Spoiled and proud

I can’t believe you don’t recognize me. I’m kind of a big deal. This whole thing, this is my column. I speak out against society’s ills and champion the causes of justice and self-determination on a weekly basis. Pretty freakin’ cool right? Yeah, I get that a lot. \nI guess it’s no surprise. You know, the Pope refuses to lead Friday morning services without reading my column over hot coffee brewed with holy water. I guess I don’t blame him, I do look like a statue of Adonis carved from gilded marble. I’ll let you in on a little secret, just between us: I can’t get enough of me either. My baby-blue eyes are haunting yet tranquil, like the opening to an undersea cavern, and highlight an uncommonly magnetic charm. Of course it’s my angelic writing style that captivates so many, as it has you my dear reader. \nBut you shouldn’t be fueling my fervid narcissism, so says San Diego State University professor Jean Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before.” She and her four-person team found that today’s college students have reached a record level of egomania based on a standardized index known as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Twenge’s team concludes that students exhibit “dishonesty and over-controlling and violent behaviors” with far greater regularity than previous generations. They “tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others” according to CNN. \nAre you still with me? Oh, good. Don’t worry about keeping up with my peerless intellect, Stephen asks me to slow down too – that’s Hawking, by the way, we’re on a first-name basis. I only wish professor Twenge and I were so close. Unlike you and Stephen, she has no idea how dismal the world would be if I wasn’t special, if I was ordinary. Ordinary like you.\nImagine my artificially-tanned, collagen-sculpted six-pack abs replaced with your bloated 30-rack of Keystone Ice. It’d be absolute chaos. Who else but sinfully narcissistic college students with disposable income will pay $40 for the first season of “Flavor of Love”? My relationships may be “short-lived, at risk for infidelity, (and) lack emotional warmth,” according to the study, but my psychotic materialism is driving the economy. \nWhere it’s being driven isn’t really my problem. So as long as my $140 North Face jacket continues to match my $95 North Face backpack and $25 North Face headband, I’m too special to care. Now that the mechanisms of the market have been solidly established, all that’s left is to flutter aimlessly between seasonal trends. It’s called the “free” market so no one has to worry about it. \nCapitalism may have made us soft around the edges, but hasn’t that been the point since man invented the wheel? Maybe. I don’t care. It was the last generation that forgot where we were going, I’m just happy to be lost with a cell phone.