Tyranny of Me
Overcoming the “Me” Virus by Penelope Holt

You don’t have to go too far back in the Way Back Machine to find well-heeled folks who believed their names should appear in print only three times to mark birth, marriage, and death. They held that making headlines signaled wrong doing or an unseemly thirst for attention. Braggadocio was a no-no, and the vulgar “I” and “me” were frowned on in conversation. Listening to President George H. Bush’s interviews and speeches from the 1980s reveals his tortured efforts to avoid the “I” word at all costs. But then along came Oprah, and we went from “never say I” to “It’s all about me.”
Of course, spreading solipsism among the masses wasn’t all Oprah’s doing. Significant cultural shifts, including the ascendency of media and celebrity, were well under way before Oprah popped up big style in the 1980s. But she was a clear bell weather and catalyst. She revealed to what extent narcissism was becoming mainstream and spreading like a virus. And she led a movement to accelerate it, under the guise of self-improvement for millions of woman, who needed a boost, as they absorbed the gut punches that came from changing gender roles, the growing need for two-income families, the pain of divorce, single-parent homes, middle-aged dating, and other late-century misadventures.
Oprah’s early shows were unabashedly about victimhood, because if it bleeds it leads, and drama spells ratings gold: “Men who can’t love and the women who love them.” “How I escaped the KKK.” “The day I learned my husband was gay.” “I left my wife for my sexy student.” But as Oprah and her “bouncin’ and behavin’ hair” evolved, so did her content. Out went low-rent suffering, and in came uplifting “spiritual growth” — a steady diet of “my favorite things”, healthy eating, and living your best life. Oprah gave a global audience of mostly women permission to take their focus and concern off others, where religion and society had habitually placed them. Instead, the talk show host and celebrity confidante created appointment television and encouraged women to focus on little old, depleted “me”. Me time. Yes, day by day, the concept of “me” grew more important. And to be fair, celebrity-styled self-help can come in handy, until that moment when, like in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the scheme spins out of control and a flood ensues.
Made in Oprah’s America
If it’s not entirely fair, it is all too easy to reach for Oprah when exploring the rise of narcissism, if only because she was ubiquitous for decades. On every TV screen. At every newsstand. In every award show — fighting an endless weight battle of fat, thin, and fat again. (Fat Oprah allegedly drew better ratings). A growing army of single mothers in the US, who today head 70% of African American homes and 40% of white, comforted themselves with Lady O and occasional aromatherapy. Well-off women in Manhattan, and factory workers in Alabama, found a focus on self and on a personal narrative — my life, my story, my identity — to fill the painful donut hole in the center of their lives. Who can blame them? For too many, a lonely, isolated existence of grind, bills, kids, and exhaustion, with little familial support, unravelling community fabric, and few true connections, can be deadening. Personal fix-up projects, where I get to rehab myself and my bathroom, in hopes of a better life, are seductive. Couple this with the allure of a mesmerizing parade of celebrity — it’s good to be Jen, Tina, Brad, Angelina, or Kobe — and we clearly see the noxious beginnings of identity project as life’s purpose.
Cultivating the right self-image begins to take precedence over authentic self. Style over substance. Fiction over fact. Illusion over reality. Yes, countless Boomer and GenX mothers, both married and single, raised Millennial kids in a growing atmosphere of unhealthy self-regard and a cult of personality. In a cozy Oprah interview with pop culture icon Lady Gaga and her mother, Gaga gushes about mommy-and-me time spent watching Oprah, as she was growing up, and the “Gratitude Journal” that Oprah inspired devotees to keep. Early cues that understanding privilege and a commitment to social justice are indispensable in any well-constructed identity project. Chicken or egg? Which comes first? A consumer society’s thirst for a contrived life of appearances over a disappointing real one, or Oprah, who merely catered to the need? It doesn’t matter. It was simply the newest chapter in the story of evolution, and the undulations of culture. Arguably, Oprah was just in the right place at the right time with camera, mic, and spotlight to cash in on the shift.
In his 1989 best-selling book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” author Stephen R. Covey drew distinctions between good character and engaging personality. The Character Ethic, Covey argued, taught that principles and qualities, such as integrity, humility, fidelity temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, and modesty were essential to effective living. His goal, he said, was to restore a flagging Character Ethic to personal leadership and the community at large. He largely failed. By the mid 2000s, a widespread commitment to character, and the duty of institutions to develop it, was pretty much on life support, giving way to the exploding power of pop culture and reality TV, where souped-up real people headed to get famous.
Boosting The Puny Me with We
If media trends and personalities helped spawn the identity project, then technology was a force multiplier in spreading and strengthening it. Today’s young, long before they have the chance to do anything, are under pressure to be somebody, at least on social media.
I am important, they are taught early, at the center of things. But the little “me” starts off puny. Let’s face it, a robust “me” has had to learn, dare and accomplish things, in order to develop into an individual with authentic power, on an expanding mission to achieve more of all that is good.
