Narcissism and Adulthood

The holiday break is over, so I'm back to writing semi-regularly now.

I stumbled across that cartoon above the other day, and thought it summed up pretty well the cultural shift towards narcissism in America.  If you think that cartoon is a bit of an exaggeration, then watch the video below, but be warned that it does involve some violence (someone punches someone else in the face).



If you don't want to watch that video, or if you don't understand what's going on, then let me explain:  we have three important characters in that video.  One is the younger girl who is a student, who apparently has been caught smoking weed, presumably amongst other bad behaviors.  The older lady who is farthest right is the girl's teacher, and the older lady in the middle is the girl's mom (grandma?).  The teacher is complaining that the young girl is smoking weed, so the girl's mom/grandma comes to her defense by punching the teacher in the face....pretty hard too.

That cartoon at the top of the post is a good parallel for what's happening in the video.  Right down to the smug attitude of the student as their parents stand up for their poor behavior.

If you're a normal person, you're probably wondering why the mom/grandma would punch the teacher instead of getting mad at their child.  There's a term for what the mother did to the teacher:  narcissistic rage.  The mother isn't defending her child out of some misguided love.  It's more likely that to the mother the child is nothing more than an object which reflects on her self-worth.  So when the teacher "insulted" her daughter/granddaughter, the mother defended her own self-worth the only way a narcissist knows how:  violence.  But it's important to remember that these parents aren't acting this way out of love.  Narcissists care only about themselves, and their children are nothing more than an extension of them (as far as the narcissist is concerned). 

Anyway, neither that cartoon nor the video are the subject of this post.  They are, however, a good segue into an article that I found about two days ago written by an "unemployed" man in his thirties.  You'd never guess this guy is in his thirties if you read the article.  It's written with all the mental sophistication of a 13 year old.

The article is called "Against Adulthood", and it explains at length why marriage, children, jobs and adulthood in general are all things we should do away with, since they contribute nothing to our self worth. The author writes this article as if he were a narcissist, which would seem at least somewhat excusable if he was still in his 20s.  People in their 20s usually are shedding the last of their childhood narcissism.  However, the author is 30 years old, and should be so wrapped up in the responsibilities of adulthood that he's forgotten how to care about himself.

But that doesn't seem to be the case.

 Adulthood

The author of the article is Franklin Schneider.  He has been fired from ten jobs in ten years, and has written a book about it called "Canned".  He also writes for a free newspaper in Washington D.C.

Franklin has graduated from college something like ten years ago and discovered that adulthood is not as easy for him to attain as he was hoping.  So he writes for a free newspaper about his troubles with relationships (and women in general) and jobs and so on. 

He has decided that the system is at fault for his stagnation and inability to enter adulthood.  He is wrong.  His article is a good insight into the modern development of narcissism in America, so let's take a look at what he has to say.

I recently found out, on the very same day, that one of my friends was engaged to be married and was expecting his first child, and that another had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer.

I felt terrible. Such a tragic waste of life. So much needless suffering. As to the other friend, I’m hopeful that against long odds, chemo can reverse the cancer’s progress. 

Those are the first two paragraphs of the article.  You see, it's supposed to be a joke because having children is worse than having cancer.......Or something like that.

We’ve obviously reached a sort of watershed moment in which we’re finally willing to question and upend sacred cows. These days, you don’t have to move in my fringe-dweller circle to regularly encounter discussions about just what we’re going to do now that capitalism has finally and decisively shat the bed.  Likewise, I believe we’ve reached a point where professing religious belief may not get you hung, but will certainly get you mocked as soon as you leave the room. Slowly, finally, we’re casting off the metaphorical chains.

And yet, for some reason, most people haven’t confronted the rottenest sorriest sham of them all: adulthood.

Franklin seems to be implying that society moving past religion is just step one in a process where step 2 involves casting off adulthood and acing like self-absorbed, spoiled child all day.  Obviously that's stupid.  I only point it out because I hope many atheists are picking up on the fact that their movement appeals to the younger crowd, and runs the risk of being viewed negatively for being associated with folks like this.

The reference to capitalism having "shat the bad" interested me.  What the author fails to realize is that it crapped the bed precisely because it was taken over by narcissistic thinking - like the kind found in Franklin's article.  His solution, apparently, is to cast off the "chains" of traditional capitalism, but capitalism was never the problem.  We are the problem.  He is the problem.  The system can't be fixed - nor does it need to be fixed - before we fix ourselves.

If Franklin found himself in some other socioeconomic system besides capitalism, he would still be dealing with the problem that he and many in this country are too narcissistic to properly run any kind of system at all.

Anyway, the author starts to get to the point here:

In my mind—hell, in my own life—what’s happening isn’t just the delayed onset of adulthood. It’s the refusal of adulthood entirely. It’s not failure to thrive. It’s an awareness that thriving kind of blows. Like almost everything in life, “adulthood” turns out to be the exact opposite of what we’re told it is.

