PREAMBULE: A case for degeneration and regeneration

In the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency, we examine on a micro and macro level the context in which an extreme narcissist has been able to rise to power.

We are living in “the Pivotal Age”, facing a fork in the road as a society. As the realest reality show in history unfolds, we look at how this catalyst moment has been in the making for several decades through economic policy, technological advancements, the invention of the Internet and social media. 

With long-lasting choices to make, society faces a future pulled between Narcissism and Empathy. And a possible new world order. This affects our everyday lives and impacts our ability to create, innovate, the way we engage with products and brands, and each other. 

How did we get here? My op-ed answers this question in five stages:

1. NARCISSISM AT A MICRO LEVEL

2. THE TIPPING POINT

3. NARCISSISM AT A MACRO LEVEL

4. THE FIGHT FOR EMPATHY

5. EMPATHY AS A CORNERSTONE FOR DESIGN & INNOVATION

PART I - Narcissism at a micro level

To understand the global rise of the Narcissist, we start at the single human level. There is a place in society for a healthy dose of narcissism. The “healthy narcissist” possesses a realistic amount of self-esteem and a balanced emotional life.

However, Narcissism to a greater extent is diagnosed as a personality disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. A Narcissist lacks interest in the needs of others, and respect for their dignity and integrity. “But behind this mask of ultra confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism” to quote Google's definition.

The social psychologist Erich Fromm in his 1957 international bestseller “The Art of Loving” explains:

In 1964 he went on to coin the term "malignant narcissism", described as a severe mental illness representing the height of evil. He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity". 

Narcissism is also described by Edith Weigert in her 1967 book “The Courage to Love" as a "regressive escape from frustration by distortion and denial of reality". 

More recently the term “narcissistic abuse” has made its way into psychology and self-help culture to describe a destructive dynamic between two adults. When the victim realises the true nature of the relationship and stands up, gaslighting by the narcissist occurs, very similar to the numerous accusations and Twitter rants Trump has displayed. Any slight criticism of the Narcissist often triggers acts of emotional and/ or physical violence and there are never feelings of remorse, instead, they believe themselves to be the victim. 

Donald Trump is indeed a beautiful specimen of narcissism. However he is in fact not that special (a potential disappointment to him one might argue). 

Narcissistic personality disorder is on the increase and now affecting us at a macro level in ways that threaten not individuals, but entire nations.

As a Greek myth, Narcissus was obsessed not with himself but with his reflection, much alike Kim Kardashian and the selfie obsession she has led the world into. I compare the Kardashians to Donald Trump not in their political importance but in their powerful global impact as Reality TV stars, elevated by the Media to the point of becoming heads of state.

The White House has become a Soap Opera filled with scandal, rivalry and controversy. A frenzied theatre as predicted by the 1979 landmark case study by social critic Christopher Lasch, “The Culture of Narcissism”, which described the rise of individual self-involvement and politics with the media and celebrity. 

PART II - The tipping point

Going back in history as far as Plato, social critics, philosophers, historians and presidents have warned of a time when democracy would run the risk of degenerating from the rise of egotism. 

In the BBC's News Night piece "What can Plato teach us about Trump?', Plato is quoted from the first book ever published on politics "Plato's Republic" where he predicted tyranny would probably be established out of no other regime than democracy.

An overwhelming amount of choice and equal rights in society would lead to polarity and would pave the way for a tyrannic, elitist yet approachable leader. This is where psychology on a macro level mirrors the single individual. People's political beliefs are driven by their psychological needs.

Narcissism and anxiety are intricately linked in that they both obsess over control or fear the loss of it. Psychologist and holocaust survivor Arie Kruglanski in the New York Times video "The Price of Certainty" explains world views have nothing to do with information and facts. They have everything to do with our craving for certainty. He coined this need for certainty as "cognitive closure" in 1989. 

According to Kruglanski, we crave certainty from being constantly faced with making decisions and the challenges they can cause. This in fact is fine and part of every day life, however, during times of great uncertainty the human psyche needs to have definite answers. The mind tricks us into believing we have the truth which can lead to dangerous extremes. Both the need for certainty and underpinning anxiety seek refuge in the false exhibits of confidence which are the hallmarks of narcissism.

The problem is we are currently living in a time of extreme uncertainty amplified by the confusion fuelled by social media, the press and the rise of fake news. When a society is afraid it tends to lean towards an extremist ideology that promotes oversimplifying problems and solutions. Liberals are not exempt and can also be guilty of extreme intolerance and polarisation. Arie Kruglanski encourages us to "be suspicious of our own sense of righteousness". 

