The culture of narcissism

With the rise of social networking and online dating, the epidemic of narcissism is climbing.  Online dating sites like match.com and networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Myspace feed the egos of young people altering the increasing display of their narcissistic traits. The message is simple: “I am as awesome as it gets, and you better be just as great to date me or to be my friend.”

Virtual resumes and bragging seem to be the norm in the 21st century. Exaggerative personal internet marketing (manifested via boastful online profile descriptions and dazzling picture displays) give certain creative individuals a seeming edge on their competition by dramatically increasing their online exposure. Pretty packaging is easy on the eyes, but is not as important as the consistency of internal values, yet its easy to fall for the outward appearance and overlook the things that really matter. 

The narcissistic tendencies in our society have caused a rise of disposable relationships that do not require much attention or emotional investment. Hence, the recent trend of focusing on oneself, instead of establishing a meaningful relationship with others. Texts, chats, and one-night stands have become the norm. Young people often do not bother picking up the phone to have a meaningful conversation because texting is easier. Hence, the rise of open relationships. Everything that does not fulfill one’s version of personal happiness becomes disposable.

When it comes to serious romantic relationships, humility is frequently replaced by cockiness and self obsession, changing the road map of a courtship ritual. Young women still not only want to be dined and covered in jewelry, but they also expect their partners to have high paying jobs and executive positions. Men, on the other hand, are looking for young, fit, successful models. People seem to care less about virtues than they do about cosmetically altered appearance. No one wants the second best anymore, when crème of the crop seems to be one click away.

 Social networking and blogging become vehicles for those who wish to project their importance through attending glamorous events. Having one’s picture taken for a glitzy magazine sometimes seems more important than work ethic, demonstrating a shift in focus towards individualistic traits vs responsibilities.The real danger of narcissism is that it is taking over our lives, replacing what is real with what seems “cool”.  I love Facebook as much as anyone, but I think it's time we  applied ourselves towards building a society of caring individuals who are subtle in their online messages. 

Portraits

fairy tales

Here is Annie Liebowitz's take on fairy tales, which I prefer to that of Dina Goldstein.  These photos were commissioned as a part of the Disney’s Dream Portraits Series, to celebrate Disney’s Year of a Million Dreams campaign.  

According to Walt Disney, "all cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures.  It is the very nature of fantasy and fable."   I see nothing wrong with exaggeration and neither does Liebowitz.  It also does not hurt that she is using beautiful celebrities to tell the tale.  

Gisele Bündchen as Wendy, Tina Fey as Tinkerbell, Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan

Rachel Weisz as Snow White



David Beckham as Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty

Roger Federer as King Arthur

Julie Andrews as Blue Fairy from Pinocchio & Abigail Breslin as Fira (Disney fairies)

Michael Phelps as merman, Julianne Moore as Ariel from Little Mermaid

Jessica Biel as Pocahontas

Fairy tales are enchanting and appealing.  A child in all of us can certainly appreciate the beauty of this work and we can all use a little bit of dreaming.

The con of "The Brothers Bloom"

 




Director Rian Johnson cheats the moviegoers by filling his new film with enough puzzling froth to bubble through an hour, but leaves the audience feeling empty in the end. To his credit, Johnson picked a cast of talented actors, who engage in dynamic dialogue among exotic locations, with settings and costumes lavish enough for a royal court. All this, coupled with clever camerawork and enticing plot cons the audience into thinking that there is more to the story than first meets the eye. Indeed it may be so.

The film revolves around veteran con-artist brothers Bloom and Stephen (played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo respectively), who embark on their last job to scam a lonely eccentric heiress Penelope Stamp (played by Rachel Weisz), with the help of a sexy but virtually mute side kick Bang Bang (played by Rinko Kikuchi). The job becomes complicated when Bloom, the youngest brother who has grown tired of playing characters and having his life cast by Stephen, falls in love with Penelope.

The twisted script is filled with enough hints at hidden meanings to keep one guessing who is conning whom. Aided by a superb camerawork, it creates a fairytale with plenty of holes to allow various interpretations of each character. This seeming cleverness tricked me into hoping that the ending would be something less predictable. In the end, Steven’s "perfect con," left me unrewarded.

Despite this original disappointment, the visual aspect of the film and one underlying reference to the “The Unwritten Life” may redeem it as a story behind a story. This film appears to be less of a con film and more of a love story with a subtext about one’s perception of life. My only wish is that there was more real character development and less hints about it.


Director: Rian Johnson

Actors: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz and Rinko Kikuchi

Run time: 113 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13 (violence, some sensuality and brief strong language)

My rating: 3.5 out 5

What is the future of Russian Intelligentsia?

In understanding the future of the Russian Intelligentsia, it is important to trace its origins and the height of its influence in the nineteen and twentieth century. Unlike the early European men of letters, who were independently engaged professionally in disseminating ideas, early Russian intelligentsia was a phenomenally single-minded class of people frustrated with the notion of being born in Russia. As Pushkin wrote: "it was the devil himself who had me born, intelligent and talented, in Russia". Pushkin, like many other intellectuals of his day, struggled under the constant stress of the national pride and Russian identity. He romanticized Russian traditions and reinvented folk customs in his writings to justify the value of the Russian soul. Such struggle with embracing the Russian origins led Russian intellectuals to form a social group that shared a unique social identity.

