Narcissus' Modern Tragedy

Facebook profiles; LinkedIn memberships; Twitter and Instagram accounts. These are all tools that make us feel good, that inject that little bounce in our step and whisper that we are something special as we slug out of bed every morning. We like to track progress on these sites and places, make friends in them, share them with our real-life friends. But who for - the same self that consciously set them up for the purpose? In a world where each is out for his own, is the idea of being social really just of holding up a mirror to your own desires, and painstakingly claiming to the world that their fruits are already your own? In sharing, and over-sharing (and over-sharing some more), aren't we just the picture of Narcissus - falling in love with ourselves as we try to build a picture of who we are at all? The answer, it seems, lies in self-reflection.

Narcissus was a man who many considered foolish. Beautiful, but obsessed by his own image, he is a wise man's cautionary tale not to value your image above its worth. Yet in the modern world of selfies and ever-present screens of our own image, who would be today's wise man - Steve Jobs? Self-obsession is a concept accepted, even encouraged by many. The drive to self-promotion is encouraged - online articles tell us to know our worth, retailers to buy it, and celebrity culture to give everything up to achieve it. Being the person that everyone is looking at or following on Twitter is touted as an enviable position, never mind the stalkers at the gate. According to the modern fable of Kim Kardashian, one can promote oneself to the point of the ridiculous - and others will promote you in turn. Success, riches and a band of admirers can be all yours, for the low price of your own humility.

Western culture, of course, loves this dictum. In the eternal search for a constant happiness that doesn't exist, many people stand to gain: brands, corporates, politicians and the paparazzi (to name a few). The quest for fame can be as small fry as setting up your own YouTube following, and as large as creating your own Richard Branson-esque empire, complete with mirrors at every turn. No longer do you have to worry about the acceptance of others - you can buy it! Everybody loves someone that's always decked out in the latest brands and goes to the latest top places. Tag yourself in and you're away, amassing a largesse store of proof that you are more important than the person walking next to you on the street, who would never get past your phone screen anyway. You are smarter, more stylish, and what's more, you have a better image.



Nobody knows more about a good image than a PR practitioner - and hey, they're right to love it. Image really does sell. Have a brand that's perceived as a bit pansy? Enlist David Beckham as a sponsor. Selling cheap Chinese wares at ridiculous mark-ups? Make the styles the latest on the catwalk. Hawking an electronic gadget? Chuck an apple on the back of it. Biologically programmed to want to fit in (and sometimes be the Chief) in our own pack of Indians, many of us have the feeling that we're always being watched - and no, not just by the proprietors of the GCSB bill. We want to be at the top of the pack, not at the bottom, and if the saintly dollar can take us to the altar we'll pay in plastic-coated paper for the privilege.

If you're reading this, identifying, and feeling a bit embarrassed, I'm glad. We SHOULD be embarrassed. Would you crawl on your metaphorical knees for a romantic partner, your child, or your job? Dare I say that these things are more important than the images we slave away at, year after year, soaking up more time than we used to soak up watching TV twenty years ago? We are human because we have been given a beautiful tool, reason, and yet many of us would trade brains for beauty because beauty is revered in our culture. Realistically, how much time do you spend on your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn? Could you have completed something truly good for your internal self-image - writing a book, training in a sport, socialising in the real world, in that time?

If there is a message to be taken from this little blogger down the south side of the world, it is this: image is useful, but only that - useful. It is useful in landing a job slightly better than the one garnered from your own talents, useful in attracting the opposite (or same) sex in a pub, useful in meeting and greeting people with a slight dab of lipstick. But that is its limitation - the rest is mere idolatry. Dare I say this from a digital tool, but it is time to lower the screen and look around you. Does everyone look happy in their own self-obsession? If you were truly interacting, wouldn't you be using more than the tips of your fingers to do it? Look and reflect on your self - not your self's reflection.

The Case for Impropriety

Sprawled on the sofa in one of those 'enlightening-Oprah' moments, my eyes scanned across a concept that managed to attach itself to the filigrees of my brain. 'Breaking open', it was called. Not to be confused with tips for burglary, the prising open of that damn-awful jam jar in the back of the cupboard, or coming out, 'breaking open' referred to the emotional opening of one's heart during a time of personal hardship. Yes, you, the currently non-emotional person wondering when this post will get to the funny bit. Believe it or not, this may concern you.