It is undeniable that certainty is necessary for us to act and fight when necessary. At times there is no space for ambiguity, indecision, shades of grey. However how do we differentiate extremism and fighting for justice? 

The problem with Narcissism is that it often leads to twisting the truth. When critical and factual information is ignored, dismissed, we enter a very dangerous dynamic as a society.  In Noam Chomsky's documentary "Requiem For The American Dream", the philosopher and cognitive scientist states a society thrives when normal human instincts of solidarity, sympathy and mutual support are the drivers.

I believe Jimmy Carter in his iconic presidential speech " The Crisis  of Confidence" identified the problem at its core as not only a rise in egotism, but in the killer disease of American society: materialism. He warned of the great dangers of a society where self interest was king and took advantage of others through personal gains and materialism. A society where "the measure of our person was based on what we own and not our beliefs and values".

The social critic Christopher Lasch mentioned earlier was one of his key advisors on the speech, also believed that post World War II America had produced a personality type consistent with clinical definitions of "pathological narcissism" located in the rise of radical American political movements, which in his time ranged from The Weather underground in the 1960s to the rise of spiritual cults in the 1970s. 

Mass or group movements have a voice in democracy. And there is no doubt with the rise of social media there has been a heightened sense that we all have a voice, all the time, all day and that voice is also visual. Which leads us to the next tipping point in the 1990s with the creation of the internet and social media. 

PART III - Narcissism at a macro level

There is no denying that social media has empowered mass democratic protest and become an unprecedented tool for spreading information across activist organisations, rallying support and building mass movements from the Arab Spring in 2010 to today's demonstrations such as the Women's march in January 2017.

This is a tool which has turned local social protest to instantly global in a matter of hours, days. Everyone has a voice and is empowered. It is a truly incredible fact of the Internet age. 

However, the internet and social media have fuelled the all reigning "I", "Me Myself and I", causing our egos to get bigger and bigger. A 2010 study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the widely used test “Narcissistic Personality Inventory”, had increased by more than half since the early 1980s, to 30 percent.

In their book “Narcissism Epidemic", psychology professors Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell show that narcissism since the 1980s has increased as much as obesity. The constant growth and explosion of social networking has provided narcissists with the tools to expand their reach from Facebook to Twitter, Snapchat to Instagram. At Western Illinois University, researchers measured two socially disruptive aspects of narcissistic personalities: 1) grandiose exhibitionism, 2) entitlement/exploitativeness. Those who had high scores on grandiose exhibitionism tended to amass more friends on Facebook. 

Elias Aboujaoude, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, notes that our ability to tailor the internet experience to our every need is making us more self-absorbed as we can now have our most minor "wants" accommodated by apps and software. It's not that important to have "real human contact", so much so that even our dating life can now be managed by apps who write to potential suitors for us. 

Narcissists are creating new "self-love standards". Every day people are now caught up in popularity contests and experience anxieties; with some reporting depression due to the pressures of the uber-connected life and the fear of missing out. There is even a "life envy" for those who seem to have the perfect life. - 

In the Greek myth, Narcissus falls in love not with himself, but with his reflection. In the modern version, Narcissus falls in love with his own Instagram feed, even destroyed by the ranking system it involves, much like Black Mirror’s disturbingly plausible sci-fi episode “Nosedive”. In a future entirely controlled by how people rate others on social media, a woman tries to keep her "score" high and suffers a complete loss of connection with reality (going back to the idea of grandiosity in narcissism).

Kenzo’s 7-minute film “The Realest Real” billed as "a humorous exploration of the fickle and instant world of the internet" pokes fun at the unsurmountable amount of data we leave behind and makes a highly designed and acerbic comment on how social media is responsible for today's blurring of reality and fiction, and the idea of how well you know someone.

Everyone feels intimately involved with everyone's life, from your sister to the uber-famous, never mind mentioning the Kardashian's Snapchat. The recent Instagram post of Beyonce announcing her second pregnancy, portrayed as a religious icon, broke the internet and had the world in a trance with joy, leaving millions of comments, obsessed with her life and wanting more. And now "life's one long application," as Mahershala Ali says in the "Realest Real", pointing to a massive wall of floor-to-ceiling paper stacks filled with every email, tweet, like and comment main character Carrie Harrier's ever posted.

Artist Harm Van Dem Dorpel post-Internet Age sculptures "Assemblages" also explore and question our lives left in a collage of social media feeds, personal websites, pages and web surfing, with us being completely oblivious to the trail of content we leave behind us. The New Portraits Exhibition by Richard Prince at the Gagosian Gallery also subverted the idea of our digital self by him re-appropriating Instagram selfies unbeknownst to people (and later on being sued for it). 

