#celec

I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I’m miserable now!

Dear Wags,

The other day, a stranger tossed off something that clung to the hem of our coat. “Being a victim,” said she, “has a certain attraction that’s difficult to resist.” What a pithy way to sum up the last decade or so of history! We have traded healthy individualism for narcissism, a most unsavory exaltation of the Self. There’s a primal vein of selfishness in all of us, but affluence, technology, and boredom have conspired to make it an irresistible force. We seem willing to trade almost anything — institutions, values, family, community, even sanity— for atomized egoism.