Adulthood has not become a disappointment.  As a generation, we have become too self-absorbed to properly handle adulthood.  This is what Franklin doesn't realize:  It doesn't matter what adulthood is.  If you're too self-absorbed to handle adulthood then the problem is you.  But is he too self-absorbed?  Well, let's read the rest of the article and you can decide for yourself.

Marriage

Before we can examine any rejection of adulthood, we have to define adulthood. Let’s start with marriage, which I think we can all agree is one of the pillars—if not the pillar—of American adulthood.

So, why do people get married?

Marriage originally evolved as a way for people to have sex without being stoned to death in the village square. While this is still necessary in some places—a couple was stoned as punishment for premarital sex just last year in Afghanistan—in the good ol’ U.S. of A., bars and Internet dating have made sex as plentiful and easy to acquire as mediocre Thai food.

So, why do people still get married?

Ignoring his ridiculous history lesson, which I'm sure he spent all of 0 minutes actually researching - Notice the subtext of what he's saying.  When it comes to marriage, the union of two people is completely inconsequential.  What matters to him, to the exclusion of all else, is sex.  For him, the sex should be anonymous, unemotional, and novel (the exact kind of sex a narcissist prefers, or rather needs as a form of narcissistic supply - or a way of maintaining their self-worth at the expense of others).

You may be thinking, "He's just a man!  This is what guys want and we all know that boys will be boys."  If so then that's the ultimate statement of how far our cultural narcissism has developed:  We've come to just think of it as normal. 

Why be held back by marriage when you can go to the bar, or online, and get anonymous sex as often as you want?  That question only makes sense if you're a self-absorbed person who cares very little, if at all, for other people.  But he's asking it.  Hopefully you're not.

It's no coincidence that as our society is shifting further towards narcissism, we're also developing ways to attain narcissistic supply for ourselves.  The rise of the bar scene as a socially acceptable and legitimate way of attaining free and easy sex is just one example among many more.

In that second article I linked to, Franklin makes a very revealing statement about himself:

[A woman] asked me for a light—this was at the [bar]. She was beautiful and scathingly intelligent, the very reason I’d started sitting in bars every night. It was her birthday, she explained, and she was looking to have fun. At the end of the night, we drove to her apartment in Glover Park. Her roommate was home, so we went to my place instead. 

After spending the night with her, Franklin makes it clear that he never speaks to this woman again.  So the question is, why did it matter that she was beautiful and scathingly intelligent?  If he wasn't planning on ever speaking to her again, those details don't really matter.  Why go to the bars looking for intelligent women to spend just one night with at all?  Wouldn't "dumb" women be just as good company?

The reason intelligence is even brought up is he wants his readers to know that he's the kind of guy who can sleep with intelligent and beautiful women.  In fact, the only reason it matters that she was intelligent at all is that it validates his self worth.

He finishes that segment by saying:

I realized with equal parts relief and trepidation that there was nothing I wouldn’t do in service to my libido.

Franklin doesn't realize it, but in fact it's not that he's servicing his libido.  He's servicing his self worth, and that's really all that matters to him.  It's not really about the sex, it's about using someone else to validate the way you feel about yourself.  For guys like Franklin, that's the bar scene in a nutshell.

Anyway, the author points out that marriage leads to children, which brings us to....

Children

The second pillar of adulthood, one that’s inextricably connected to the first, is having kids.

But these days, the only thing more forehead-slappingly stupid than “accidentally” having a kid is having one on purpose. The data (if you’re a big “data” person) is unambiguous on this point: Kids ruin your life. Every survey, every study, has shown that after having children, quality of life goes into a steeper nosedive than United 93. Testosterone levels in the father declines with each child. Kids literally emasculate you.

I just have a few quick points about this.

1).  Asking a narcissistic society what affect caring for other people will have on them will inevitably yield negative results.  Narcissists care only about themselves, so these results aren't necessarily surprising.

2).  The "unambiguous" data Franklin appeals to in order to "prove" that quality of life drops after having children is a study which perhaps shows that testosterone lowers when you have children.  Really?  Is testosterone the measure of quality of life now?  What about learning to care for another person?  What about the love of a child?  What about self-sacrifice?  What about seeing the accomplishments of your children?  Does none of the satisfaction gained from those things count towards quality of life?

I'd also note that there's a name for lowering testosterone:  Aging.  It happens.  If you have kids, you'll get over it.  

3).  What this really boils down to is Franklin's complete inability to fathom that someone might want to sacrifice their own comfort or quality of life for another person.  What's so bad about putting other people ahead of yourself?  Well, nothing.  In fact, it's the highest personal and moral calling a person can answer in their lifetime.  Unless you're self-obsessed, in which case self-sacrifice must be avoided at all costs.  

