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The Daily Me and the gift from me to me

Francisco Miraval

 

I was driving down Colorado Boulevard in Denver just south of I-70 when I saw a billboard that caught my attention. The billboard, standing on top of the roof of a building near a busy intersection, included the image of the bottle of a well-known alcoholic beverage with a gift tag saying “From: Me. To: Me.” And something else like “Thanks, but you shouldn’t…”

Obviously, the ad is part of a marketing campaign to associate a certain product with the spirit of the holiday season. However, the appeal to extreme, dangerous, and even pathological individualism (because the person is depicted with a divided personality) should not be easily dismissed as “just another clever ad.”

The idea that somebody could be so individualistic, or, even better, narcissistic, that will not only buy a gift for himself or herself but also wrap the gift and write a gift tag, and even write a “Thank you” note to  himself or herself it is a ridiculous idea.

Even more, the idea of associating such a hyper-individualistic attitude with that time of the year traditionally associated with giving, sharing, and helping others is plainly absurd. Yet, the billboard is there, telling everybody that it is OK to become the center of the universe or, even better, the whole universe.

I was thinking about the social and ethical consequences of that message implied by that billboard when, in a magazine about journalism, I came across the parody of a newspaper called The Daily Me. Instead of being a newspaper about a city or a state, or even a country, this publication only included news about only one person: me (whoever that “me” may be.)

The parody had a humoristic side, but at the same time presented an aspect of truth, because there are many posting in the most widely used social networks that are, in fact, an expression of The Daily Me, where “I” am the protagonist and “I” congratulate myself for what “I” do. And “I” thank myself for being me.

In other words, the idea presented by the billboard (to divide my personality so “I” can give me a gift) is put into practice countless times every day at social networking sites where the “I” is divided into writer and reader, taking turns to read what the writer wrote, when in fact writer and reader are the same.

It is difficult to accept that any society –that, by definition, implies interaction among its members– can survive if each person adopts an individualistic-narcissistic attitude where his or her priority is to buy gifts for himself or herself, or to write something to read it later and enjoy the “surprise.”

I am not advocating for communitarianism, because both extremes are pathological and therefore dehumanizing. Perhaps it is time to break out of the golden of the “I” and carefully re-read the myth of Narcissus and what happened to him and why. There is a reason why that millennia-old story still teaches us good lessons even today.

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