Social Media Vanity

Does this hyper self-focused media landscape exacerbate our natural tendencies for selfishness to such a degree that it ends up being all consuming?

This was the end of a comment posted by "Javier" after the first blog posted.  I felt it was a powerful enough comment that it warranted not only a response but an entire article focused on the idea.  It is a question I've been thinking about for quite a while...is social media turning us even more selfish then we already tend to be or is it the other way around?  I have a very easy time saying yes- it absolutely guides us toward caring more and more about ourselves- what we're saying, how we're saying it and who is listening.  

Success Coach Jayson Krause, shed his life of the overbearing world we've come to know as Facebook in a crushing blog you can find here. It's definitely a unique perspective on what social media meant to him.  

Another interesting example of social media turning us even more self-absorbed is Nate Freeman's New York Observer piece "Sexless and the City".  It's a pretty interesting take on how young people today seem to be more concerned about what will be on Facebook the next day then they are of actually having a good time when they are out and about on the town.

Both of those are differing examples of how our society is changing due to constantly having to look at ourselves and our own actions...becoming more and more wary and concerned about how what we're doing is being perceived by others.  Social media vanity is a brand new phenomenon that is sure to paint the landscape for at least the next few years until another internet fad is established.

Conversely though, I see the use of social media in a non-selfish way more and more.  How can something be selfish when it allows us to see into parts of the world, in real-time, that were just a couple of years ago only accessible by CNN or the BBC?  When I can post a question about how the rest of the world feels about America's actions in Libya and receive answers from Ireland and Australia within minutes...isn't that use the antithesis of selfish?  Isn't opening ourselves up to more and more opinions, especially from complete strangers, the opposite of selfish behavior?  Yet at the same time...the fact that we can ask a question and have it answered immediately by complete strangers just another form of social media vanity in and of itself?  Because how would you feel if no one answered?

Selfish is a plate best served ________?

So I've been thinking about this topic for quite some time now...selfish.  If I had a dollar for every time a woman in my life called me that I'd, well, at least be able to buy myself a good dinner.  It's not like I didn't warn them.  Throughout my entire athletic career I was a selfish person, I had to be.  My training and my ambition demanded it.  "What time do I have to eat"; "What time do I have to train"; "What can I drink, what can't I drink"; "What time do I have to go to sleep"...and so on and so forth is the way of the high performance athlete, and thus the life of all people closely connected to that athlete.  Oscar Wilde's definition is very intriguing and it says "Selfish is not living the way one wishes to live, it's asking others to live the way one wishes to live."

That is a very important statement- asking/demanding others to live the way I lived is something that I did constantly.  Not worrying about others lives was something else that happened along the way to Olympic Gold.  Not disregarding their lives or not caring, but not letting others lives distract me from my goals.  What really has triggered me to start this blog and eventually want to write a book on this topic was something that happened to me 4-6 years ago.  Six years ago I was dating an amazing woman.  In her house was a book she had slowly been plodding along reading...reading whenever her and I weren't together- which during the off-season was not very much.  The book was titled "Under the Banner of Heaven" and it's a very popular book.  It sat there in her house for quite some time and she told me she had been reading it.  That was about all I knew about the book at the time.

A couple of years later, not too long after we had broken up, I saw the book at a book store.  Curiously, I picked up the book and read the back cover.  Do you know why I read the back cover?  Because I didn't know what the book was about.  It was a book that someone I had dated and loved for over two years had read and I never thought to ask her what it was about, if she was enjoying it or what it made her think of.  I didn't ask not because I didn't care.  Not because I didn't care about her or what she was doing- it just never occurred to me.  It never occurred to me to ask.  It dawned on me at that point what selfish was...and it took me another few years to see how it affected every aspect of my life.

Selfish can be a very, very bad thing.  It can be an impartial thing.  It can also be a wonderful thing.  It can drive people to do simultaneously destructive and productive things. Through this blog, and your comments and feedback, I plan on exploring how selfish affects us all and how it affected the success I had in my life, along with the disappointments.  I want to look at how we define it, why it happens and how others utilize it in their lives; at how selfish drives success and how very selfish people can turn to lives of giving to others and ultimately look at the roots of that giving.

I'm excited for this to be an open forum on the topic and hear what you have to say about what myself and others post.

Ultimately- once we realize we are selfish, is it still ok to act that way?