One of the reasons behind the economic decline of the developing countries is the helpless effort to waste time in pleasing the narcissist people whose ego needs to be fertilized with the “Yes, you are right” attitude of many around them. The world keeps working when we waste our time in satisfying the false ego of such people. The time and energy we generally consume on thinking about others, face-saving, distorting faces and devising ways to please some and ruin others for their entire lives, can easily be invested positively for contributing to the prosperity of the deserving.
In this situation, the distinction between self, inflated self and deflated self; confidence, over confidence and under confidence; needs to be taught. Those who roam about surrounded by an aura of false self are causing multiple social challenges to many. In order to satisfy their false ego, others have to bear what they don't even deserve. Such people with inflated self images are bred on lip service, flattery and added spice to speech. They can listen to what suits their purpose, inflates their false selves even further and sounds sweet to their ears.
Detrimental self involvement and grandiose self images are making us selfishly pursue attention and power; and consequently waste time and energy. Our rosy views of ourselves, if challenged, make us resentful. The problem prevails in all domains of life such as domestic, political, academic and professional etc where we feel good about ourselves without realizing our reality. Some among us use others as a source of attention, a means to climb up the ladder of success or an instrument to exploit those who really want to climb the ladder through legal means.
Social media aggravates this situation. Facebook alone has more than 800 million active users while unsubstantial reports about Twitter report the number of its users approaching one billion. We now are bred on likes, shares and comments. In social and professional scenarios, titles and address forms like “sir”, “madam”, “Dr”, instead of our names, define and please us. The power hierarchy as opposed to what I observed in the USA, for example, is clearly visible in the developing countries. In the US they address people by their names, concentrate on work, generally waste less time on befooling others with flattery and mind their own business. People are confident without taking a dose of flattery every day.
On the contrary, we are collectively obsessed with our own images. We want to see the glimpses of our own reflection in everything we see. We want our children to be exactly like us. Blind acceptance of nonsense brings nothing but disasters and suffering, but we never teach students and children to question and take a firm stand. We teach them to go with the flow, accept nonsense and appreciate it. Creative ideas, in our case, sometimes don’t get implemented solely due to personal power related issues and harm us economically.
Besides having ego problems, we also subjugate to hypocrisy and hollowness. Imagine a mean woman poisoning the mind of a credulous man or vice versa, an incompetent student buttering a teacher, scholars flattering other scholars, a doctor or engineer using professional title on wedding card and consider the kind of generation we are making up. For petty benefits in a transitory world many people waste time of all those whose poor aggressive egos they nourish through their sweet words and white lies. This flattery-business and white lies camouflaged by innocent faces are working as weed, generating insensitivity in general. Hypocrisy has become a norm deeply ingraining in our cultures and sadly bringing harm to the roots of our nations. We also have hollow people who have never learnt to trust their own capabilities and can never muster up courage to distinguish right from wrong and give it a voice because they are too scared. They are even scared of themselves.
The holy books, Sufi literature, books on morality and social criticism emphasize the value of pacifying, suppressing or negating evil selves and avoiding hypocrisy, backbiting and lies; but it is a matter of deep concern that what we have to teach our next generation to refrain from, we ourselves practise as a norm. People should be admired and encouraged for their positive traits, but not for what they can never even be. What is the point of wasting time on people with petty attitudes? Why do we need to get stamped and maneuvered by others’ flattery all the time? Why is there a face behind every face?
Paulo Coelho suggests in By the Side of River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept that people build evil plots in their minds and then want other people to play their part in order for the drama to succeed. It’s our moral duty to point out things that suffocate us or others around us. Why bear silently? Why flatter mice? Why live a dual life? Why believe in nonsense that others pour into our ears? Rumi says:
“The one who has a good friend doesn't need any mirror.”
Our higher mental faculties should be able to distinguish right from wrong. We must strive for bringing peace in others’ lives instead of wasting our and their time by turning their lives into hell. A just analysis and ranking of one's self is what we all need. In a world bred on hypocrisy, it is everyone's responsibility to critically analyze and resist what is false as much as one can plausibly do. True self images need to be awakened in order to bring peace and prosperity.