Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons, said: "I'm Special"; that phrase has endless permutations, extensions and implications from one end of the political and religious/philosophic spectrum to the other. From democratic ideals of equality to the promise of room for each person to have a chance to excel as much as possible versus those with destructive delusions of specialness rob everyone of possibilities.
Moral midgets and egomaniacs with money and power or just raw ego driven natures that say loudly "I'm special" in any way they can and the powerful subtext of it all is "because I say so... It's those "special" people who really cause problems, not others who whose specialness is suppressed or ignored who need some encouragement or empowerment or just left alone. I want to explore the problems with those who already are at the top who require the rest of us to buy into their definition of I'm Special... the ones who give that a bad name.
(this is long... if you want, skip down to the last line for the short version and take the poll while you are there....)
In the end, the question is: how much room do some self important people leave for others, some of whom actually have more promise and potential to go as far as they can on a level playing field? For many of those who get to the top or are born there there is little or no humility or balanced awareness that luck also played a part in them ending up where they did. And for those who try and close the door to others to have a similar chance they basically are bending the rules to suit themselves.
They or their parents or grandparents may have added rule-bending and self-importance to the hard work and talent that is usually needed as well. This type of person seems to also need to have the self centeredness of a frustrated toddler and matching empathy defects that allow them to overvalue their own efforts and capabilities and undervalue that of many others, especially those who are effectively locked out of succeeding at the highest levels by these value extractors who rank above them... At one time they may have been down the ladder and moved to the top through force of will and abuse of the talents of others. One has to admire those who can succeed beyond their actual value to others to the point where their shortcomings in some aspects of knowledge, intelligence, talent, creativeness become immaterial. They are very special in self promotion and manipulation and for them that is all that counts to come into enough wealth and power that it becomes a tool of self perpetuating status.
But they are not some defective breed apart who share little of human nature with the vast majority who do not and probably will never have the wealth and power of the top 1%. We all are a little self centered and we all see our views as in the reasonable middle and value our own efforts and talents a bit more than others might... it's human nature. And we tend to excuse our own faults and errors more than the same elements in others, especially those who are noticeably different than ourselves. That is not to say that most of us employ this to the extent of overt racism or intolerance but it still seems to be a needed component of a balanced psyche. We have to "like" ourselves at least a reasonable amount to function and to get along and "like" others as well. People without this survival trait tend to suffer from depression. We need to fool ourselves at least a little. We can pretend we have little in common with the buccaneers of industry and enterprise but all their faults which are the secret of their success differ from us only in degree and proportion. They are us with some of our normal setting cranked way up or way down so to speak. We in some way all need to invent and define ourselves... somehow the greediest and most ruthless had reasons to be what they turned into to believe certain things about themselves. They define their specialness as including acquiring the power to try and ensure that we believe it too which allows their specialness to become even more special... Nothing succeeds like success because after a certain point people stop asking question or challenging the special person because they have fewer reasons to and then because they can't any longer. But they will never believe that they are untouchable or invulnerable only that they should be. They will still have the hunger for or the certainty of specialness they had as kids.
The kids who especially need a book like "I'm special I'm Me" will most likely not turn into a love and attention hungry afflicted pop-star wanna-be, Empire building MBA or another Emperor Nero or any dictator who just has to have a cult of personality and unlimited rewards for whatever beneficial thing they embody or believe they do.... but some will..... There are way more shy or modest people whose "light is hidden under a bushel basket" and who need to believe in themselves a bit more and maybe a bit less in someone else who with less basis, proclaims their own specialness a bit too much... So feel good about yourself as much as you like as long as you also do the golden rule thing for everyone else. Take it away Chrissie Hynde... you are special... and aren't we all...
"Brass in Pocket" (I'm Special)
PART II
Specialness overkill
BUT those who take this trait of self appreciation and promotion too far justify a lot of exceptions for themselves and their families and "Clan" in whatever context their clan might be, political orientation, or religious groupings, gender, class, race, ethnic, neighborhoods etc. They will tend to overlook illegal acts or gray areas in behavior or ideas if it is done by those who validate the identity of an individual in some way. Part of this is wrapped up in identity and following from that the defense of that identity and the extended identity of the group they have loyalty or allegiance to. Go back to elementary school and high school in your memory and recall all the silly games of smacking down people who were special or who tried to be... unfairly or not. As adults we still play these games but all to often the real winners practically speaking are those who can say "I'm special" and therefore I make the rules that allow me stay special and get what I say I deserve along with a good number of people who are convince and stay convinced of the specialness even when it is just the appearance of specialness with little real substance....
