of why it’s happened. If I was a 26-year-old man in 1940′s America, know what I would have been proud of? Being a white man in 1940′s America. I could be proud of my gender and race – cuz hey, at least I’m not black or a woman.
Today, however, being proud of one’s race/gender/greed (I’m purposefully excluding religion, because that’s one place people are still total assholes) is mostly unacceptable, and mankind’s need to be proud of something has forced us into being proud of ourselves. Not a totally bad thing, I says, since maybe we’ll all soon be too busy with ourselves to worry about how much we hate the other guy.
If any of this sounds too FOX-esque, forgive me. My recent 4-day trip to Augusta, GA left plenty of tv watching time, and I spent hours on FOX news. God, I hate Glenn Beck
I used to like Glen Beck. he really went off the deep end.