Project Vision 21

I recently read an article on a well-known international news site that said that we live in a time probably without historical precedent in which rules, laws and agreements are no longer respected and in which everything is insatiably focused on achieving more money, more attention, more likes as the goal of life.

In other words, we live in the age of hypernarcissism in which the existence of the other as another like me is not recognized and, in fact, the existence of the other is not recognized. While the individualist says “I am the center of the universe,” the narcissist says “I am the entire universe.”

In that context, social rules, laws and customs, whether paying taxes, respecting traffic signs or holding the door open for someone to enter first, are always solely and exclusively for others, but they never apply to us.

And, for this reason, each one feels that they should no longer participate in a collective reality, creating their own personal “reality”, which has little or nothing in common with the shared reality. This capacity for extreme self-deception (so old that Heraclitus was already talking about it) obviously prevents any genuine and creative dialogue.

For this reason, every encounter with another person becomes a competition, a conflict and, in many cases, a fight. It is not about listening and learning, but about listening to respond, to win an argument. In the absence of humility and respect, each interaction is seen as an opportunity to show oneself as superior to the other person.

At the same time, and as a consequence, practically no one takes responsibility for their actions, much less for their own lives. There is no such thing as being responsible to anything or anyone, and if, due to these twists of fate, someone demands that we be responsible, then we consider it an injustice or persecution, and we look for someone to “blame.”

If I remember correctly, in 2012 a study published by Harvard indicated that in that year the psychological attitude we just described had become the prevalent psychological attitude among adults in the United States, correctly anticipating that in the near future (that is, now ) that attitude would become globalized, as it actually did, with tragic consequences.

In the context of Theory U (a theory of change based on the self-awareness of the change agent), the situation described here is known as “inner absencing”, that is, an existence based on closing one's eyes to reality, seeking someone blaming and (in many cases) using physical or psychological violence to destroy (literally and figuratively) the other.

This social pathology represents a dynamic of destruction and self-destruction (clearly visible to anyone who wants to see it) because it blocks all access to living a life based on reaching our true potential. In other words, we ourselves block the possibility of creating a different future. So much so, that we are collapsing internally without even knowing it.