On a steep, cobbled slope in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, I held on tight to the poles of the runaway rickshaw I was pulling, as it insistently picked up speed and slammed into my bruised back…again. Age thirteen, weighing one hundred and five pounds, I was transporting a sick but very overweight German nun down to the grotto, where long ago, they say, the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared to Saint Bernadette of Lourdes to kick off a brisk business in miracles. Crutches hung all around the grotto, discarded by the formerly sick and crippled. Many had prayed, drunk the holy waters and then stood and walked away with their miracles of healing, leaving assorted medical paraphernalia as their testimony.

I could not be sure if these stories of miracles were really real. I was sure that I, a day girl at an English convent school, was in Lourdes on pilgrimage to do good and be of service. Jesus may or may not have risen from the dead on Easter Sunday long ago, but alive and well, on that slightly overcast day in Lourdes, was proof that legions of people had taken his message and example to heart. The story of Christ had triggered in me, as it had in others, a desire to embody Christ consciousness. To commit to the highest good. To make choices that were noble and not base. To transform, day by day, into a person whose behavior might invite love and respect in place of hollow self regard.

And so I found myself with a bruised spine, like a little human pony, trying to stay ahead of the heavy rickshaw that threatened to tip over and deposit its holy occupant, my sick nun in her expansive gray habit, on a side walk packed with merchants selling souvenirs and trinkets; the worldly competing with the celestial, as always.

I’ve been talking to Sam Harris in my head a lot lately. I’ll be brewing coffee or poaching an egg and find that once again I am giving Sam a mental dressing down. I had hoped that Jordan Peterson and other defenders of faith would give Sam, a famous New Atheist, a good talking to. But the debates always veer off into cerebral gymnastics and run-on sentences filled with fifty dollars words that sound smart but lack common sense and bottomline truth. So Sam, if you’re listening, here’s why you need to stop rubbishing religious faith.

Virtue leads to happiness and peace, and vice leads to suffering and despair. That’s not a moral claim, it’s just the way reality shakes out, due to cause and effect, for most normal people with a conscience. Those who invest in character virtue, (you know the list: patience, kindness, loyalty, fidelity, honesty, diligence, etc.), just wind up happier and more productive than devotees of the seven deadly sins. We probably agree on this. What we don’t agree on is how you get people to embrace virtue and not vice in a way that significantly transforms themselves and their world.

You believe that secular humanists don’t need religion to embrace an innate character ethic and do good in the world. That’s true, but do secular humanists embrace virtue within a deeper ethical framework that is tied or bound up — religio — in a community that works relentlessly and continuously to pursue good as a higher calling? Do they embrace the power of the transcendent and believe in the deeper aspects of psyche, where powerful and sacred archetypes wait to be activated and realized — archetypes that are triggered by the rituals of faith?

We the faithful turn to Buddha and Jesus, not because we reach for supernatural beings out there, but because we yearn to activate the energy of Christ consciousness within ourselves. The books, the rituals, the teachings, the stories, symbols and psychology are just the methods we use to effect this transformation. If you fail to grasp this truth, you don’t understand the journey, nor the map, nor the territory, Sam. Faith as a tool for personal transformation and spiritual alchemy is beyond reason and intellect. And to turn away from this terrain, because it lies beyond the rational, makes you a poor explorer and a shabby map maker. Stay home, read books, pace within the confines of limited self awareness and reason and dig your tunnel deeper.

I am only mildly interested in very good humans, although I do like Ghandi. What I, like many other seekers, am looking for is a concept of supreme goodness, the highest and best good. Like Mr. Voltaire said, “If God didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.” Many of us aspire not to human goodness, but to unattainable, divine perfection as an ideal. For inspiration, we need something far beyond the limitations of what ordinary humanity has to offer.