How many comments, likes, and follows a day? How many to feel fulfilled? And where does this leave our human and physical interactions? We are becoming de-sensitised and training our brains to disconnect from the physical world. How many of us witness couples, or groups of friends not speaking, instead locked to their phone screen? Brands are becoming social commentators on this loss of human contact with Ray Ban in their campaign "It Takes Courage" portraying two people engaging with each other in a train car packed with humans eyes glued to their smartphones, looking much like robots. 

Are we more interested in the digital image we project online of ourselves than the person sitting across from us? Emojis, happy selfies, it’s easy to fake one’s happiness, but the main consequence of narcissism is the loss of empathy, and it seems we are doing just that as a society by helping to the top of our admiration poll leaders who build their success on self-obsession. 

There is however the ying to this yang, no darkness without light as we see a counter-reaction in society on a global level seeking equality and empathy. 

PART IV - The fight for empathy

The cast of "Stranger Things" at the Screen Actors Guild Award in their acceptance speech valiantly vowed to fight for empathy. She became the person of interest who needs to be saved. The group sitting on the Grammy's stage merged their fictional super hero qualities with their real life selves, following in the footsteps of many in the creative and entertainment industries fighting for "Empathy".

Iconic physicist and author of "A Brief History of Time: Stephen Hawkins has stated Humanity's future depends on empathy". In his view the loss of empathy is a key threat to the future of humankind, bigger than AI, war or environmental disasters. 

Stephen Hawking, the man responsible for the game-changing book “A Brief History Of Time”, has spoken out about what he thinks will be the downfall of the human race. This is from Huffington Post:

Hawking chose aggression and warned that a nuclear war could end civilization and possibly the human race and states: "We need to replace aggression with empathy, which brings us together in a peaceful loving state.”

This is the new cause and signals the rebellion against narcissism. At risk of becoming the new age of political correctness, this fight for compassion comes after many are asking themselves in shock: how did we get here? 

Dave Chapelle reminding us “we've elected an Internet troll as our president” in his Saturday Night Live stand up monologue manages to do so with humour. Others less as Meryl Streep famously pointed out in her Golden Globes speech.

So how did spreading fear, shaming others, disputing facts, glorifying the self, the self interests and dishonest conflicts of interests become the norm? As those paradigms shift and polarised groups rise, some key values have been taken for granted. 

A place where empathy became eroded was in the virtual digital space, where many act unrestrained with delusions of grandeur, viciousness, impulsivity which results in infantile behaviour not only rising to the surface but remaining unchecked. Just as members of a mob get swept along by others' emotions, the same thing can happen to us when we get swept up in a virtual Internet mob.

Did the internet kill empathy? What if the next generation(s) lack empathy? Are we breeding narcissists in our social media bragging culture?

We are replacing the real conversation between people with social media codes of conduct, rules of the "dos" and "dont's" as explained in the New York Times article "Rules for Social Media, Created by Kids" by Devorah Heisner. Truth be told these rules now affect adults too. Listing the many unspoken rules which can make teenagers feel popular or devastated, she quotes a study by researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles where it was discovered that the pleasure centers in teenagers’ brains respond to getting “likes” on Instagram exactly as they do with thoughts of sex.

Could it be that likes will be more rewarding than physical contact? Teens and children can be harsh. But when it comes to them living with people who have different views on how to use social media and share their lives, what role does teaching empathy to the younger generation have?

Where is the empathy when people's most random acts or misfortunes are on display on YouTube, Facebook etc and the mass become the judge and the redeemer, the commentator, the vigilante. With no sense of responsibility for this person's actual life and the unseen scars this will leave. The trail of impact on their privacy, social and personal lives which can have devastating effects. 

In an earlier time we might have been instructed to look away or give the person privacy. No more. We click and click and click. Because there is no physical connection.

We can't see that every click is a cruel punch in the face.

Have our brains become so desensitised by a 24/7, all-you-can-eat diet of flickering images that we've lost all perspective on appropriateness and compassion when another human's privacy is at stake? Have we become detached voyeurs on a mass level?

According to the most recent findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 8- to 18-year-olds on average spend 11½ hours a day using their technology. Their brains have become "wired" to use their tech gadgets effectively in order to multi-task. Many people are desensitising their neural circuits to the horrors they see, while not getting much, if any, off-line training in empathic skills. We are under-estimating the devastating effects this is having on our society. And it impacts all ages. 

