Life As Performance Art 153

I really wonder these days what people use for a moral compass. It seems that with religious faith being on the wane that not even the Ten Commandments are going to hold much sway. I notice that people seem increasingly self-absorbed, isolated, and more shallow than ever. With the current tide of fear that we all live under and the tendency of middle class parents to be overprotective, it is really sad what I often see and hear in this crop of young people. They're not all bad by the way, but on the radio yesterday morning one particularly pathetic wanker was being interviewed about his difficulty in getting into UBC, a rather prestigious local university that is harder to get into and now more expensive and exclusive than ever. I think he was eighteen years old, and insisted that by not being accepted by said postsecondary institution, he was traumatized. Seriously? Since when is entrance to a snobby university a human right? Talk about entitlement. But there is something even worse and more sinister at work here. I noticed that this young man probably has experienced absolute zero in the way of moral and character formation. This to me makes him truly lost. I phoned in a comment to the radio station, telling this pathetic little boy to grow up, man up and accept that life isn't always going to hand him that which he feels entitled to and he had might as well start getting used to it if he really wants to grow as a human being. I don't think they're all like that. The girls, anyway, really kick the boys' asses when it comes to being moral and ethical and responsible. But there are exceptions and I see them every day. Some, with or without religion, really do make an effort to be moral, to do the right thing, or at least to be kind, though too often they end up substituting ethics with lame politically correct cliches. I believe that human beings are intrinsically, almost instinctively, moral. The idea that we are all selfish beasts that care only about our own success and survival simply is not true. The fact that we are so very bad at it, and always have been, is quite egregiously clear, Gentle Reader. I think that the current generation, and my own for that matter, was really damaged by the self-esteem and self-actualization movement in the eighties. When I was seeing a psychiatrist in the early 2000's, I would want to simply hurl and projectile vomit whenever he would try to talk to me about having good self esteem. (you would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, Gentle Reader!) He simply was using the wrong language, the wrong terminology. I do not hate myself, by the way. Neither do I adore myself. I was listening last night to an interesting program on CBC Ideas about the influence of Joseph Campbell on contemporary pop culture, with his motif about the hero and how this kind of narcissism and self-adulation has really seeped into our way of thinking. I have never liked, or been interested, in Joseph Campbell, by the way. Of course, he's American, and his brand of self-centred nonsense feeds right into the selfish rugged individualism for which the Americans have become famous, and which, through out of control global capitalism, they have basically poisoned the entire global culture. This is why I think we really have to go from thinking of me to thinking of we, or more correctly, thinking of us. Humans are a very social and highly communal animal, and despite our sad capacity for hubris, and our pathetic tendency towards narcissism and self-adulation, we really have to keep thinking and honing our behaviour because everything that we say and do is going to impact others, and that is going to rebound back onto our own sorry selves, darlings. If you don't have a moral compass, then try to get one. Pick up a Bible, or a Koran, or a Torah, or some sacred text and start to relearn what the ancients have had to teach us. The words might be old, but they are also eternal.