Really boring beings

I have, for the most part, stopped learning new songs since the 80s. I felt that I could not relate to most songs since then but I never really knew why. Last March 2011, a study published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts gave me a probable reason why.  

The study was entitled “Tuning in to psychological change: Linguistic markers of psychological traits and emotions over time in popular US song lyrics” and it was done by DeWall, C. Nathan; Pond, Richard S., Jr.; Campbell, W. Keith; and Twenge, Jean M. The researchers labeled “song lyrics” as “cultural products.” Their study looked at the words in songs and looked at what they had to say about psychological traits of generations. The study analyzed the lyrics of songs from 1980 to 2007. They found that songs that focused on “self” and anti-social behavior rose while “other-centered” and social interaction songs as well as those about positive emotions were on the wane. This signaled to the researchers that with song lyrics in the US as a measure, narcissism has been on the rise since the 80s. For a snapshot illustration, I can think of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water” in the 70s. Now, contrast that with ‘I Wanna Do You (You, You, You)” — a song that came out sometime in the last few years.

Three years ago, another cultural product, social networking, specifically Facebook, was used to detect and gauge the narcissism of users. It was a study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The researchers gave out questionnaires to Facebook users and analyzed the content of their Facebook pages. They also had strangers rate the Facebook user’s “narcissism.” They are not saying that all Facebook users are narcissists. They are saying that the Facebook format makes it easier to detect narcissism of users by the content posted on the page walls as well as the “glamorous” and “self-promoting” profile photos they use instead of mere “snapshots.”

Narcissism is a drooling love affair with oneself. If you were a narcissist, you have an unrealistically bloated view of your own talents, a view you also impose on others. It is coined from a character in Greek mythology, Narcissus, who died because he could not stop looking at his own reflection in the pool (now the blog, the tweet, the post). Psychologists say we all have this love affair every now and then, but some have it in mythological proportions that they could qualify as having an official mental disorder called, what else, but narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). But the story does not stop there.

We are not only becoming increasingly self-involved, we have even reached a point where narcissism is no longer by itself, a big deal. I say that because it was announced late last year that it has been dropped as a “disorder” from the upcoming 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I could not figure out exactly why from the many articles I have read except to say that it will just be one “ingredient” that can characterize other mental disorders. This does not mean that narcissistic people are cured. Rather, they will just be joining forces with other “ingredients” to describe “listed” disorders.

I wonder if local songs have followed a similar self-absorbed trend like the ones in the US. It would be very interesting to see how much we could read into Filipino songs, tweets, blogs, personal websites to know how many of us are most likely to “expire by the poolside” fixated on ourselves.

Narcissism involved such outrageous self-absorption that the Greek literati had to invent a story for it. Around 2,000 years later since that myth was created, we humans have succeeded in turning that myth to widespread reality with ever growing kinds of media to express it. I think if we continue this trend, aside from the obvious dangers we pose to ourselves and to others if we love ourselves way too much, we shall be the most boring beings in the cosmos. No one would really want to contact us anymore.

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