Critical thinking

I've been doing some tough thinking lately, really reflecting on myself and my role and place in the world and what I have to offer, and I've come to some pretty serious conclusions:

I am not special, not at all. I have nothing unique to contribute. Even if I were given the power to rule the world, I couldn't offer anything to make it a better place.

Okay, stop. Think about what you were thinking in response to those statements. Some of you were probably wondering what had happened to get me so depressed. Some of you were probably thinking "That's not true!" and mentally drafting a comment to convince me I'm wrong. Some of you may have been sneering at me for wallowing in angst and self-pity. But, unless you came here thinking that I have an over-inflated ego and deserve a downfall, your reaction probably wasn't positive or neutral. In our culture, those kinds of statements are not considered positive or neutral. They aren't considered healthy or normal. They're considered negative, a sign of a problem that needs fixing.

So what does this have to do with anything? They recently did a study labelling an entire generation as narcissists because, when asked to respond to certain statements, the responses of the students studied were the opposite of the statements I made above.

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory asks students to react to such statements as: "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I like to be the center of attention."

(It isn't explicitly stated in the article, but the way these tests generall work is that you give a yes or no, or a response on the agree or disagree spectrum, to the statements given.)

I don't think this is a valid indicator, because our cultural values indicate that an "agree" is the "right" answer, the "healthy" answer. I think people would be inclined to say "agree" or "yes" when they didn't actively disagree, or when they were thinking "There's nothing wrong with me in this area, I'm perfectly healthy and normal in this aspect of life." Telling someone "You're special" is a meaningless cliche, while "You're nothing special" is an actual insult. "He thinks he's special" is run-of-the-mill everyday egoism, while "He think there's nothing special about himself" borders on time to schedule a therapy appointment.

So does the fact that our culture has established "I'm special" as the norm mean that everyone actually thinks they're special? I don't think that's necessarily true either, because there isn't really any place in our culture to reflect on or question your own specialness. You can question other sacred cows, like sex or politics or religion or your basic moral values, and by the end of your first year of university you most likely already have. If you decide to change your religion or politics to something drastically unorthodox, or have kinky sex with unlikely partners, or give on up capitalism or consumerism or family values, there's a name for whatever you're doing and and online community for likeminded people. But if you decide to question whether you're actually special, there's no name for that, no community for that. If you go to a therapist because you find yourself questioning your politics or religion or sexuality, they'll help you work through the feelings around it, but won't try to change your politics or religion or sexuality. If you go to a therapist and say "I'm beginning to have doubts about whether I'm actually special," they'll probably try to get you to see that you're actually special.

Lather, rinse, repeat for making the world a better place and for wanting to be the centre of attention.

As long as we consider negative responses to these statements as signs of a problem, we can't go around indicting people for giving positive responses.