December 23, 2010

These are interesting times for B.C.'s political parties. "Interesting times" defined as a curse in an old proverb. Just when you thought things couldn't get more interesting with the ejection of Premier Campbell, the NDP dump their leader.

Things are about to get more interesting as the parties scramble for votes from an ambivalent electorate; beaten down for decades yet increasingly narcissistic. Politicians will have to find ways to appeal to an electorate weary with wage loss but fixated on themselves: impatient, easily insulted and aggrieved, with high expectations despite a diminished standard of living.

Narcissism is a relatively new phenomenon. Fifty years ago, duty to family and country trumped the vainglorious goals of the individual. The hippy movement preceded narcissism. As baby-boomers morphed into the thirty-year-olds they said couldn't be trusted, flower power wilted into the Me generation. We had become part of what was formerly the enemy. Hippies became the establishment.

The seismic generational shift was indentified in 1979 by historian Christopher Lasch in his book The Culture of Narcissism. The flower-power generation, ostensibly about love and brotherhood, had turned inward.

Lasch argues that our culture of self-absorption that evolved from that culture of rebellion and free love is paradoxically the result of too many constraints and at the same time, too few. On the one hand, people felt powerless in the face growing corporatism and the impersonal complexity of the modern world. At the same time, baby-boomers felt empowered by their sheer numbers and a sense that they were special.

Jennifer Senior, in her article for New York magazine, says this mix of shifting constraints coupled with a taste of individualism "gave people a sense of lawlessness and dizzying personal freedom."

Narcissism has created high expectations for B.C.'s electorate, at the same time dealing them a dwindling lifestyle. This is especially true for B.C.'s working poor who have been hit hard. While all low-income Canadians have been affected, B.C.'s working poor experienced the greatest loss of wages: 11.3 per cent drop during the last 25 years according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.


 

Mixed feelings are evident when it comes to government. Citizens expect more healthcare and education while paying less through taxes. This simmering discontent makes a surly electorate.

The culture of self-importance is not an accident; it has been carefully crafted. Students are told at an early age that they can be anything they want to be. All they have to do is follow their dreams. Students are indignant when they achieve low grades with little work. Doesn't the teacher know that they are an important person with big dreams?

Narcissism is growing. In 1951, when 11,000 teenagers were asked if they agreed with the statement "I am an important person," only 12 per cent agreed. When the study was repeated in 1989, a resounding 78 per cent agreed. However, their astonishing self-importance was not matched by test scores. In fact, correlation is inversely proportional: Korean children who expressed less self-importance had higher math scores.

The internet feeds narcissism. We all have something important to say on Facebook andTwitter. YouTube encourages us to broadcast ourselves. The internet allows us to construct a world which mirrors our own through customized sites like my.yahoo. It's a world constructed to affirm that we are right. No matter that a scientists has spent a lifetime studying a subject, our opinions are as good as theirs and we have thousands of supporters in our mirrored world who will defend our views.

The conflicting world of narcissism is aggravated by the increasing obscure nature of technology. It used to be that you could open the hood of a car or take apart a clock and understand how it works. Now you are greeted by mysterious black boxes. There is a growing impatience and confusion with the realization of an opaque world that we can't do without. The effect is to throw up our hands in despair at circumstances which we have no control.

That frustration is carried over to governments. When the Liberals do exactly what they said they wouldn't, it generates similar disconnect and anger. The frustration is palpable in a narcissistic electorate that feels empowered by individualism yet powerless by technology, corporations and government.

B.C.'s wacky politics have become interesting. Politicians will need to tread softly.
 

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca