Archive for category critical thinking

The Disease of Hollywood Narcissism

I admit I’m so much happier now that I don’t really watch TV, keep up with the endless minutiae of every irrelevant incident occurring throughout every second of every day. Having said that, one of the most interesting phenomenons in modern society is the way people—especially Americans—transfer or transpose their own egos into the mirrored reality of famous stars, actors, politicians, sports stars, reality TV and a multitudinous cacophony of completely inconsequential blather and bullshit.

Hollywood Spawned Narcissistic Ego Disorder

People like stars because they see themselves in them. They feel part of them. Women swoon over famous men and men fantasize about sexy famous women. We want to to have sex with these people. We want to hang out with these people. We worry about them. We cry when they cry. We cry when they die. We scathingly critique them when they make us mad. We jerk off when they do a Playboy spread. Not only do we worship, look up to, grovel for, dream of and much more—we want to be them. Hollywood has become the mirrored ego in a majority of people’s lives.

And that is not only sad, it is sick. It’s a sociological disease driven by mass media entertainment. These are powerful, wide sweeping sociological phenomena that absorb people without them even knowing it. It is a self-generating entity unto itself.

People in American society are far too concerned with famous people, stars, musicians, awards, who died, etc. It is actually a sociological mass brain disorder

Dr. Drew Pinsky has a theory (the mirror effect) that most stars are predisposed to narcissistic personality disorder long before they become famous and that a majority of people in society use this as a mirror thus psychologically distorting and damaging their own minds using stars as “twisted mentors”. I’d go even further to say the entire landscape of the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogging, etc. has changed the way people interact as a whole. Because of the way our lives and egos are mirrored by Hollywood narcissism, we are growing into a less intelligent, excessively greedy, superficial horde of human beings.

Your destroyed identity

Your destroyed identity

When human beings begin to actually care what happens to a character on a TV show and then obsess over the actor paying the character, it is so bizarre I cannot help but look at them like science experiments gone awry.

The entire idea of friendship has become a shallow meaningless relationship whereby elimination of those we disagree with is but a click away—and this disturbing phenomenon overflows into our actual lives. Let me rephrase that: it doesn’t overflow, it is a tsunami of sickness.

All these concepts coincide with the modern plague and version of depression and drug addiction. The truth is, when we allow all this garbage (over-obsession with Hollywood, what other people do or say, etc)  into our lives we lose “presence” in our own lives.

When it comes to judging celebrities and their behavior, it might be best to take a good look in the mirror

I know a young woman who didn’t go to her own mother’s funeral, but did travel 1500 miles to mourn over Michael Jackson’s death (and actually cried for three days over it). But the fact remains, she never actually knew nor was friends with Jackson in real life. That is scary my friends. What famous people do or say generally has no relevancy in yours, mine, or anyone’s lives. There’s nothing wrong with watching TV, listening to music, having a “star crush”, but when it becomes an obsession it becomes a serious medical disorder.

We need to choke down that Valium to sleep. We need that Prozac to cope. We need to take sides in political issues. We need to worry about why we aren’t more beautiful, skinnier, sexier, younger. Advertisers masterfully manipulate the public making women believe they need to be someone else to be wanted, loved or desired. Men are sold and actually buy billions of tablets of ExtenZe so their dicks will be longer and harder.

WHY?

Because there is something wrong with you and they want to sell you the cure. The most unbelievable aspect of all? You demand it. You demand to be sick. Keep obsessing on all those things in life that truly don’t matter and transferring your own ego into the matrix of meaningless bullshit—you’ll remain exactly where they want you to be.

Be yourself. Love yourself. Let go of all that which truly doesn’t matter and be filled with love and happiness. And most importantly, BE PRESENT in your own life and forget about what stars do. Learn the difference between loving yourself and narcissism.

Dramaturgical Perspective

What I’m really getting at is an actual sociological paradigm called dramaturgical perspective. This can be an effective way to explain a  sociological disorder (affects an entire group of individuals, not just one person). Dramaurgical perspective theorizes that because of modern communication, we are no longer individuals or who we believe we are. Our identity is built on consensus (relationships between ourselves, others, societal groups, and how these elements blend as a whole). We aren’t really ourselves, we are in a sense playing ourselves or the created image of who we want to be like an actor. Social interaction has become dependent on this “consensus”.

