If this site HAD a “No Shit!” section, this would be in it.

NEW YORK - Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people “or auditioning on ‘American Idol.’”

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the “self-esteem movement” that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.

As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of “Frere Jacques” in preschool: “I am special, I am special. Look at me.”

Some analysts have commended today’s young people for increased commitment to volunteer work. But Twenge viewed even this phenomenon skeptically, noting that many high schools require community service and many youths feel pressure to list such endeavors on college applications.

Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies.

“Permissiveness seems to be a component,” he said. “A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for.”

The new report follows a study released by UCLA last month which found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be “very well-off financially.” That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966.

Yet students, while acknowledging some legitimacy to such findings, don’t necessarily accept negative generalizations about their generation.

Hanady Kader, a University of Washington senior, said she worked unpaid last summer helping resettle refugees and considers many of her peers to be civic-minded. But she is dismayed by the competitiveness of some students who seem prematurely focused on career status.

“We’re encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way,” Kader said. “I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships.”

Kari Dalane, a University of Vermont sophomore, says most of her contemporaries are politically active and not overly self-centered.

“People are worried about themselves — but in the sense of where are they’re going to find a place in the world,” she said. “People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn’t mean they’re not concerned about the rest of the world.”

Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. “It would be more depressing if people answered, ‘No, I’m not special.’”

21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey
Satirica rating:	Four stars: Not bad at all; good points, well written. Recommended.
Author:	Patrick O\’Brian
ASIN:	039306025X
Label:	W. W. Norton & Company
Publisher:	W.W. Norton & Company
Date added:	2007-04-26 10:42:11

---

In my CD collection, I have several performances in various media of the Contrapunctus XIV of Johann Sebastian Bach–that great final fugue left uncompleted. At the end of the manuscript, there is, written by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, “Ãœber dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme B A C H im Contrasubject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben.” (”At the point where the composer introduces the name BACH in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died.”)

No more jarringly painful notes nor words exist in Western music.

I am struck by the same sense of loss and despair in reading the manuscript of Patrick O’Brian’s final work, titled simply 21.

For those of you who don’t know, O’Brian is the Anglo-Irish author who wrote the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin series of novels based on the British navy of the early 19th century. The first of the central characters are Jack Aubrey, a lieutenant in the navy and about to receive his first command in book one of the canon, Master and Commander, and progressing through his receiving his pennant as an admiral of the Blue at the conclusion book 20, Blue at the Mizzen. The second character is Stephen Maturin, a physician and natural philosopher, who, in the course of the books, also becomes an intelligence agent for the British. The movie Master and Commander, with Russell Crowe as Jack and Paul Bettany as Doctor Maturn, was based both on the book Master and Commander (#1 in the series, written in 1970) and The Far Side of the World (#10, 1984).

Of especial note is the fact that Jack plays passable violin, and Stephen plays the violoncello–many evenings shipboard in the stories, they retire to the ship’s (usually the HMS Surprise) great cabin and perform “current” works together–Luigi Boccherini, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.

“21″ simply…stops halfway through chapter 3; I purchased the manuscript edition which has the typeset on the left pages and O’Brian’s handwritten manuscript on the right. Oddly, I have a printed version of The Art of Fugue that is published in the same manner.

The writing is absolutely wonderful; arid, sarcastic humor; languid, thoughtful phrases; and enough detail to satisfy even a Thomas Hardy aficionado. If your fiction intake usually consists of Stephen King, Tom Clancy, etc., (good authors, both) then be aware you’ll need to alter your reading habits. O’Brian’s books are not volumes that can be skim-read, but rather require concentration; they are true literature.

If you haven’t read these wonderful gems of English literature, I enthusiastically recommend that you do–but be prepared for a kick to the solar plexus when you get to page 112 in 21, just like that last episode in Contrapunctus XIV.

With Molly no longer with us, Texas, rather than having one lone voice pointing out that the Emperor is, in fact, butt nekkid, now has absolutely no perspective. God help us all.

A few of my favorite incisive and discerning quotes from Ms. Ivins…

On the 2000 campaign:

• “It’s like having Ted Baxter of the old ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ show running for president: Gore has Ted’s manner, and Bush has his brain.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 10/25/2000)

On George W. Bush:

• “If you think his daddy had trouble with ‘the vision thing,’ wait’ll you meet this one.” (Progressive, June 1999)

On Bill Clinton:

• “If left to my own devices, I’d spend all my time pointing out that he’s weaker than bus-station chili.” (Introduction to “You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You”)
• “No one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal.” (”You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You”)

On George Bush Sr.:

• “Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.” (Mother Jones, February 1990)
• “The next person who refers to David Duke as a populist ought to be Bushururued, as they now say in Japan, meaning to have someone puke in your lap.” (Mother Jones, May/June 1992)

On Ronald Reagan:

• “You have to ignore a lot of stuff in order to laugh about Reagan — dead babies and such — but years of practice with the Texas Lege is just what a body needs to get in shape for the concept of Edwin Meese as attorney general. Beer also helps.” (Progressive, March 1986)
• (Responding to the Reagan warning that “The Red Tide will lap at our very borders.”) “These sneaky bastards from Nicaragua — there’s 3 million of ‘em down there, there’s only 16 million Texans, and they’ve got us cornered between the Rio Grande and the North Pole.” (Progressive, May 1986)
• “I have been collecting euphemisms used on television to suggest that our only president is so dumb that if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards.” (Progressive, August 1987)

On Texas:

• “I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram column, March 1, 1992)
• “I love Texas, but it is a nasty old rawhide mother in the way it bears down on the people who have the fewest defenses,” Ivins wrote in September 2002.

On the National Rifle Association:

• “You can count on the NRA to put on a show that makes King Lear look like a master of understatement. I suspect they’re all thwarted thespians: If we could just get them into show business we wouldn’t have to listen to them carry on about how freedom is just another word for a .357 Magnum. (Progressive, August 1999)

On Berkeley, Calif.:

• “If there are hookers in this town, they wear Rockports.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 12, 1997)

On Camille Paglia:

• “Christ! Get this woman a Valium!” (Mother Jones, 1991)

On Jerry Brown:

• “Question: What would happen to Brown’s face if he smiled? Second question: What would it take to make him smile?” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 10, 1992)

On H. Ross Perot:

• “It’s hard to envision a seriously short guy who sounds like a Chihuahua as a charismatic threat to democracy, but it is delicious to watch the thrills of horror running through the Establishment at the mere thought.” (Time, June 1992)

On cancer:

• “I’m sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn’t make you a better person,” she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

On Texas voters:

• “Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?”, in a 2002 column about a California political race.

On Bush Jr.:

• “The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy,” from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

On Pat Buchanan:

• “Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan’s speech; it probably sounded better in the original German,” Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful’s speech to the Republican National Convention.