Selfish Savvy

By Vithal C Nadkarni

Last week, Spiritual Atheist was thrilled to see some senior vocalists appreciating a younger flautist’s performance at a music soirée in Tardeo. “That is a throwback to a bygone era of gracious norms,” the culture critic accompanying your columnist said. That was when galaxies of star musicians used to listen to their colleagues from the front rows respectfully, regardless of their gharanaloyalties, she added. Their flashier counterparts today seem to be more selfobsessed and far more mediasavvy.

Alas, many also seem to be driven by the myth of scarcity that leads to complaints of “not getting enough” public attention/patronage/appreciation or whatever else thanks to an allegedly indifferent or insensitive media! Nor is this gripe confined solely to the performing arts world: look around, you might find an explosion of the I, Me and Mine phenomenon that has everyone and their aunts busy counting how much they themselves have, want and don’t have versus how much everyone else and their uncles have, need and want!

In the US, long regarded as the nation of and for Narcissists, the incidence of the disorder, named after the boy who fell in love with his own reflection, seems to have risen 100% in 10 years! Ironically, the underpinnings of shame associated with this syndrome aren’t appreciated as often. “Shame is more likely to be the cause of these behaviours, not the cure,” writes Brené Brown in Daring Greatly, her best-selling paean to the culture of being vulnerable, which promises to Transform the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead!