NARCISSISM defined as ‘excessive interest in and admiration of oneself, usually at the expense of others’ has an interesting history and genesis. It emanates from Greek mythology wherein a handsome young man Narcissus is cursed to fall in love with his own reflection. But gradually Narcissus discovers that the object of his life(his own self) cannot love him back, he(Narcissus) withers away and dies. The story of Narcissus and what it emblematizes has a bearing on our(Kashmiris’) individual selves: we are an extremely narcissistic people.
Our narcissism reflects itself in multiple ways: One, we have become pompous and garrulous. Both these attributes make us loath to countenance viewpoints other than our own. We are argumentative to the point of quibbling over trivia and our arguments never get settled. Two, we think we are the best in the world. The consequence of this fallacious thinking makes us wallow in and jump like frogs in the proverbial well. Three, it makes us contrarian: express a viewpoint, for example, with your friends, or acquaintances, right or wrong, it will be shot down for no other reason than taking a contrarian stance. Four, added up, these features make us mediocre and we then wear this mediocrity on our sleeves. While this list is not exhaustive, it means that we cannot(except for the daredevil eccentric amongst us) produce anything extraordinary and brilliant – in say literature, science, technology and so on. Yes, we have over centuries produced stalwarts in the fields of literature and poetry but these are exceptions; not the norm.
And , to repeat, these eminent men and women of excellence have been wildly eccentric. In this regard, and in more or less recent times, the great poet Ghaney Kashmiri comes to mind: the luminary would have his house locked from the outside when he was in the house but would leave it unlocked when he would be away. On being asked about this curious behaviour, the inimitable Ghaney Kashmiri would say that, ‘ he was the most valuable asset in his house and he would not want to be stolen’.
By way of a digression, when I returned for the first time from overseas, I thought, contrary to convention, that we were actually not a communitarian people but a supremely individualistic one. But I was disabused of this notion soon. Notwithstanding the many and multiple deep flaws of individualism, in its pure form it does require some character. By elimination, observation and experience plus comparative analysis I concluded we are a narcissistic people.
Where does this narcissism of our individual selves come from?
Difficult to answer but one speculation may be that we are a landlocked people with hardly any inter or cross civilizational contact. We have only ourselves to compare and benchmark against. Or, maybe along with this it’s the weather that has led to a cocooned existence. Or maybe it’s the general tenor of culture where lack of real confidence is supplanted by a fake admiration of the self. On the face of it, our narcissism should lead to a confident , self asserting culture and society. But it has actually had contra and counter intuitive effects: our narcissism at the individual level makes us into a self loathing society at the communal and aggregate level. The irony is that while we Kashmiris have a greatly inflated view of ourselves , at odds with reality, we have a terrible view of ourselves at the collective level. This perhaps is the ultimate paradox of Kashmiris.
Can our narcissism be cured? Can we have a proportionate and sober view of ourselves?
Maybe. But for this to happen, we need to shake ourselves from this narcissistic stupor. One way to do this is to conceive of the world and the universe as a cosmological reality that is infinitesimally greater than ourselves and consider ourselves as specks in the world’s luminosity – creatures created by God Almighty with a higher purpose. This may inject some sobriety and gravitas in ourselves and lead to a sense of self that is healthy -one that smells of roses. And this orientation might help us produce works of greatness, in the process according some measure of sanity to both our individual and thereby our collective selves. Contrarily, beating the same trodden path of narcissism would mean walling (and not even knowing about it) in a pit of mediocrity and collective self-flagellation. As Ramadan 2023 comes to a close, it is these thoughts that must animate us!
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
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