Natural Born (The Tower Journal, Spring 2013)

Natural born healer,
Natural born heretic.
Natural born warrior,
Natural born woman.
I am.

Narcissism and Materialism: Global Decline

Narcissism, megalomania, and concomitant emotional immaturity are the insidious epidemics which are consuming global society from the inside out, like a cancer or virus. Media campaigns aimed at coercing people to feel worthless unless they have a Coach bag,  Polo sweater, or Armani suit only foster shallow and self centered materialism in people, particularly Americans, where social mobility is a revered obsession. After all, since most Americans are descended from poor immigrants, indentured servants, or African slaves, we define our status by our newly acquired stuff.

Yet the narcissism I speak of does not confine itself to the shopping mall. On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media, people feel free  to cowardly post insults and ad hominem attacks, which they would almost never have the nerve to say to the face of their cyber victim. This sniper mentality breeds a powerful sense of immunity that shields all social offenders in the virtual reality world. In addition, social media users begin to develop a sense of entitlement and expectation from having virtual strangers following their every tweet or posted picture.

Last but not least, this narcissistic  world view permeates all social views,including seeing an unborn child as a mere fetus without rights when the mother doesn't want to be pregnant, and as a precious child only when pregnancy is desired. This attitude of "I decide who lives or dies, " or what  is human or not, is the ultimate manifestation of narcissism.  Unborn human life is treated with the same sense of "possession is nine tenths of the law" that we use for objects. In order to thrive as a human species, we need to overcome these puerile tendencies  and recover some of our human dignity.

What Has Gone So Wrong with Modern Women that Fifty Shades of Grey is a Hit?

   While I admit I've only read excerpts and reviews of the series,  it is more than enough to get a pretty clear picture of  both the shallow and twisted nature of the Fifty Shades of Grey series. After all, there aren't a lot of sophisticated concepts in the books that require deep thinking, yet ironically some women read them to "appear sophisticated", or because their friends are reading it and they're curious.  Instead of  viewing it as sophistication, however, the mental health community considers it pathological, listing sadism and masochism in their current diagnostic bible, the DSM IV revised. It has also been noted that people who like being abused are statistically more likely to switch into abusing themselves. 
 
    More importantly, have women who think these books are okay or even entertaining thought of the fact that it sends men the message that we really want to be sexually abused in real life? It gives men the idea that we probably do want to be treated with force or even outright taken by force.Women need to resist the subversive messages that society is sending women about what is "sophisticated."
 
     In a time when women are being raped in unprecedented numbers all over the world--not just in India and Africa but all over the US, including the military-- feminists should realize that this utter garbage written by a woman for other women only reinforces the image of ourselves as wanting to be raped, and thus makes us more likely to be raped.

     I can just imagine a trial occurring in the not too distant future in the USA where a lawyer defends an accused rapist by saying about the victim, "Well, but isn't it true that she told you she read Fifty Shades and she liked bondage and rough sex? Weren't you just having consensual BDSM?" I can see this happening quite clearly. 

    In fact, in 1986, there was the famous "Preppie Murder Trial"  in which the defendant, Robert Chambers, was able to claim that the strangling death and rape of the victim was only accidental rough sex gone wrong, rough sex that she had asked for,and the defendant walked only with a manslaughter charge.

      Real feminists should be appalled, early feminists rolling in their graves, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedan. It is sad how unhealthy and fooled modern women are becoming. With the idiot who wrote this stuff, it's like the blind leading the blind.