There was a time when talking up individuality was especially important, coming out of times of conformity and suppression of differing viewpoints and ideas or times of great disparity in wealth and poverty. But the cult of individuality, like every new movement keeps going past reasonable and eventually heads into overkill to the point that it seems to invalidate it's own original intent. Instead of a plague of a just a few "Special" people at the top, deserved or undeserved, we have a multitude of special people all climbing over each other in a creepy struggle to outshine everyone else by any means necessary, fair or unfair.. (not something entirely new... just in degree and extent... because we just about can all have our 15 minutes of fame) until we have a new crop of very successful special self promoters at the top of the hill of new hills of specialness. Among the new "winners are plenty who deserve to be there but along with them are all the ruthless people who pretend to be as deserving but whose only specialness is getting to the top by any means necessary. They are a type of chameleon who blend in with those who have actually earned their status with actual value gained for society. They may not be as rich as those who control the rules of the suceess game but they deserve all of what they get.
"Hello, I'm Special""
How Individuality Became the New Conformity
Hal Niedzviecki
When being a rebel is sanctioned by society, what is left to rebel against?
Hal Niedzviecki has a blunt message for the army of tattoo and piercing enthusiasts, bloggers, skateboard warriors, and anyone else walking around with the smug certainty that they are one of a kind: Individuality is the new conformity.
Niedzviecki’s meditations touch on everything from designer religions to webcasts, from reality TV to the endless "Everybody Is A Star" platitudes of global pop culture. He unearths the amateur underground and shines a spotlight on the self-help industry, Hollywood, and mainstream media. The result is a smart, witty, and impassioned argument that shatters the you-can-do-anything pop myth and exposes the paradox of individualism.
Special and Special... not all good or bad...
Democratic individualism is good... it leaves room for others to have a reasonable chance to excel and at least get a socially approved reward of some kind. Individuals who have unique gifts or ideas do tend to get noticed if not rewarded in some way... eventually. But there is conformity and disincentives to be different at every level. There has always been room for individualists at the top. The very rich are in some ways the ultimate conformists, they are often ruthless and judgmental with each other and only the strongest individuals can maintain some ability to rebel in some way and also be among the more innovative and dynamic of the rich. Many do it in a quiet way that is based on substance and a quiet self assurance, while others are more noticeable and seem to be acting out their own fantasies of specialness in ways that can be utterly indifferent to any hardships or suffering their empire building causes. Their belief in their own specialness does not allow much room for any competition. Success by the most driven who do not play by the rules means that the winners are not the best who everyone agrees deserves ample rewards for what they do but cheaters who game the system and ordain what their rewards must be often at the expense of society at large. They grab what they can when they can because they can. They help set up the situation where few can deny them that they say they are worth.
The invention of Modern "I'm Special"
Robber barons, priest kings, heads of dominant Colonial trading companies, supreme chiefs and emperors of new kingdoms and empires, all believe in their specialness with a raw fervor that helps make what they want happen. And this drew supporters and followers since we all like to emulate a rising star and get the benefits of following them. In the long view we owe them much but they did not always get to the pinnacle of wealth and power by gentleness and even-handedness. Huge numbers of people have been dispossessed, cheated, murdered, exiled and enslaved in so many ways by these special people. But in so doing they linked up many strands of invention, innovation and ideas directly and indirectly. Who can say how all the accidents of history that brought the right people to do or understand the right things at the right time could have happened in ways that harmed way fewer people and allowed more "special" people to be recognized and rewarded more fairly.
From the earliest times, self proclaimed special people have stolen and used and abused the work of others who really are more "Special" than they. The studio head, the Chief executives, the managers, the publishers, impresarios and many other types of middlemen who became wealthy from the work and artists that they controlled... and sometimes they became even more famous or are remembered longer. Things have gotten a little better since Mozart got to be the first self employed musician who was not an itinerant street player...And from the time of the Beatles the huge disparity of the special middlemen getting the most "value" from the artists work they promoted has moderated a bit and we all got to enjoy vicariously the "lifestyles of the Rich and Famous because they got a little more of the pie at times." The cliche hit record-instant-wealth-and-fame scenario became a bit more true for some but the labels and handlers did even better than they did before with the help of new accounting twists and corporate structure innovations. But just as before, One-hit-wonders came into specialness and quickly went back into un-specialness.. Some who helped them get their moment of fame deserved the wealth they built more than others... they did not rob their clients and talent quite as much and maybe did better because of that in the long run.