At the time, I thought, 'Wow, how beautiful" (read: how also irrelevant to me and my glorious future). But it appears there always is a time when one 'breaks open', spilling their tears and ill-considered beers on the public pavement. We are all human, we are all mortal, and, it seems, we are all embarrassing. Yet sometimes what we perceive as embarrassing - our times of humiliation, badly timed tears and bursts of anger - are actually the most interesting, the most valuable parts of ourselves that we have to offer. These are the times when we are truly real.

We all like to think of ourselves as real. "Oh, I say  what I mean", "There's no point in smiling when I'm not happy", and "I'll always tell you the truth" are all phrases we often hear ourselves saying. But in the face of the public, that all-judging public, would you be ready to bare your soul? Could you cry in front of your boss, rage in front of your grandmother's friend or outwardly despair at a professional gathering? Well no, you answer, of course not - it would be inappropriate to do so in each of those circumstances. Which comes the nexus of my next point: as real as we believe we are, we are often slaves to propriety. It is propriety which causes us to don those professional masks, conceal those dotted mascara lines charring our cheeks, and create a fake cheese for all to see. Propriety is our friend in many situations; but too much of it can turn it into our enemy.

Doris' Campaign Against Propriety

The part I find the most beautiful about this death of propriety, 'breaking open', is the sadness element within it. For much of our rage, unhappiness, or concern is really stemming from a bed of sadness. If you are in this place, or have been in this place (don't lie), you'll know what I mean when I say everyone can see it. The guy behind the supermarket counter can see it. Doris' nosy nose over the fence next door can see it. Unfortunately, new clients and industry-ites can see it too. They can see it not so much through a look in your eye or your body language as through a sixth-sense, some sort of anthropological left-over from when strangers used to care about each other. And the most beautiful thing about this sixth-sense - wait for it - is that is takes us back to that humane time. Strangers will help you, smile at you, open your car door and not make off with the rest. Breaking open reveals the best that humanity has to offer, at the time when a subject of humanity most needs it.

To close (how do you close an aspect of humanity?), breaking open is one of the best experiences life has to offer. Whether you've broken up from the love of your life, lost your house, are unsure of your identity, or have killed your career, there is a little piece of love left over for you. It's waiting behind the supermarket counter.

The Wrong Game

Kiwi Friendships: Loving People in a 'Stink' Way

Corrections, rectified statements, re-assertions. These are all hallmarks of the modern meeting, ways of marking down the opposition to maintain a professional superiority. Yet why does negativity have such a large part to play in the schoolyard of selected client relationships? Surely if you were after a great client-supplier relationship, as most claim they are, business emails would be filled with pleases, thank-you's, and best regard's. Yet beginning some business relationships appears to be the opposite of starting  personal ones. For some, the best way to yield a return is to 'frenemize': to keep the words pleasant but the tone derogatory, jumping at the chance for ways to prove their superior knowledge and quick wittedness (and yes, this does mean for many Kiwis a great friendship is made of derogatory words with a pleasant tone). Really, it is about being on the right side of the (who is more) wrong game.

Professional attire and sombre colours, I think, reflect this mentality too. It is hard to be wrong if you are dressed in grey, but easy to be a bimbo if wearing hot pink. Being safe goes a long way in these kinds of relationships, as does tampering with those recessive OCD genes your Aunt Nelly had by checking, re-checking, oh-wait-rechecking again, checking just-in-case, one last time. Which, of course, is all part and parcel of being professional, and doing a great job in whatever you put out to the world. Of course we all want to achieve perfection, and are especially paranoid about that contact report after a few too many Mocconas. This is not the problem. The problem is the jump to attack on the slightest of mistakes, the type where you can visualize the respondent's Cheshire-cat face licking its lips as if you were a Christian thrown to the lions. It is all very evil, and it is all very ouch.