No worries, a growing cafeteria-style menu of identity groups, tribes, politics, and social justice projects await the young, on campuses and in broader culture, to help round out their image and sense of self: Third Wave Feminism, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, DACA, #NeverAgain, Trans, TERFs, SJWs, Antifa, Alt-Right, Kekistanis, LGBQT, Rape Culture, Climate Change, BDS, Intersectionality. These movements are backed and elevated by a phalanx of writers, activists, politicians, and learning centers, and distributed across platforms and devices that consume attention and gobble up focus, energy, and precious time. Big money and effort are invested in growing membership in the new identity clubs that increasingly shape who people are, how they think, what they do, and how they vote. The little “me” is bolstered by the loud and rowdy “we” of identity politics. It’s not who you are as an individual, but which group you identify with that counts.
Where’s the harm? It’s the perennial mission of youth to be idealistic, disruptive, transgressive bomb throwers and noise makers. But these activities usually stand in contrast to more stable and long-standing institutions and social moeurs, solid family units, principled educators, and sane adults. As young people bounce off the walls in search of meaning, it is the job of the grown-ups to hold steady, passing on wisdom, sharing important traditions, carrying forward what is still worth having. In the current era, this balancing energy seems strangely absent, as though the romper room has taken over the house. The tower of babel seems higher, the cacophony louder, the bull crap deeper, the chaos more widespread and unmanageable.
And then there is unprecedented opportunity for personal exposure and attention grabbing. “You get a masthead. You get a masthead. You all get a masthead.” The spirit of Oprah’s largesse continues to grant unearned privileges and goodies to entitled new generations hungry for the limelight. Attention junkies are desperate to be seen and heard, to be somebody, even though they may have done nothing yet to earn it. A digital revolution, social media, and the ballooning blogosphere have given all and sundry a platform to bleat about half-baked nonsense — endless prattle that, in another time, would not escape the confines of a basement slumber party. With roller rinks, discotheques, and youth clubs practically obsolete, and congregating on street corners now discouraged by too many hyper-vigilant parents, the Internet is where youth go to hang out, preen and talk smack.
Of course, self-importance and experiments with identity exist in every generation. Maybe it seems more disconcerting now because adolescence is extending, for far too many, too far into adulthood. Over-sharing often reveals failure to launch, while tech tools give the unworthy authority and access they previously did not have. And so we watch the first digital generations come of age online, complete with the selfies, sexting, poor judgement, and intemperate speech that will haunt them for years to come.
Tired of “Me” Yet?
A recent article hypothesized that writer, lecturer, and author Jordan Peterson is to contemporary young men what Oprah was once to women, casting both as dispensers of self-help to the masses. I balked. After all, Oprah is a mega media star, and Peterson is an esteemed educator and licensed clinical psychologist. He uses proven therapy to cure suffering in the real world, not in TV land. But on reflection, perhaps the pair, Oprah and Peterson, do belong together, if only because they bookend the very strange era of “me.” Baby Boomers have earned the “Me Generation” label for reasons spelled out across acres of commentary. And Oprah and her ilk may represent the summit of “me” disease within the Me Generation and their offspring. Boomer and GenX Parents have passed on the virus to their young. But their kids lack the antibodies and protections that come with growing up in another time, when it wasn’t all about “me,” when there was often a calling to live for others.
In the 1993 Lois Lowry book “The Giver”, the Receiver of Memory is the character who holds memories from a time before the age of Sameness descended upon the book’s dystopian society. He exists to transmit wisdom to a community that no longer remembers the past. Like a modern-day Receiver of Memory, Dr. Peterson has visited pop culture with his maps of meaning, and rules for life, to help those who need them journey beyond the confines of “me” to find purpose in responsibly caring for self and others. Yes, it’s time to be less about “me” and more about “you.” Maybe the overwhelmingly positive response to Peterson, by young and not so young alike, represents the novelty of moving away from the sickening effects of too much wrong-headed self-involvement. Could it be we are ready for the antidote to the creeping narcissism that has taken root and sickened the culture?
The desire for social justice and progress is authentic and heartfelt in most, especially in the young. But true justice can’t be achieved with merely posing and posturing, performative displays, propaganda, slogans, and narcissistic rage. Put down the placard and clean up your room, Bucko. Peterson has come to the hangout spaces on Twitter and YouTube, the communal basement, to tell its occupants to get their acts together. There are ways that they really can help, he says. If they are serious, he is ready with a prescription. But his students must first relinquish the selfish pursuit of rights and happiness, because life is suffering and sacrifice. A truth many once knew, but perhaps, growing distracted, forgot.
It takes time and effort, Peterson admonishes, to become someone who can solve complex problems versus merely protest them. So turn your efforts to mastering hierarchies of competence that offer the chance for genuine accomplishment. Take aim at true excellence. When you’ve advanced a couple rungs up the ladder of progress, something wonderful begins to happen: self-respect starts to fill the hole that a culture of me, me, me, which mistakes self-indulgence for self-esteem, never could. When the student is ready the teacher appears, and sometimes he can actually help.
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