In earlier times before travel, TV and semblances of democracy you only got to see the mansions and objets d'art long after the people who enjoyed they were gone. Museums, tours of palaces, the work of the common people for the power and wealth elites on show as part of the collective heritage of a people. These days the VIP who used to be more private more often are on TV hosting the tour of their McPalace... What a change! Used to be most peasants never saw the inside of the palace except while looting and burning it during a revolution.... But for the most part the lowest classes bought into the way things were and understood that those at the top were special and deserved the wealth power and circumstances they enjoyed. Not that those at the top did not have to work at hogging the best for themselves.
When being Born Special really meant something
It made sense in a hierarchical, Medieval/feudal setting with a class of nobles to under-reward the real value adders in a kingdom. To keep power and status and hand it on to your heirs to enjoy in turn meant adequately hoarding the perks and privileges that supported it. But they could not do it alone as cultures became more "specialized". There were other "special" people they could not do without... not just the Special Dukes, Barons, Knights and other special enforcers and co-dependents. The artisans, traders and bankers not to mention religious authorities had to be allowed a share of the really special gravy they helped produce or handle.
The Towns were given special rights and privileges and the important guilds had circumscribed powers that still allowed the Really special people to work their way up often enough and get something out of their efforts and not have too much wealth siphoned off to the power elites to the point where the system was destabilized. But that has been the recurring curse of special people at the top with the power to match their ego being able to transfer a larger proportion of the rewards from effort and invention in a society to themselves with an accompanying set of religious or political or philosophical justification. They do it more and more till they bankrupt their society at the same time that the squeezed peasants and artisans reach a breaking point. And that is where special borrowing to bridge the gaps that resulted from using up the generous rewards too fast. The invention of banking was in part to help the special people stay special they way they wanted to be. It was a check on the over-extensions of greed at the top. But as soon as special people invented modern joint stock corporations and international banking and trade institutions they quickly became overrun with a new breed of "special" people who made sure that their control of the money supply and debt allowed them some form of power over the previous extra special people. And we have had to live with the cycles of greed overreach from succeeding generations of Special people able to grant themselves a lot more of the reward pie than they deserve.
And best of all the more distance there was from the sources the less direct awareness of just how unpleasant the lives were for those who were at the bottom of the supply chain. The rewards that the special people at the top of the newer more international extended special person support mechanism were so sanitized and disconnected from the cheating, violence and destruction that the special people could continue in a fantasy of their own importance and goodness... their conceptual predecessors saw some suffering and blood first hand more often while as time went on the richest could live in denial more and more easily. Or ultra rich in some ways are well beyond Marie Antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess at Versailles. The "good" they bring about by employing people can soothe any twinge of conscience and help them rationalize people working in third world sweatshops in semi slavery almost devoid of any pretense at decent standards... Beautiful lies you could live in... Too many Special people at the top live in those lies full time since the relatively few who disagree cannot or will not be heard.
How to tame "I'm Special"ness?
Good old Adam Smith and Marx and all the rest since then have been trying to figure out what the heck is going on in economics and society and politics to continually cheat the majority out of a fair share of the rewards of what they do and maybe how to if not fix it, at least make it work better most of the time.
If the "Special" people at the top saw the bigger picture they would be able to possibly see why some self restraint on their part is good and how to self perpetuate a very cushy balance and keep a disproportionate share of the pie with out spoiling the whole party. But every time the cycle repeats and the original specials who were more effective and not as greedy perhaps are succeeded by the next generation who were more "inheritors" than originators and therefore did not see how and why they got to where they are. They grew up believing the new mythologies of their parents success and their own position. Expectations, and entitlements and justifications build till they become parasites who do not know how to self limit the unsustainable drain on a society that they become.
The most greedy and motivated always gravitate to positions where they can make the world offers that can't be refused. They essentially become the self perpetuating big boardroom members and CEOs that can award themselves as much as they can get away with over and over again. And why, because
A. they can and
B. they believe they are special and deserving of every last bit of reward that they can get.
And that probably happens because they found that they could in the first place "A" and that bit of luck led to explaining it by B.... and so on.