We seek a divine master and teachings that live across time and space, even if they represent abstraction or imagination, especially if they trigger imagination. We embrace the discipline that comes with the commitment to ascending on the path to highest goodness. We make it sacred and not mundane, because we want to elevate its importance in our lives. It’s not enough to have a commitment to a human interpretation of goodness and fair play. That’s not powerful enough. It won’t make you other centered. It’s unlikely to correct your selfish habits and careless behavior. It won’t give you a sense of urgency about the need to heal the world, to rescue others from hell realms. You won’t be moved to cart a nun, who is double your weight, to a holy place where she might access a deeper and more mysterious key to healing than she can find in a hospital run by messy mortals.

People of faith devote their lives to community hospitals, schools, shelters, food banks, day care and sanctuaries of hope and healing. Before you wipe away the religion that undergirds them, show me what will replace them. Show me secular humanists whose raison d’etre is doing good in the world as a higher calling. Don’t point to the abstraction of government or utopian schemes. Show me atheists who, pound for pound, can compete in number and scale of operations with foot soldiers in an army who are fueled by deep faith in a higher power.

True, this higher power eludes scientific and rational probing, but what it does inspire makes all the difference in the world. Before you mock it into oblivion as just a superstitious belief in sky magic, and use clever words to chase it away, hosing it from culture, I want you and your cohort to hand me a blank check. When your skepticism has won the day. When the churches and temples stand quiet and empty. When the faith-based centers of succor are unmanned and unable to aid the suffering, then the bill will come due to you and yours, and I want to know how you will ever pay it.

As a girl and practicing Catholic, I threw myself into November charities, doing as much good as possible for others. I signed up for youth work and pilgrimages with the sick. I sacrificed for Lent, and when I prayed, it was for others. So much of that is behind me now. Those old ways and commitments no longer drive me to kindness and goodness. I’ve forgotten how to imitate the sacrifice of a Jesus in the story of the crucifixion, when faith itself died on the cross. “Abba, Father, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus wept, until faith returned again a hundred fold on Easter Sunday. A parable about how to give until it hurts, until a child’s spine is bruised by the load it pulls, but its heart and soul are swollen and strong.

Today, I’m a lot like Sam, a clever, self-satisfied person who thinks my rational sense of worldly goodness and my efforts to be better are enough. They aren’t.

You don’t have to go too far back in the Way Back Machine to find well-heeled folks who believed their names should appear in print only three times to mark birth, marriage, and death. They held that making headlines signaled wrong doing or an unseemly thirst for attention. Braggadocio was a no-no, and the vulgar “I” and “me” were frowned on in conversation. Listening to President George H. Bush’s interviews and speeches from the 1980s reveals his tortured efforts to avoid the “I” word at all costs. But then along came Oprah, and we went from “never say I” to “It’s all about me.”

Of course, spreading solipsism among the masses wasn’t all Oprah’s doing. Significant cultural shifts, including the ascendency of media and celebrity, were well under way before Oprah popped up big style in the 1980s. But she was a clear bell weather and catalyst. She revealed to what extent narcissism was becoming mainstream and spreading like a virus. And she led a movement to accelerate it, under the guise of self-improvement for millions of woman, who needed a boost, as they absorbed the gut punches that came from changing gender roles, the growing need for two-income families, the pain of divorce, single-parent homes, middle-aged dating, and other late-century misadventures.

Oprah’s early shows were unabashedly about victimhood, because if it bleeds it leads, and drama spells ratings gold: “Men who can’t love and the women who love them.” “How I escaped the KKK.” “The day I learned my husband was gay.” “I left my wife for my sexy student.” But as Oprah and her “bouncin’ and behavin’ hair” evolved, so did her content. Out went low-rent suffering, and in came uplifting “spiritual growth” — a steady diet of “my favorite things”, healthy eating, and living your best life. Oprah gave a global audience of mostly women permission to take their focus and concern off others, where religion and society had habitually placed them. Instead, the talk show host and celebrity confidante created appointment television and encouraged women to focus on little old, depleted “me”. Me time. Yes, day by day, the concept of “me” grew more important. And to be fair, celebrity-styled self-help can come in handy, until that moment when, like in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the scheme spins out of control and a flood ensues.

