The Bigger Problem Than Guns
rainbowrider
Published
01/10/2013
In light of all the violence going on in the last few years and especially the last few months we have been
asking ourselves "why?" I've always maintained that our problems are social and needs to be looked at
objectively and not try to do a "quick fix" and then bury our heads back in the sand. Cause the "quick
fix" of banning ANY gun isn't going to work. Then we'll have to ban knives and baseball bats since
they are used to kill more people than guns. The data is there to support this! We need to fix the
"real" problems! I read this article today and thought the person who wrote it made some very
good points and wanted to share this with all of you. I'm sure some will not agree and that's ok.
I'm not even saying that this is the "whole" problem, but I think it's a big factor! RR
We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists
first, the meaning of narcissism:
1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one's own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits
On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of friends. They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), speak in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they like.
Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth following, as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame.
Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for being something they are not.
On MTV and other networks, young people can see lives just like theirs portrayed on reality TV shows fueled by such incredible self-involvement and self-love that any of the real-life characters should really be in psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life.
These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed.
As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psyciatrists hand out Adderall like candy.
All the while, these adolescents, teens and young adults are watching a Congress that cant control its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending, a president that cant see his way through to applauding genuine and extraordinary achievements in business, a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the psychotic people who wield them, and (here's no surprise) a stock market that keeps rising and falling like a roller coaster as bubbles inflate and then, inevitably, burst.
Thats really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting. Thats why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while. Theyre doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy.
Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface. I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.
We had better get a plan together to combat this greatest epidemic as it takes shape. Because it will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we have ever known. And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the saying goes, that it is us.
written by Dr. Keith Ablow and the study was done by Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis that has been on going for 30 years
asking ourselves "why?" I've always maintained that our problems are social and needs to be looked at
objectively and not try to do a "quick fix" and then bury our heads back in the sand. Cause the "quick
fix" of banning ANY gun isn't going to work. Then we'll have to ban knives and baseball bats since
they are used to kill more people than guns. The data is there to support this! We need to fix the
"real" problems! I read this article today and thought the person who wrote it made some very
good points and wanted to share this with all of you. I'm sure some will not agree and that's ok.
I'm not even saying that this is the "whole" problem, but I think it's a big factor! RR
We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists
first, the meaning of narcissism:
1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one's own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits
On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of friends. They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), speak in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they like.
Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth following, as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame.
Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for being something they are not.
On MTV and other networks, young people can see lives just like theirs portrayed on reality TV shows fueled by such incredible self-involvement and self-love that any of the real-life characters should really be in psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life.
These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed.
As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psyciatrists hand out Adderall like candy.
All the while, these adolescents, teens and young adults are watching a Congress that cant control its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending, a president that cant see his way through to applauding genuine and extraordinary achievements in business, a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the psychotic people who wield them, and (here's no surprise) a stock market that keeps rising and falling like a roller coaster as bubbles inflate and then, inevitably, burst.
Thats really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting. Thats why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while. Theyre doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy.
Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface. I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.
We had better get a plan together to combat this greatest epidemic as it takes shape. Because it will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we have ever known. And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the saying goes, that it is us.
written by Dr. Keith Ablow and the study was done by Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis that has been on going for 30 years
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