What happens when you are emperor of The Roman empire and your mama always said you were special AND you were a singer, maybe even a reasonably good one but you just had to share your talent with everyone... whether they wanted to hear it or not for hour after hour... and everyone found they had to praise your singing and even try to out-praise the next person lest they fall from favor and/or lose their life...
Poor Emperor Nero... enforced superstar, convinced of his own Specialness and wielding enough power to convince everyone else to at least pretend they agreed... he was not the first self proclaimed poisonous "I'm special person" and there have been multitudes ever since. We all have to toot our own horn a little and put up with jealous people sometimes who can't quite allow the idea that anyone deserves a little more than them. But these people for some reason if they are very right wing will defend the prerogatives of well known wealthy fleecers and flim-flam artists and the policies that support their scams even when it directly affects their own well being. On the extreme left there would be those who do not think any reward should be allowed for anyone that would give them more than the average person. The few extreme levelers would deny any specialness and for some reason this mostly non-existent group was a favorite straw-man bugbear of Ayn Rand and her Galtoid followers... And yes her phobia had some basis, this extreme experiment was tried in the Soviet bloc with disastrous results culminating in the extreme evil banality of the ultimate leveler experiment of the Khmer Rouge which finally took it to its extreme and invalidated it for all time. (or until people forget).
Part III
Pop Philosophies and hearing the Donald sound like Ralph Wiggum
OK it's a little like transactional analysis, "I'm OK, You're OK" Sort of: "you might be OK, but I'm REALLY SUPER OK" or more simply, "I'm OK, you're not OK". The Khmer Rouge were kind of the ultimate... "You are all suspected Not OK"... and the only special arbiters of this were "Special" ... mostly.... But people like them are not the real problem most of the time.
We have much more to worry about from those who go pseudo-Randian and neo-feudal whether they are up front with the PR to justify their selfish self-reward levels or skip to just doing it all behind the scenes.
With some small sympathy for Ayn Rand whose work seems mostly to be interpreted in terms of "The Virtue of Selfishness without any consideration of what might be the one reasonable bit in her philosophy:
"...neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself"
Her biggest fans in klepto-business skip the not sacrificing others bit and like Social Darwinists before her who eagerly misused Darwin, justify scooping the cream and much of the milk of enterprise and wealth creation for themselves while ensuring that most of those lower down kept in the dark of how the process has been hijacked. But whether they are loudly proclaiming their specialness via the media or sneaking around like a Cheney buddy they are all Faux special...
Only a functioning healthy Democracy and continual monitoring, transparency and honesty can keep reward systems and incentives balanced and the more out of control egotists from wrecking things periodically as they invariably do... We have to always be wary of those who like George Dubya Bush and his handlers who believed "We are special, so special we can make special rules for ourselves and our supporters....
For me, just imagine the child inside a typical self important person who believes their own press... think of their overall need, message and approach as just an enforced or induced elaboration of the Ralph Wiggum line that they expect us to buy into without question:
I'm Special
Almost all of us once had that feeling of specialness that a child feels before the real world lets us know things are more complicated... We're ALL winners!! But for some they need even demand some immature form of that for the rest of their life... In some sense in a narrow area of their tragic inner self they did not entirely grow up. So, If you can translate the whole extravaganza of famous egotists to just that line... "I'm special", and imagine their inner waif or brat saying "I'm Special" in a Ralph Wiggum voice but without his happy innocent ignorance then you know they have no power to convince you.
Dubya "I'm Special" (God wants me to be president...)
Cheney "I'm Special" (I'm smarter than the other kids...)
The Donald "I'm Special" ....
Adolf "I'm Special"
Any Robber baron of 19th century etc. "I'm Special"
Any Enron, Big oil/energy profiteer or Big Bank/insurance CEO "I'm Special"
Any one of a stupendous number of self promoting celebrities "I'm Special"
Celeb TeeVee preachers "We're Special"
and so many others...
But if you can say about someone, "You ARE special" whether they are someone in business or entertainment or politics or live with you or nearby... and have perfectly good personal reasons based on reality... well that's OK... they may know that they are special in some way too but one reason they are what they are is they let other people say it... and don't try to rub everyone's noses in it... while they just get on with doing what they do as well as they can... and it may be that whatever reward they get is richly deserved and our thanks is second the biggest one of all, knowing that they made a real difference in the world is the main reward for them. Allow them the rewards they've earned. And also ready to smack the knuckles of the grabbers who try and game life for their own semi exclusive benefit...
OK, the short version:
Stick up for yourself but don't be an asshole....