Your Email Had A Spelling Mistake

The question for today is: do business relationships really have to be this way? Do snarling sent emails really inspire perfection and competition, or do they ignite low self-confidence and second-guessing in the recipient? You could say that depends on the type of person; but are there really people in the business world as there are in our personal lives, in that sense of the client-supplier relationship? Aren't many personalities dulled down, squeezed to fit, custom-suited for the boardroom, a bunch of humans with logo-esque faces? If so, depersonalization could have a lot to answer for in the catty client meeting. 

Perhaps, at the close of day, it all comes down to frantic funding. Monsters are made of money, which complicates any relationship. Throw a tight budget into an already tense relationship, the antithesis to your beautiful and friendly ones, and you have a certain word beginning with a b. But isn't that just life? When it comes to cash concerns, haters gon' hate.

Word of the Day: Roundelay

Power ballads might have cheesy connotations, but we all know it's the only music we'd be embarrassed in the shower for. Pick who you like; a bit of Adele, Gaga or Aretha will earn you no respect in the karaoke booth - but it's only yourself you're trying to impress anyway, right? Today's word of the day is a tribute to what ballads are not: roundelays, or short, simple songs with refrain.

There is something to be said for the short, simple song that packs a lot of punch. Not all songs have to be sung a la Christina or Mariah (for the good of the general population, it is indeed imperative that the majority of us try not to sing them this way). Indeed, simplicity is such a memorable and beautiful tactic in so many disciplines that is hard to see why anyone would try so hard to complicate things. Yet if there weren't awful complicated songs, there would be no respite for them, and perhaps no American Idol. The world would suffer.

Or would they?

Word of the Day: Dimidiate

Guilty/not guilty. In love/not in love. Employed/not employed. Why does the answer have to always be one or the other? The world is split in half by those who think in white or black, or 50 Shades of Grey; just like our Word of the Day, dimidiate, or split in two.

The idea as to whether there is an absolute truth in any situation is always a complex one. Ask it: emotions get riled up all over the show, especially if you ask it in relation to personal truths. Does the fact that a philosopher was a Nazi unquestionably affect the merit of his ideas? Is cheating acceptable or not? Is it socially acceptable to politically segregate people based on their sexuality? General answers will be complex and subjective; but the fire behind the answers is not.

Why, when we finally agree on something, do we not have the fire inside us to fight against it?

You can't run a country like a business.

Word of the Day: Cinquecento

Sundays are the days that roll around like its sleepers in the morning, stretching out feelers for things to do. A lazy day, Sundays sometimes demand that you add a little spice in your life - being the only day that most people truly have free. The question is: what can add value? For those feeling the fat fastening to their middle regions, a trip to the park might be in order. For the foodies, a trip to the latest-reviewed restaurant. For the rest of us feeling a lapse in the cultural side of things, a museum or gallery fits the bill. Musing along the hallowed hallways of many a tormented soul, we can bring home sights and words that delight our dinner guests and give us an elegant edge. Words like our word of the day: cinquecento: an Italian style of art or artist of the 16th Century.

For those readers who believe they are above visiting a place to add to their image, I would love to believe you. Do you tag yourself in eateries or clubs, become lured by labels or price tags, or have the use the exact cutlery for the cuisine you are crunching? Yes, most people are unknowing casualties of consumer culture. Yet, I'm sure most of us would still agree on wishing we were in the 16th Century in the face of what some channels perceive as Italian art, these days.

Jerseycento just doesn't have quite the same ring.

Word of The Day: Galvanic

As science fiction turns reality with the advent of the first artificial minds, our thoughts naturally turn towards the robotic. These clean, mean, steely machines could be the future of the human race. They know how to use a search engine, can already do much administrative work, and share our unexplained penchant for lolcats. Perhaps our days of boring admin are over. Or, we could just roboticize parts of ourselves, voluntarily. Today's word of the day is galvanic: of, or produced by, electricity.

Living our lives in a galvanized way is already true in many ways; the internet, phones, payment processors and other comfort-inducers are already doing the leg-work. Robots are gaining a cool factor that they've always maintained, but which, like a flattering and tacky fashion trend, reaches consumer peaks every ten years. Making robot-esque human dance music, inducing robot sweat-shops and printing out your own 3D objects are just some of what is in store. It all seems innovative, but a little geeky. Then again, who said the robotic can't be sexy?

Gives you something long and hard to think about.