A Few thoughts on Selfie, by Will Storr

Selfie: How We Became so Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us is the latest in a series of thoughtful books by journalist Will Storr. I was attracted to the subject because I think that the rise of the "Imperial Self" has done so much to shape and degrade modern life.

Storr examines the modern self through several lenses, such as Esalen ("be what you are"), Ayn Rand, the self-esteem movement and, of course, the rise of social media culminating, including the selfie itself. He points out that our growing emphasis on self-actualization flies in the face of and denies a central reality of life, namely that we control much less of it than we'd like to think we do, that we are flawed, mortal beings living in a fluid, even unpredictable world and that we therefore need each other.

Of course the emergence of the self has been positive, even liberating in many ways, particularly for members of oppressed groups. But the emphasis on self-actualization has been accompanied by a decline in curiosity about or empathy for people different from ourselves and has commonly led privileged people to discount the idea that privilege entails responsibility. A focus on the self is also behind much of the social isolation that is responsible for high rates of depression and other mental-health problems.