The rest of Franklin's writing on childhood is just a mash of nonsense arguments with himself.  Just one last thing I wanted to quote from this section:

I’ve seen it again and again. In the handful of years before people decide to have kids, they reach a certain plateau: get married, buy a house, get the “assistant” prefix sheared off their job title. Now what? The finality of the “life” they chose starts to set in, a “future” of endless commutes, rote intercourse, and mortgage payments. Their dreams are dead, so why not give those ping-pong balls a tumble, have a kid and see if it can do better

Let me take the fluff out of this quote and simplify what he's saying,  "At some point I will realize that I have done nothing with my life.  I will have made no meaningful connection to my wife who I've dishonestly claimed I love.  My job will no longer inflate my sense of self worth, if it ever did.  My last hope of feeding my self-worth is by having children and attempting to live vicariously through them."

This is the existential crisis men may experience while living in a narcissistic culture.  When we get old and can no longer draw self-worth from our environment and those around us, our last resort is to selfishly try to live through our children. Sometimes...

If you're unsure, then let me make clear that this is not how normal, healthy adult human beings think.  Having children is not a way to finally accomplish what you feel you could not in life.  Having children means you sacrifice those accomplishments, or your self-worth, or your life if need be, to make sure that your children are taken care of.  If you have children, you don't matter anymore.  That's something that Franklin can't seem to fathom.

Nor does he comprehend the irony that he wouldn't even be alive to write this ridiculous article if his parents had followed his advice and purposely refrained from having any children.

The final topic which Franklin spouts off on is work...

Work

The third pillar of adulthood, after all, is the career. I should know: I don’t have one, which is the main reason I’m regarded as an outlier here in this modern Washington of ours. To be loveless and childless may be thought of as failures, or even eccentricities. But to not even have a career at which to fail, well, that’s just odd.  

Or is it? This being America (God bless it!), all you have to give up in exchange for enough money to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head, with two weeks of pretend-freedom a year, is your soul. Thanks, but no thanks.  

When Franklin uses the word "soul" I don't think it means what he thinks it means.  What he means by "soul" is "self worth".  Internally, that's all that Franklin seems capable of understanding.   To demonstrate how this is the case, read on...

He says:

Still, long after I renounced the idea of a “career,” I still felt guilty about not “contributing to society.”

But then goes on to say:

not to get all Marxy here, but your work always benefits your superiors more than it benefits you; your boss’s boss’ boss’ boss is getting rich, while you can barely make your Kia payment.

In other words, "What's in it for me?"  This is a sort of childish thinking that most people grow out of by Franklin's age.  The desire to contribute towards a common goal, to contribute to society, to have a sense of purpose and so on are all things that normal adults look to fulfill. 

The great irony of it is that Franklin has been living off something like six years of unemployment payments from the government.  Despite his rejection of adulthood, if it weren't for those adults upon whom he depends then he wouldn't even have the means to write this article.

This is the entitlement mentality ingrained in so many of us by a culture of narcissism.  "I shouldn't have to contribute to the same system that makes it possible for me to live!"  Sure.

I wonder how capable he is of making those Kia payments with the hard earned money he is taking from other working adults.

I want to really drive home how absolutely immature and selfish Franklin's attitude towards work is, so here's a quote from an article written about Franklin:

Today, Schneider remains happily out of work in Washington, D.C. His unemployment ran out at the beginning of last summer after 102 consecutive weeks. Although the system mandates a continued job search, he had been sending out a resume littered with typos, bad fonts and emoticons to ensure that no one would hire him.

First, why is an article being written about this man?  Have we really sunk that low as a culture that this is what we consider to be worthwhile reading?  Second, this is one of the worst examples of childish entitlement I've ever seen.  He isn't just passively remaining an adolescent, he is actively seeking to subvert adulthood for as long as possible.

You may be tempted to turn this into an argument against social welfare, but I think you're missing a bigger problem here.  Yes, there are leeches on the system, but they aren't leeching on welfare just for the simple fact that welfare exists.  Leeches exist because they feel entitled, and they feel entitled because our culture encourages that sort of narcissistic thinking.

Conclusion

There's a lot more to Franklin's article - though not much of substance - but I'm going to stop responding here because I think I've made my point.  There's just one more quote I want to highlight.

Remember when I spoke about narcissistic rage earlier?  Narcissistic rage is a narcissist's violent retaliation for perceived threats to his self-worth, so when Fraknlin writes...

I’m surprised that most midlife crises take the relatively harmless forms of sports cars and affairs. If I’d stayed on [the traditional path towards adulthood], my fortieth birthday might have found me in a clock tower with a high-powered rifle. 

...in at least a metaphorical sense, he probably isn't joking.

Franklin a stark representation of our culture's shift towards narcissism.  It's very likely, I hope, that if you've read his article you thought it was stupid.  That's good.  But you can be sure that if you thought Franklin is an idiot, there are many others out there who think that Franklin has it all figured out.

Here's another perspective.