Made in Oprah’s America

If it’s not entirely fair, it is all too easy to reach for Oprah when exploring the rise of narcissism, if only because she was ubiquitous for decades. On every TV screen. At every newsstand. In every award show — fighting an endless weight battle of fat, thin, and fat again. (Fat Oprah allegedly drew better ratings). A growing army of single mothers in the US, who today head 70% of African American homes and 40% of white, comforted themselves with Lady O and occasional aromatherapy. Well-off women in Manhattan, and factory workers in Alabama, found a focus on self and on a personal narrative — my life, my story, my identity — to fill the painful donut hole in the center of their lives. Who can blame them? For too many, a lonely, isolated existence of grind, bills, kids, and exhaustion, with little familial support, unravelling community fabric, and few true connections, can be deadening. Personal fix-up projects, where I get to rehab myself and my bathroom, in hopes of a better life, are seductive. Couple this with the allure of a mesmerizing parade of celebrity — it’s good to be Jen, Tina, Brad, Angelina, or Kobe — and we clearly see the noxious beginnings of identity project as life’s purpose.

Cultivating the right self-image begins to take precedence over authentic self. Style over substance. Fiction over fact. Illusion over reality. Yes, countless Boomer and GenX mothers, both married and single, raised Millennial kids in a growing atmosphere of unhealthy self-regard and a cult of personality. In a cozy Oprah interview with pop culture icon Lady Gaga and her mother, Gaga gushes about mommy-and-me time spent watching Oprah, as she was growing up, and the “Gratitude Journal” that Oprah inspired devotees to keep. Early cues that understanding privilege and a commitment to social justice are indispensable in any well-constructed identity project. Chicken or egg? Which comes first? A consumer society’s thirst for a contrived life of appearances over a disappointing real one, or Oprah, who merely catered to the need? It doesn’t matter. It was simply the newest chapter in the story of evolution, and the undulations of culture. Arguably, Oprah was just in the right place at the right time with camera, mic, and spotlight to cash in on the shift.

In his 1989 best-selling book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” author Stephen R. Covey drew distinctions between good character and engaging personality. The Character Ethic, Covey argued, taught that principles and qualities, such as integrity, humility, fidelity temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, and modesty were essential to effective living. His goal, he said, was to restore a flagging Character Ethic to personal leadership and the community at large. He largely failed. By the mid 2000s, a widespread commitment to character, and the duty of institutions to develop it, was pretty much on life support, giving way to the exploding power of pop culture and reality TV, where souped-up real people headed to get famous.

Boosting The Puny Me with We

If media trends and personalities helped spawn the identity project, then technology was a force multiplier in spreading and strengthening it. Today’s young, long before they have the chance to do anything, are under pressure to be somebody, at least on social media.

I am important, they are taught early, at the center of things. But the little “me” starts off puny. Let’s face it, a robust “me” has had to learn, dare and accomplish things, in order to develop into an individual with authentic power, on an expanding mission to achieve more of all that is good.

No worries, a growing cafeteria-style menu of identity groups, tribes, politics, and social justice projects await the young, on campuses and in broader culture, to help round out their image and sense of self: Third Wave Feminism, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, DACA, #NeverAgain, Trans, TERFs, SJWs, Antifa, Alt-Right, Kekistanis, LGBQT, Rape Culture, Climate Change, BDS, Intersectionality. These movements are backed and elevated by a phalanx of writers, activists, politicians, and learning centers, and distributed across platforms and devices that consume attention and gobble up focus, energy, and precious time. Big money and effort are invested in growing membership in the new identity clubs that increasingly shape who people are, how they think, what they do, and how they vote. The little “me” is bolstered by the loud and rowdy “we” of identity politics. It’s not who you are as an individual, but which group you identify with that counts.

