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Narrative Knowing 2

Introduction

I will divide the analysis into four parts: my biography, the analysis for my physical self, the analysis for my digital self, and the analysis for my political self. The physical self will primarily use the article written by Singh (n.d.) as the underlying work for my analysis, while the digital self will mainly depend on the study Barry et al. (2017) carried out. On the other hand, the political analysis will focus on the concept of otherness. For this reason, I will be using the article published by Zevallos (2011). For the biographical information, I will only include the ones that may be relevant to the analyses.

Biography

Around the start of senior high school, I often deprived myself of sleep in exchange for more time playing video games. As a consequence, I was usually fatigued in class and barely paid attention to the online lectures. In addition, I had a difficult time supporting my group in projects due to my brain fog. The sleep deprivation exacerbated my inclination to procrastinate because I had no energy to work on my assignments; video games were the only thing that could keep me awake.

Besides my physical self, a central aspect of my life is my digital self. I utilize social media to present myself in the most attractive way I can. I rarely post on my main account to minimize people’s exposure to my flaws. Furthermore, I use an anonymous account online to post memes because I loved seeing people like my jokes. I also argued online with my anonymous account; it would, however, make me extremely stressed when I receive more negative feedback than the other user I am arguing with.

In terms of my political self, a huge aspect of it involves my social identity—Muslim, male, middle or upper-middle class. In terms of being a Muslim, I noticed in grade school that when I studied in a school full of Muslims, the non-Muslims would be powerless against targeted jokes belittling their faith. In contrast, when I studied in a school with barely any Muslims during high school, people would frequently make terrorist jokes towards me even if I clearly expressed my discomfort.

Physical Self

As Wilhelm Reich contends, the body and the mind are interdependent—both influences each other (Singh, n.d.), just like my bad habits and bad state of mind both reinforce each other. I would be unresponsive to my experiences, thereby ensuing a large accumulation of tasks and perpetuating my unhealthy mental state. Furthermore, Carl Gustav maintains that what we know about reality comes from our psychic experiences (Singh, n.d.); as such, my poor-self management resulted in a bad understanding of others and my environment, which impaired my academic performance. This is supported by Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory, in that I could not focus on higher-order needs (i.e., intellectual and moral needs) because I could not even meet my basic physiological needs (Singh, n.d.).

Digital Self

A study investigating the link between selfies and narcissism found that narcissists would typically only upload selfies that emphasized their attractive features (Barry et al., 2017); this might explain my lack of publicly available self-portraits. The study also claims that narcissists were inclined to hide their perceived flaws due to their fragile self-esteem, which I believe match accordingly with my experiences since my self-esteem is heavily based on the appraisal of others—a trait associated with vulnerable narcissism (Besser & Priel, 2010). Studies also find that narcissists use social media as a form of self-presentation that supports one’s positive image and highlights their physical attractiveness/personality (Bergman et al., 2011; Kapidzic, 2013), which I believe maps accurately to my behavior. As mentioned in the biography, I enjoy positive feedback coming from my uploaded memes and also become stressed when I receive more negative feedback for my arguments; the studies claiming that the strong concern for rejection and the desire to be the primary focus of others can break down why this is the case (Miller & Campbell, 2011; Besser & Priel, 2010)—I, most likely, am narcissistic.

Political Self

According to Okolie (2003), superiority and inferiority is often embedded in social identities. I believe that this is perfectly demonstrated with my experiences in both grade school and high school, where the dominant group is viewed as the normal and the minority is viewed as the other (Bauman, 1993). From what we can observe in my biography, negative and positive traits associated with my social identity are treated as being intrinsically true, despite it being not the case. This might be because of the hierarchical social order emanating from the dichotomies of otherness (Zevallos, 2011). In a Muslim majority school, the Muslims have the power to decide how non-Muslims are represented, while it is the opposite in a non-Muslim majority school. This is because the dominant group determines how the other groups are portrayed (Hall et al., 2013).

References

  1. Barry, C. T., Doucette, H., Loflin, D. C., Rivera-Hudson, N., & Herrington, L. L. (2017, January). “Let me take a selfie”: Associations between self- photography, narcissism, and self-esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 6(1), 48–60. Retrieved 2024-07-23, from http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/ppm0000089 doi: 10.1037/ppm0000089
  2. Bauman, Z. (1993). Modernity and Ambivalence (First Edition ed.). Cambridge: Polity.
  3. Bergman, S. M., Fearrington, M. E., Davenport, S. W., & Bergman, J. Z. (2011, April). Millennials, narcissism, and social networking: What narcissists do on social networking sites and why. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(5), 706–711. Retrieved 2024-07-24, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0191886910006215 doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.12.022
  4. Besser, A., & Priel, B. (2010, October). Grandiose Narcissism Versus Vulnerable Narcissism in Threatening Situations: Emotional Reactions to Achievement Failure and Interpersonal Rejection. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 29(8), 874–902. Retrieved 2024-07-24, from http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.29.8.874 doi: 10/jscp.29.8.874
  5. Hall, S., Evans, J., & Nixon, S. (Eds.). (2013). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (2nd edition ed.). Milton Keynes: SAGE Publications Ltd.
  6. Kapidzic, S. (2013, January). Narcissism as a Predictor of Motivations Behind Facebook Profile Picture Selection. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(1), 14–19. Retrieved 2024-07-24, from https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cyber.0143 (Publisher: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers) doi: 10.1089/cyber.0143
  7. Miller, J. D., & Campbell, W. K. (2011, July). Addressing Criticisms of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). In W. K. Campbell & J. D. Miller (Eds.), The Handbook of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (1st ed., pp. 146–152). Wiley. Retrieved 2024-07-24, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118093108.ch13 doi: 10.1002/9781118093108.ch13
  8. Okolie, A. C. (2003, January). Introduction to the Special Issue – Identity: Now You Don’t See It; Now You Do. Identity, 3(1), 1–7. Retrieved 2024-07- 23, from https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532706XID0301_01 (Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532706XID0301_01) doi: 10 .1207/S1532706XID0301_01
  9. Singh, S. (n.d.). The Concept of Physical Self in Psychology. Retrieved 2024-07-23, from https://www.all-about-psychology.com/the-concept-of-physical-self-in-psychology.html
  10. Zevallos, Z. (2011, October). What is Otherness? Retrieved 2024-07-23, from https://othersociologist.com/otherness-resources/

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