"The more vile we are ..."

So--as I recently posted on Facebook--I finished reading Wilkie Collins' 1880 novel, Jezebel's Daughter last night. I've been slowly reading my way through his complete novels--and still have nearly a half-dozen to go. (How did he not have writer's cramp!?!)

I will write a bit more about the book and its story in my Sunday post, but for now I want to take a look at something his narrator says very near the end of the book. He is talking about, well, narcissism,* a trait most evident in the title character of the book, a devious woman called Madame Fontaine.

Here's a couple of things the narrator says:

We are all interesting to ourselves--but the more vile we are, the more intensely we are absorbed in ourselves. ...The better we are, the more unselfishly we are interested in others. The worse we are, the more inveterately our interest is more concentrated in ourselves" (223, Pocket Classics edition).

A simple (if not simplistic) formula: Our worth is based on how much we care for others.

Throughout my life I have known people--not a lot, but some--who were absolutely devoted to others--to their health, their education, their well-being, their economic status.

But these people--these charitable souls--must nowadays work in a climate of Me-First--in a world in which, more than ever (it seems), a person's worth has a dollar sign on it. Things and brand names have become marks of our value as human beings.

Our popular culture swarms with the message that who you are is based on what you have. TV and Internet ads are everywhere, and so many of them seem to say: Buy this thing, and you will immediately move up in the world--people will think better of you.

It's a hard message to resist; its ubiquity seems to certify its truth.

But I'm with Wilkie Collins' narrator on this one (and, yes, my failures in this regard are not ... few). The better people among us are those who care deeply about others. It's a trait I look for in my friends, my family, my political leaders, and so many others, including myself.

It's a trait we need to cultivate more assiduously, for our country (our world) is full of people who require our empathy, our support. Our hearts.



*Coincidentally, yesterday's word-of-the-day on dictionary.com was ...

solipsism  noun

Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist; extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.