People are living more and more aspects of their lives as a slave to socially molded conveyance or performance. It has become commonplace for people to become a caricature of themselves and live as a performing artist, based not on who they actually are, but on who society says they are. Some  are aware of this and use it to manipulate others, but are still a sociologically produced psychological product . . . kinda like a living breathing human McDonald’s cheeseburger.

The symbiotic relationship of mirrored realities (Hollywood to masses and masses to Hollywood) are reflections of each other. Human beings become more fake than the fake actors they worship. And it all designs and builds a bizarre mass-sociologically separatist reality.

  • We are born blank slates.
  • We get a corrupted politically correct mass media influenced education.
  • We then become less individualistic.
  • We grow up and separate even further.
  • We divide among religion, race, politics, class and every other type of separatist identification.
  • We allow mass media entertainment and the 24 hour news cycle to turn us into superficial slaves.

I could go on an on about this stuff, but I’ll just say: take a step back from this sociological matrix and take a long look in the mirror. Are you really who you believe you are? Are you nothing more than a highly manipulated representation of a displayed performance you reveal to the world?

I didn’t watch the MTV music awards yesterday. but I did watch in sheer astonishment as the Kanye West sociological manipulation exploded across the web, Facebook and Twitter. The very idea that some guy on TV manipulated how you felt at the time and prompted you to voice your concern over this irrelevant triviality is incredible. The mass public was played like a violin. Ask yourself why and look in the mirror when you do it.

You might just have narcissistic personality disorder.

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Political Positivity

Here’s a little political positivity for today. With all the vitriolic hatred between the right and left in American politics, I’m so thankful I am not affiliated with either the republican or democratic party. It’s really asinine to call yourself liberal, conservative, libertarian, progressive or whatever. I’m basically an anarchist who believes in rugged individualism and opposes government, but having said that, I have something positive to say.
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The Human Urge To Criticize and Judge

In my own personal struggle for positivity, basically defeating a lifetime of harrowing depression and long being the tortured writer/musician, I reached a plateau where I felt a lack of inner growth—nothing serious, but still longing for progress. And I found something I’ve always known, but am just now implementing in a true way. One thing I’ve fought for years and many other writers, artists, musicians (or everyone) experience the same thing—is the need to force my view of the world on others. On a deep philosophical level, this is an albatross I want totally discarded.
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Law of Attraction is a Hoax?

Is the Law of Attraction a hoax? If I proclaimed to channel the god Bahghu Mahgufu from the seventh realm of consciousness, wrote a book about it and expected people to believe it—would that make me a prophet with millions of followers or some self-exalted idiot?
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Writing & Artistic Creativity – The Power of Belief

When you write a fiction story, compose poetry, paint a picture or simply create something great whilst in a fit of inspiration–do you get the feeling something otherworldly is going on? Do you force it out? Does it just magically appear in your mind?
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Narcissistic Society Superficial Blogging

We live in a world of shallow ideals, cheapened values . . . even amidst world wide recession, we remain narcissistic, superficial and foolish–reflected in our blogging, news, TV and daily habits. I’ve become almost livid over blogging and all the popular themes so prevalent right now.
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The Myth of Mental-Spiritual Limitation

Let’s consider the words expansive and vastness for a while. When considering the vastness of the universe, we believe we have an idea of how big it actually is, but we do not. Compared to the vastness of the universe, the planet Earth is smaller than an electron inside a single atom . . . infinitely smaller. In addition, the universe is not only gargantuan, it is expanding–getting larger every second. Even if we could conceptualize just how big the universe is, by the time we did, it would already be vastly larger than it was upon the moment of our realization.

The Earth is one planet circling our sun. Our sun is one star in a stupendous galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies. But as humans, we really have no idea just how vast our universe is. To make things even more staggering, there is more than one universe. According to physics (string theory and M-theory) there are eleven parallel dimensions. I’ve read several books about string and M-theory, studied physics, chemistry and calculus in college, but I will not get into anything mathematical here–I want to keep this simple and leave the over-intellectual, pretentious and eloquence aside.

There are eleven dimensions, which makes any concept of expansiveness and vastness so small–we cannot comprehend–or can we? There are eleven of you. There are eleven of me. There are eleven of Bobby (that’s me) living in eleven parallel dimensions–this being one of them–and all are connected by a central line–all part of one. We are much more than we believe we are. We are eleven beings sharing one soul so to speak. They left that out of the bible didn’t they? In essence, we never die–not because we end up in heaven or hell–but because we are living our lives . . . somewhere in time . . . eternally.