Where’s the harm? It’s the perennial mission of youth to be idealistic, disruptive, transgressive bomb throwers and noise makers. But these activities usually stand in contrast to more stable and long-standing institutions and social moeurs, solid family units, principled educators, and sane adults. As young people bounce off the walls in search of meaning, it is the job of the grown-ups to hold steady, passing on wisdom, sharing important traditions, carrying forward what is still worth having. In the current era, this balancing energy seems strangely absent, as though the romper room has taken over the house. The tower of babel seems higher, the cacophony louder, the bull crap deeper, the chaos more widespread and unmanageable.

And then there is unprecedented opportunity for personal exposure and attention grabbing. “You get a masthead. You get a masthead. You all get a masthead.” The spirit of Oprah’s largesse continues to grant unearned privileges and goodies to entitled new generations hungry for the limelight. Attention junkies are desperate to be seen and heard, to be somebody, even though they may have done nothing yet to earn it. A digital revolution, social media, and the ballooning blogosphere have given all and sundry a platform to bleat about half-baked nonsense — endless prattle that, in another time, would not escape the confines of a basement slumber party. With roller rinks, discotheques, and youth clubs practically obsolete, and congregating on street corners now discouraged by too many hyper-vigilant parents, the Internet is where youth go to hang out, preen and talk smack.

Of course, self-importance and experiments with identity exist in every generation. Maybe it seems more disconcerting now because adolescence is extending, for far too many, too far into adulthood. Over-sharing often reveals failure to launch, while tech tools give the unworthy authority and access they previously did not have. And so we watch the first digital generations come of age online, complete with the selfies, sexting, poor judgement, and intemperate speech that will haunt them for years to come.

Tired of “Me” Yet?

A recent article hypothesized that writer, lecturer, and author Jordan Peterson is to contemporary young men what Oprah was once to women, casting both as dispensers of self-help to the masses. I balked. After all, Oprah is a mega media star, and Peterson is an esteemed educator and licensed clinical psychologist. He uses proven therapy to cure suffering in the real world, not in TV land. But on reflection, perhaps the pair, Oprah and Peterson, do belong together, if only because they bookend the very strange era of “me.” Baby Boomers have earned the “Me Generation” label for reasons spelled out across acres of commentary. And Oprah and her ilk may represent the summit of “me” disease within the Me Generation and their offspring. Boomer and GenX Parents have passed on the virus to their young. But their kids lack the antibodies and protections that come with growing up in another time, when it wasn’t all about “me,” when there was often a calling to live for others.

In the 1993 Lois Lowry book “The Giver”, the Receiver of Memory is the character who holds memories from a time before the age of Sameness descended upon the book’s dystopian society. He exists to transmit wisdom to a community that no longer remembers the past. Like a modern-day Receiver of Memory, Dr. Peterson has visited pop culture with his maps of meaning, and rules for life, to help those who need them journey beyond the confines of “me” to find purpose in responsibly caring for self and others. Yes, it’s time to be less about “me” and more about “you.” Maybe the overwhelmingly positive response to Peterson, by young and not so young alike, represents the novelty of moving away from the sickening effects of too much wrong-headed self-involvement. Could it be we are ready for the antidote to the creeping narcissism that has taken root and sickened the culture?

The desire for social justice and progress is authentic and heartfelt in most, especially in the young. But true justice can’t be achieved with merely posing and posturing, performative displays, propaganda, slogans, and narcissistic rage. Put down the placard and clean up your room, Bucko. Peterson has come to the hangout spaces on Twitter and YouTube, the communal basement, to tell its occupants to get their acts together. There are ways that they really can help, he says. If they are serious, he is ready with a prescription. But his students must first relinquish the selfish pursuit of rights and happiness, because life is suffering and sacrifice. A truth many once knew, but perhaps, growing distracted, forgot.

It takes time and effort, Peterson admonishes, to become someone who can solve complex problems versus merely protest them. So turn your efforts to mastering hierarchies of competence that offer the chance for genuine accomplishment. Take aim at true excellence. When you’ve advanced a couple rungs up the ladder of progress, something wonderful begins to happen: self-respect starts to fill the hole that a culture of me, me, me, which mistakes self-indulgence for self-esteem, never could. When the student is ready the teacher appears, and sometimes he can actually help.

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