This group originally emerged from the dissident members of the nobility, such as Radischchev (one of the first Russian authors to criticize socio-economic conditions in Russia at the time of Catherine the Great, which earned him an exile to Siberia). The group grew and solidified in the later years to criticize the inhumanities of serfdom and to oppose the fundamental iniquities and barbarities of tsarism. Scientists, painters, authors, professionals, teachers and lawyers in particular, represented the critical Russian intelligentsia. The intensity of their criticism evolved over time from subtle remarks of Turgenev in the “Fathers and Sons” and reproduction of the pain and suffering of the lower society by Repin in his painting “The Barge Haulers”, to the stern sermons of Tolstoy, followed by fervent anti tsar movement of the emotionally committed Decembrists, to a final militant action of Lenin that ultimately lead to political violence and assassination of the tsar and his government officials.

Ironically, the new Bolshevik government had an intolerant policy against the articulate, intellectual criticism. It began enforcing such policy by suppressing newspapers (initially as a temporary measure that later became permanent). Lenin considered the Constitutional Democrats the center of a conspiracy against the Bolshevik rule and, soon after the October revolution, began mass arrests of professors and scientists, deporting the very Socialist Revolutionaries in an attempt to eliminate Russia’s past in order to build the future on a clean slate. This new policy quickly alienated a large number of the intellectuals who had originally supported the overthrow of the tsarist order. The suppression of democracy resulted in a strong opposition from academics and artists, who felt betrayed in their beliefs that revolution would bring a free society. Many Russian intellectuals emigrated shortly after the revolution, publishing attacks on the new government from abroad. This resulted in government denying any further exit permits to artists and other creative minds, who wished to leave Russia. Lenin saw the old Russian intelligentsia as a rival to his party’s goal to bring revolutionary consciousness to the working class. In his view, intellectuals generally came from nobility and served bourgeois interests, unfit for the communist society. This notion was carried out by the communist party by persecution of intellectuals throughout the Soviet period, reaching the height of its limits under Joseph Stalin.

Stalin tightened the reigns of the government, making controlled decisions at the top party levels, with little, if any, input from below. Thereby, the communist party formed its own elite class, which determined the state objectives and carried them out in dictatorial isolation. The government inflicted a police terror upon the population, resulting in million casualties of innocent people. The secret police efforts were especially concentrated on the members of the old Russian intelligentsia, whose creative efforts were strictly censored, deporting many to Siberia.

During the World War II, members of the Russian intelligentsia, who fought to defeat Hitler, returned home as veterans to confront the repression of the Stalinist society. As a result, a new generation of intellectuals was born that resembled the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia. This new group was ignited by the Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism in 1956.

In the early 1970s and late 1980s, the soviet government temporarily opened its borders to those wishing to leave and, not surprisingly, many disenchanted Russian intellectuals immigrated to the countries with democratic governments. Those, who stayed behind, pursued their dream of a democratic socialist society, devoting their lives to defending ‘socialism with a human face’ and ultimately contributing to the political disintegration of the communist regime under the Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika program. By then, it was too late to hold the soviet society together. Interestingly, after the fall of the Soviet Union, many members of the Russian intelligentsia have forsaken their commitment to democracy to support Boris Yeltsin, who introduced militant action and economic reforms which impoverished a large part of Russia.

And now, with Putin in charge of the Russian government, it remains unclear whether the Russian intelligentsia will rise again to pursue their dream of democracy in Russia. The traditions of the Russian intelligentsia are dying out. It almost seems as though it is no longer fashionable in Russian to take an active part in the opposition movement. They are also not embracing the traditions of the Western intellectuals in keeping their distance from authorities and the government. Rather, the new Russian intelligentsia is embracing the authorities, leaning on them for success. As an incentive for their support, the United Russia party has given party membership cards to famous actors and musicians. It may very well be that the Russian intelligentsia no longer considers it an option to criticize, especially when any criticism or opposition is likely to be suppressed with an iron hand.


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Sources:
Inna Kotchetkova, The Myth of the Russian Intelligentsia, Old Intellectuals in the New Russia, October 2009.
Stalin And Putin: Have Times Changed Now?; CDI Russian Weekly, March 4, 2003
Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility, 1966.
N.G.O. Pereira, The Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia and The Future Of Russia, June 1974.

For more information on  the slow decay of intellectual culture in Russia, go to: http://www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/archives/nc1/shalin_intellectual.html

Another interesting read on this topic is a book by Vladimir C. Nahirny - The Russian Intelligentsia: From Torment to Silence.

Poet (Dedicated to Osteen)

Painting of Osteen by Vika, 2007

Entrusted heart without care
To endless scribbles of the quill
Poet paves pity road of pennies

Forever fueled with good intentions
His fiery soul is watered down
With each faint drip from the ink well

I watched the fire rise and fade away
A melting dream in smoke
It lives another day

Too weak to soar
On sodden fire wood
Too vague for sense

The poet scribbles still
His mind runs high on smoke
His heart runs low on will