Its All About "ME" Syndrome

n. the condition of being or feeling of being of overinflated importance to the continued workings of the universe despite being truly only a small, insignificant bit player in the entire grand scheme of things.

In recent weeks there seems to have been an inordinate amount of cases of Its All About "Me" syndrome especially among the members and apologists for the mainstream media. While i fully appreciate their positions, i am reminded that no matter how hard we wish for something not to be happening or not to be true ... 99.999999% of the time it is.

Old line media took another hit this week with the resignation of Eason Jordan, over the remarks he made at a symposium in Davos and also over similar comments and statements he made all without supporting or substantiating collaborative facts or evidence. The facts surrounding the case are well established at Hugh Hewitt's site, Michelle Malkin's site and Captain's Quarters among many others including the aptly names but soon-to be-needing a rename www.easonjordangate.com.

Needless to say the old line media are a bit flomuxed regarding all this. The greatest cry from most quarters of their ranks being either the infamous fingers and hands clasped tightly over the eyes and ears so as not to see or hear what was going on or the other favorite trick of the "victim" classification the loud screaming "ITS NOT FAIR"!!!!

For those who have not yet enjoyed the rich and wondrously enlightening "Blog" by Hugh Hewitt which will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the important and almost instantaneous change in the information superstructure, it is highly recommended that you DO NOTHING ELSE until you have read, devoured, and assimilated all its treasures ... even if you are not a Blogger, but are only a consumer of news, information, and evertyhing else that is LIFE on planet earth, this book will help you to understand how the information superhighway has changed and continues to change right before your very eyes -- and how you are and can play a vital role in those changes.

If you are a Blogger or thinking about starting one, a businessperson, a user of the internet, or you just want to know how things in today's world are operating and you have not read it yet ... DO NOTHING ELSE UNTIL YOU READ IT.!!

For those people who just cant stand the thought of buying a book by such an out in the open and proud of it conservative member of the center-right you can still get the gist of Hugh's book regarding the rapid change taking place in almost -real time by taking a first read or perhaps a re-read of the great book on change by Spencer Johnson ... "Who Moved my Cheese". Although i must sound a note of caution to the obvious suffers of Its All About "ME" syndrome ... its all about change and adapting to it not about food.

It too, is a great read and again filled with terrific insights on adapting to changes in life, work, family, whatever it is you are involved in. Change is inevitable in our world and only those who can quickly adapt to changes around them and anticipate where they might be leading will in the end be secure, happy and contented.

In an ever-changing and challenging era of instant communications around the world, the adage that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result" is more true now than ever.

Some will complain that the rise of instant communication will also cause a rise in instant condemnation or in the calculated attempt to "get" those you don't agree with by searching and publicizing every indiscretion no matter how petty and small it might be in order to make your case for ruination of your intended target and therefore will mean that less and less people will dare to speak out.

I could not disagree more .... in fact that part of communication (the multitudinous amount of individual and personal opinion on every subject under the sun) is i believe the only part not to change. Even before the advent of the internet and blogging, people were free to talk -- agree, disagree, hotly contest anything and everything spoken, sang, written in every form of communication known to man.

My maternal grandfather, Leon Gardner was a man of very well known and well advocated positions on every subject and there was nothing he liked more than "discussing" them with everyone around him ... if you agreed or disagreed with him it didn't matter ... what mattered was the free exchange of ideas.

Now grandfather also thought that many of his "discussion" partners were, well to be charitable, he called them "ninnys"; but that never stopped him from allowing the discussion of their opinions to take place ... when the discussion was over he would merely say ... well even a fool is allowed to have his opinion of things no matter how stupid or wrong they might be.

In fact my grandfather loved "discussions" so much that there were many times when i personally witnessed him argue both sides of the issue ... switching back and forth as well in the arguments ... especially if he thought that his discussion "partner" didn't know a hill of beans about the subject. He was never one to simply roll over on someone or crush them needlessly ... it wasn't so much about wining (although he cared deeply about that as well) ... but i believe the greatest joy he received was from the experience of the "arena" the act of open discussion ... of putting forth ideas and defending them -- in other words the wondrous-ness of the argument.

I submit that the instantaneous-ness of available mass communication will greatly increase the size and scope of an informed populace ... and yes i do have rather a lot more faith in my fellow humans than many on the liberal left (and yes to be completely fair many of those on the conservative right as well) who will try to claim that those who are of the other end of the spectrum will only read those sites and such information as they agree with (while subliminally saying that they are better then that because they will read everything and still make an informed decision to maintain their "open-ness" of beliefs despite the inordinately huge amount of bias and disinformation being bandied about).

There are two things that i believe in so passionately that it would take mountains and mountains of information and evidence well beyond merely a reasonable doubt to the contrary to make me change my mind about them:

The first is that young people (12-20) are inherently smarter and more aware of events, their personal belief systems, circumstances, and happenings all around them and are also much better prepared to deal with them (and in fact already are dealing with them better) than we adults will ever give them credit for being.

The second thing is that every human being WANTS and DESIRES as a natural part of being a human to be informed; to make for one's own self the determination about what and who they are and what and how they will believe. And i believe that the great majority of them want also and desire more than anything to succeed at that goal of self-determination and self-awareness that no matter how many left, right, center or impossibly out in the far reaches of the universe sources of information they read most, if not all, will find that they believe some, disbelieve others but that all are at least worth listening to or reading or at least understanding for the simple point of keeping your own tightly held beliefs current and defensible.

Yes, i admit i do read lots of information from all across the left-center-right spectrum and i still carry on proudly the family tradition handed down by my grandfather of never finding a discussion i didn't want to be a part of no matter my views or even the views of the others in the discussion or the subject matter for that matter. The trick is not to get such an inflated idea about your own importance or indispensability that you lose all perspective.

There are far too many celebrities (and many such more politicians and would-be politicians) who wrongly think that because they are who they are, that they are somehow more important; or that because they played a certain character in a play or movie or have written songs about such things that they are then EXPERTS in those ideas, or situations the character was in. Does this mean they automatically are not experts though ... NO. They are simply one more voice in the discussion, no more an expert on the subject naturally then the people who went to watch them play or act or write.

Every one of us in an expert only in their own experiences (and then again maybe we still are not experts) ... perhaps we are merely bit players even in our own personal drama known as "life as we know it and experience it."

In the end i believe that the writer known as "The Preacher" hit the nail on the head when he examined life and found that it was "vanity of vanities, all is vanity ... indeed all is vanity and grasping for the wind."

None of us is so important and so indispensable that we will not suffer what is our lot in life -- to whither as the "grass which is here today and tomorrow is cast on the fire."

Bloggers (no matter their belief system), i believe, have a much better grasp of that reality as it touches on the theater of the mind and in the thoughts and processes of our beliefs and ideas and dreams than those of old line media because we have not been told from day one that we were special.

We, as normal humans living our mostly satisfying yet unremarkable lives, know that we are all just as equal as others .... only those for whom life has been one endless "god-like" existence will have trouble learning to become equal.

I am reminded of the great commandments written by the newly freed inhabitants of George Orwell's brilliant book "Animal Farm"

as they were originally spelled out:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.

and how, due to their own self-importance and their desire to ensure their superiority, the leaders and elites of that supposedly "equal" society changed them at will and whim until eventually all that remained was one which read:

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

No one should presume that they have all the answers or that all their answers are the one true correct answer (ESPECIALLY ME) ...

Yes, each of us should strive to give their best to the edification and education of everyone else by thought word deed and example but never by force of will or of any other kind. We should rather, as another great writer, the Apostle Paul, explained to his audience in Philippi "have learned to be content whatever the circumstances."


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