In a 2002 study published in Brain and Cognition, Robert McGivern and co-workers found that adolescents struggle with the ability to recognize another person's emotions. The teenage volunteers in their study had particular difficulty identifying specific emotions expressed by another person's face.

These young people were at an age when they are still developing the capacity for empathy, the ability to understand another person's emotional point of view. In many ways, the young teenage brain is non-empathic. The concern is that this heightened length of time on screens interferes with young people's learning and development of basic empathy skills, such as maintaining eye contact or noticing subtle nonverbal cues during a conversation.

In a 2007 study of 197 students aged 17 to 23 years, participants were asked to quickly identify the emotional expression of a face as it rapidly morphed from neutral to an angry or happy face. Happy faces were identified faster than angry faces, but when the volunteers played a violent video game before the facial recognition task, they were much slower to recognize the happy facial expression.

What can we do to help prevent this desensitisation to any image from affecting the way we react to other people's pain or difficulties? Should we delete these images? Do they have a purpose of information, as we saw with the widespread images of the Vietnam war conflict and how that contributed to ending the conflict due to growing outrage?

Curiosity is human and it is the fuel to what I do every day as a trend researcher, our brains seek to be stimulated by the "New". Empathy is human too and it is what defines humanity as our hearts seek to be connected by the sense of "Understanding". This disconnection from emotion is a deadly mechanism.

When we lose sight of compassion and empathy, we are losing touch with what it means to be human, and reality and fall much easier prey to Narcissism and the bully behaviour it fosters.

We have a responsibility to examine our widespread bullying behaviour on social media and take responsibility when faced with an American president both in control of Nuclear codes and an uncontrollable Twitter thumb. It is not that different from the growth of "Internet Shaming and the outrage machine" by the New York Times. 

Looking the other way at cyber bullying but ranting against Donald Trump is hypocritical. There is a dangerous disconnect between people and their words. But Language is everything, language forms our brains and thinking, language is freedom, language is power. And language can be the most lethal weapon. Cyber bullying has become a major problem in today’s social-media based culture, affecting a reported 43% of teens aged 13 to 17.

In the age of "You Can’t See Me So…" there is cowardice. Technology is not truly to blame, cruelty and destruction have also formed the world we live in for thousands of years. However technology is shaping things in a whole new way, possibly more insidious. - 

In an article published on News.com titled “Troll Psychology: Why People Are So Mean on the Internet” author Amanda Gardener explains the potential reason why online cruelty has become so common: “The majority of communication is non-verbal, composed of body language, eye contact, speech tone and language patterns. Without this information to help us process and categorize information, our minds are left to sort through the uncertain. And, thanks to a leftover prehistoric penchant for fight or flight, being unsure about another person’s intent often creates a negative reaction to a perceived threat."

In this culture where we lack empathy and are overloaded with images which include marketing and constant advertising, we are losing the ability to emotionally connect with people. And on a business level, we are becoming harder targets for brands as our ability to connect dwindles.

As a result, brands are desperately trying to connect with us and a company that can provide success in answering this conundrum holds the holy grail. How many workshops, and marketing articles on how to” authentically connect with your consumer”? 

In Fashion, we live for the drama, the storytelling, the theatricality. But what emotion is there to conjure and wake up when the consumer is jaded? Not only jaded by the overloading of products on the floor and sameness but jaded by their own lack of human connection and their sole connection with a “smart” electronic device.

This lack of consumer enthusiasm is obviously connected to the current economic and political climate, but one can say brands have run out of options to connect with their end user’s short attention span and fickleness. In the attention economy, the same growing Narcissism which fuels the worship of our self-image, is also the one that creates a desensitized consumer. 

In which case one could argue empathy is not only necessary for humankind, it is necessary for a healthy economy which thrives on the end user’s attention, understanding, and appreciation. Empathy also drives good design and ultimately innovation. 

PART V - Empathy as a driver for innovation

Empathy has and can continue to revolutionise design.

As creative thinkers whether we are fashion designers, app developers, entrepreneurs, at some point in our idea generation process we have to take the time to carry out end-user research. We have to absorb the key fact we are not solely creating something to reflect our own needs but have to put ourselves into the "shoes" of the other to create a successful product. Even if it means creating something the end user doesn't know they need yet. We are thinking for them, with them, ahead of them and this is a key part of our decision-making processes.

The only way this works is by calling upon our inner sense of empathy and understanding what the other is feeling. In an interview with UX Matters, Bas Raijmakers, Daniel Szuc, Geke van DIjk, and Jo Wong state that designers can use several exercises to increase their empathic understanding of users and the conditions in which they operate with the aim of:

1. increasing open-mindedness

2. reducing bias

3. collaborating with research participants

4. accepting what you see and hear. The latter is not always so easy, but it is part of the process. 