Let’s consider time. We believe we are here at this very moment, and is the only place we can be . . . right now. Think about this: Every single breath we’ve ever taken we are taking right now. At this precise moment, we are being born, turning 1,2,3,4, and so forth–we’ve already died, forgotten by eternity. Somewhere in time, all these moments are happening and always will be–we just happen to be aware of this moment–our past and future selves are only aware of their own moment–and there are eleven of us. Of course, all these are theories, not necessarily facts. Some physicists say there could be infinite universes–but nobody really knows. I’m not here to argue about theories, but to share an idea:

All said . . . as mind boggling as it may be . . . I arrive at the point of the article. The central motif. When considering the words expansive and vastness; how they relate to your understanding of the universe and all eleven parallel dimensions–our minds are more vast and more expansive than everything. Our minds are limitless. Our minds more vast and more expansive than the universe and all its dimensions.

I strongly correlate these concepts to my life long study of Taoism, Zen and Yoga. The idea of enlightenment or illumination is really the same as understanding we have no limitations (as long as we’re healthy and alive). All beliefs of limitation are myths and self-imposed. We believe we can’t, therefore we can’t. We believe we can, therefore we can. Easier said than done, but we can overcome limitations.

Something simple we can all relate to is writer’s block. Writer’s block is a myth. There is no such thing. It only exists if you want it to. When you crush all limitations, smash all boundaries–all those things confining us no longer exist. Think limitlessly and be like water. If you think I’m wrong, perhaps you should spend the rest of your life studying Zen and Yoga.

In my case and my writing, I apply this universal idea to my fiction. This is probably one reason I write what I do. Here’s one small example: I never say, “I can’t write this or that. I’m not knowledgeable enough to write this or it’s not accepted by society. This is offensive and people may not like me. This is so revolting, it is a disgrace.” I never think this is what I consider quality or good and limit myself in such a narrow fissure.

I reject all precepts of what people believe good, skilled, beautiful, meaningful and artistic are. These ideas are merely opinion and are irrelevant. If a so-called master of poetry or professor of literature thinks my work is either great or drivel–it is just one person’s opinion and offers no validity whatsoever. They may not understand it. They may just be so set in their ways, only certain subjects interest them. I reject this entire notion. I cannot be set in my ways because I have no ways. To be truly artistic and creative, you must be free and absolute in your conviction. Societal norms, taboo? I say bah.

One writer with an extreme influence on me is Carlos Castaneda. He says humans have four natural enemies. They are listed in order as you cannot understand the second until overcoming the first.

  1. Fear of Death: We must overcome the fear of death before becoming an official beginner in life. Most people die of old age before ever getting close to this point.
  2. Clarity: The fear of death conquered, we have clarity. Seeing the truth in everything; unable to not see truth. A pristine and clear view of all.
  3. Power: The most dangerous. Balancing true power while walking the razor wire of greed and desire. Having the wisdom to know the fine line between power and lustful evil. This is where most fail. Most people with power haven’t gotten past step one and don’t deserve it. True power has nothing to do with money, success or material things.
  4. Old age: The final enemy. We all must face it if we’re lucky enough to live to this point.

What say you? Do you place limitations on your thoughts? Do you fester guilt for thinking bad thoughts? Do you think of yourself as being limitless? Do you let society control your artistic creativity? Do you judge others? Categorize people? Categorize yourself? Is your mind and expressiveness expansive and vast? Can you do this without ego?

To sum it up, I share my favorite Zen axiom:

Nothing exists . . . all things are becoming.

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All Races & Religions – All Welcome Here

So we’re born as pure innocent children–blank slates with eager minds and sparkling eyes, filled with wonder and astonishment (if we’re lucky). Then we go to school and make friends. We don’t care what race, religion or whatever our friends are; too young to know anything, but smarter than any adult where it counts most.

We get a little older and the separation begins–the division, partition, divergence forked into endless segregative paths. The black kids hand separate from the white kids; geeks divorced from jocks and so forth. A little older and we are driven further apart by religion, more distance by race, body size (fat, skinny, ugly, weird, hot, fine, etc.) and then . . . we grow up. We learn to drive a thousand more asphyxiating wedges between us based on class, sexual preference, who your family is, how much money you have–by the time we’re into our early twenties we become “mature” separatists conforming our lives to every ridiculous form of separatist identification possible.
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