Thought Snack: The Empty Self Is Infantile
"The empty self is infantile.”
It is widely recognized that adolescent personality traits are staying with people longer today than in earlier generations, sometimes continuing to manifest themselves into the late thirties. Created by a culture filled with pop psychology, schools, and media that usurp parental authority, and television ads that seem to treat everyone as a teenager, the infantile part of the empty self needs instant gratification, comfort, and soothing. The infantile person is controlled by cravings and constantly seeks to be filled with and made whole by food, entertainment, and consumer goods. Such a person is preoccupied with sex, physical appearance, and body image. He or she tends to live by feelings and experiences. For the infantile personality type, pain, endurance, hard work, and delayed gratification are anathema. Pleasure is all that matters, and it had better be immediate. Boredom is the greatest evil; amusement, the greatest good."
-- Excerpt from The Lost Virtue of Happiness by J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler.