The purpose of empathic design, to say it as nicely as possibly, is also to exploit the end user's capabilities. And of course the ultimate goal is to accommodate, improve their experience by creating something tailored around their explicit and implicit needs.

So how does empathy relate to design? In 12 acts of kindness, a project led by designers Jesica Walsh (co-founder of Sagmeister and Walsh) and Anthony Goodman, a 12-step experiment was created to confront apathy and selfishness and attempt to "open their hearts, eyes and minds to become kinder, more empathetic people."

This experiment could seem naive or utopian, but in uncertain times, a counterculture often emerges seeking out those utopian ideals. And utopia seeped into real needs then becomes practicality and necessity. Very much the way organic vegetable lovers were once seen as hippies when now most brands are jumping on the sustainability train not only as part of marketing strategy, but as a necessity and desire to do what's right. 

In the video "The Power of Outrospection", Roman Krznaric explains how we can help drive social change by stepping outside ourselves. He is an internationally renowned expert on empathy and author of 'Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution' and a founding faculty member of The School of Life as well as the world's first digital Empathy Library.

Empathy is the starting point to innovation. Innovation can start with introspection but it is through outrospection that a revolutionary idea will come to life.

Revolutionary ideas often come from the single point of a person's mind and its unique maturation. However, it is the collaboration, a sense of human values that brings revolutionary products to life. Design thinking is a human-centred methodology for generating creativity and solving complex problems. Empathy is the backbone of this process. 

In the design thinking process, before you jump to solutions led by the understanding of others for example “we need a mobile app that brings” or “we need to redesign our shopping experience in our online store” first you start with building empathy for the people for whom you are designing. You engage with, observe and understand people's needs and what is important to them before you even formulate your end solution.

The added challenge can come when designing for market research rather than individual needs. Or making choices for an institution. Does answering the needs of a particular end user profile lead to a better outcome for all? This is where empathy as part of design thinking is different from focus groups. In the latter the goal is on assessing quantifiable results across a demographic. Design thinking is different because is not a process for developing for a mass market of average users.

In design thinking, empathy is the starting point of the process for innovation which starts with the needs of individuals as they often lead to greater and broader insights and inspiration.

Fashion (much later than app developers and UX designers) seems to be catching on to empathic design. Multimedia artist Julian Klincewicz uses the catwalk to express love and empathy. His show at the San Diego Art Institute was cast with his friends, his mother, teachers from school, many personal connections as part of his project "Hey, I Like You". The art project celebrates empathy and relationships between people and objects. The collection with has messages such as "Careful How To Bare Your Soul" shows that clothes are tokens of affection, they represent our emotions and memories. They also symbolise our need for human connection. 

CONCLUSION: a case for necessity 

Michele Borba, an educational psychologist and author of "Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our-All-About-Me World" argues that the rise of narcissism and loss of empathy are key reasons for why nearly a third of college students are depressed and mental health problems among the young are on the rise.

Denmark, the land of the happiest people in the world and of the sought-after practice of Hygge takes empathy so seriously they are creating weekly empathy-building classes as part the national curriculum for all kids aged 6 to 16. “Together, the class tries to respect all aspects and angles and together find a solution,” says Iben Sandahl, co-author of "The Danish Way of Parenting—What the happiest people in the world know about raising confident, capable kids". 

Happiness is a complex concept. Preaching about the benefits of empathy as the new politically correct must CAN BE a risky PATH to OVER generalisation and simplification.

Empathy is not an inherent trait. Children can be, to put it frankly, cruel and harsh. To be overprotected is not necessarily a good thing. But to step out of our own personal spheres is key. At this point in time, does that start with turning off our smart phones? 

To be considerate of others, our planet, our objects could be said to be a choice. But is it truly?

We now face some harsh realities, direct consequences of our thirst for personal betterment and material satisfactions regardless of the cost. Those realities come in the form of climate change, overconsumption, income disparity and the rise of the narcissistic leader. This leader could have a fake tan and a coiffe, but in truth he/she is in all of us. In our every day we have become more concerned with our digital selves than our interactions with the natural flow of life, the earth and being human. 

To every paradigm there is a paradox and the recent rise in socio-political activism, in conscious and responsible design is a direct consequence of the alarm bells ringing around and within us.

We create the norm in every little step we take, word we utter, button we click. And this norm cannot be the insidious, insecure and insipid climate of Narcissism which has taken over. What will it be? It is up for the taking/ making. The question then is what would we like to be remembered by as a generation?

| By Geraldine Wharry