<h2>Tracing the roots of our runaway self-obsession to… ancient Greece</h2>
British journalist Will Storr’s “Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us,” explores how Westerners became a bunch of selfie-shooting strivers trapped in a cycle of trying to perfect themselves — or, at least, project a perfect image of themselves.
People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy. Unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions, Storr takes us on a journey from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, the encounter groups of 1960s California and self-esteem evangelists of the late twentieth century to modern-day America, where research suggests today’s young people are in the grip of an epidemic of narcissism. He’ll tell the strange story of the individualist Western self from its birth on the Aegean to the era of hyper-individualistic neoliberalism in which we find ourselves today. Selfie reveals, for the first time, the epic tale of the person we all know so intimately… because it’s us.
Selfie opens with a quote from the right-wing philosopher Ayn Rand, talking about her discovery of God in 1938. “I am done,” wrote Rand, “with the monster of ‘we’.” She revealed that God is one word, “I”.
The modern human is obsessed with self. We are all little gods, pumped with self-importance.
The proof being the selfie. No view or experience is worthwhile without a camera-phone pic of me. And since we are now divinities, we are perfectible. And there’s the mental health rub. We try to be slimmer, smarter, wealthier, sexier and sportier, yet fail because we are dogged by our biology. We are animals with paws of clay.
“Perfection,” writes Storr, “is the idea which kills.” He throws in some alarming statistics. Between eight and 10 per cent of the adult population in the UK and the US are on antidepressants.
His findings: Our self-obsession has dangerous consequences, and in his view, leads to depression and suicide. His <a href=”https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/12/selfie-will-storr-review-me-myself-trump-age-ego”>interview subjects include</a> a woman who spends hours a day curating her vast selfie collection for public consumption, but admits that privately, she’s a self-cutter.
“I think the selfie exposes who we’ve become,” Storr told MarketWatch.
Originally the selfie camera was intended to help us communicate with others through programs like Skype or FaceTime, Storr said, but most of us use it to snap self-portraits and upload them for likes or follows.
“I think the fact we reacted like this really shows that we have become more self-focused,” Storr said.
How did we get so overwhelmed by self-obsession? Blame the rocky shores of Ancient Greece, which was bad for farming but good for the birth of our runaway individualism, Storr explains.
Ancient Greece was the birth of Western individualism, Storr said. “You couldn’t really do agriculture in Ancient Greece. It was made up of a thousand city states all on these rocky shores and islands. So to get along and get ahead in Ancient Greece you had to be this self-starter. You had to be making olive oil and trading it or fishing and selling your fish.”
“It was a very individualistic society,” Storr added. “We began to see the world as made up of individual pieces and parts, and then from that comes this idea of the individual human being as this node of potential and possible perfection, so all the pressure gets placed on the individual.”