The Calamity of Wasting Words

In our human history so many words have been said and written. Starting from humble grunts and groans, over the epochs our mode of verbal communication has developed into superior sounds laden with meaning. And double meaning. And triple.

And yet, those wonderous sounds I was so in awe of in my youth, now seem to have come full circle - I see and hear and read today's words, but they are all just grunts and groans. Because the words remain superficial. They have no real meaning. No sincerity of feeling. Because at least when cave dwellers were grunting, they were trying to communicate something. However basic, it was sincere. It was survival.

Today, everyone's ego is fighting to be in the equation. Films are not being made to create art, for example, or even just to tell an entertaining story. They are being made to self-validate a director's beliefs, or to make up for their own lack of self worth. The cinematic endeavour as an artform has become a vehicle hijacked by narcissists who make works of sycophantic reaction rather than to provoke thought and discussion.

It's a form of mental and emotional terrorism on the audience, who, kidnapped and subjected daily thanks to streaming platforms, begin to suffer a form of Stockholm Syndrome where they not only applaud but accept such pretentious garbage as art. These propups signify nothing but an arresting style that arrests mental development. And what irks me is how they waste the wonderful resource of words and turn them into superficial grunts and groans.

How can you tell the difference between a work of art and a fake? Real art asks you to think. Deepfake art tells you what to think. So, take a good long, critical look at the next thing you watch. Take notes and ask yourself a) how much is pretentious posturing and b) should I tell the artist to go masturbate in private?

Because when you talk about yourself, that is how many people it should matter to - one. Self-validation, however, has come to mean those who actively seek acknowledgment of their emotions, thoughts, experiences, values, and beliefs from others. And I am forced to ask, why?

Surely, it's an oxymoron. If they are my beliefs, why do I need someone else to validate them? They should be self-validating, right? Worse still, why should I waste so many beautiful words trying to force people to acknowledge something that only matters to me? Why do I have to make my view the world view?

Nuke Your Narcissism

You see this form of "self-validation" a lot in people with a narcissistic personality disorder, which is a mental health condition, in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others, so they cannot validate, but require validation. They will offer deepfake validation to get your own.

It's a very real, insidious disease. But it's also become very du jour, because a lot of people in the entertainment industry, in politics, and in the law emulate these mental abberrations to climb some social ladder, and in doing so, like some mental form of HIV, have spread a virus with their unprotected penetration of another's mind. YouTube has proven time and again that sometimes it is dangerous to give a talentless person a camera and a platform, and that it might be better protection for their victims (a.k.a their audience) if they practised spewing their junk alone.

Think of the rapper Ye formerly known as Kanye West, who has very real and serious mental issues. His self needs to be validated by white Americans, because he believes sharing a hundred years of history makes you a single race and he wants this to be true. Or think of Donald Trump. Who uses every trick in the self-validating handbook to get the world to see him as he sees himself.

Trump has the same personality disorder as Ye, but while the former is controlled by it, the latter controls it for PR. Oh, and for gain, of course. Money, power, pink tacos. Whatever the man wants. It doesn't matter, as long as his public image is validated by enough people to cover up his sick self, he knows he has nothing to worry about.

Here's how this modern concept of self-validation works as I see it (we used to call it propaganda back in the day): Say I want to spread lies about someone, and I want it to stick. What do I do? I certainly don't try and validate its accuracy with facts, because I know it's a lie. What I will do instead is go for self-validation, which means to get as many people as I can to believe and validate me and thus the lie. In this way, a lie can grow and grow, until it outgrows the very truth.

Our societies have become the perfect conduits for this spead of mendacity. The spread isn't even, but it sure is thick. Three decades ago, society frowned upon such selfish behaviour. Back then, you couldn't get away with this self-worshipping bull. Wasting words on explaining to people how great you are would automatically get a response for you to go and masturbate in the privacy of your own room.

Now, it's in the mainstream. It is not a sub-culture, it dictates culture. The victims now want this form of third party self-validation, too. (Oxymorons upon oxymorons). The focus is no longer on "us" but on "I". And if you don't actively seek self-worship through this corrupt form of "validation", people look at you as though you're weird. But you know what would be weird? Taking a very serious social cause - say racism or misogyny - and making it about you or your self worth.

However, the fact of the matter is that you don't need to attach yourself to a feminine cause to feel validated as a woman. Or to a black cause for your life to matter. Your own existence should be all the validation you need. This is what self-validation should mean. That you were born and you share this world is self-validating in and of itself. It is what makes your rights inalienable.

I Am Here: The Three Words You'll Ever Need

You should feel validated because you are already here, by your very existence. But don't take my words for it; you're absolutely free to tell me to go fondle myself. Don't allow any cause - or man, or woman, or child or your own ego - to validate who you are. And especially not from an ego that will demand that validation from others.

Sure, join a cause, lend a hand, but I suggest you do so because it is the right thing to do, not to make your self-loathing go away or because your narcissism needs a hit for its insidious high. It's bad enough our social causes will never be solved because our humanity is inherently bankrupt on morality, without using it as a vehicle for self-worship as well.

Since the 1970s, philosophers have been aware that humanity is ethically absent on social causes, because it is in our nature to be this way. Moral philosopher Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" argues as much, and he didn't ask for "self-validation" to back up his theory. He provided validation of a theory that some will agree with, others will not, but Singer's ego was never in the equation.

And if we are to talk about the human condition and our artificial concepts (instead of trying to create a new American race, I would suggest Mr Ye consider how the idea of race itself should become a defunct concept because we have used it to murder, subjugate and persecute one another for centuries) then it has to be about "us" and not "I". That is what a social cause is about; you join one not for yourself, and not really even for others like yourself - you join simply for others (even better, for those unlike yourself).

In this way, a man can take up the fight for a feminine cause, not because he is validating himself, but to stand up against toxic masculinity. Or a straight guy who supports gay rights, because he knows those rights should be universal. Or a gay person who joins social causes outside of their "sexual identity" (another oxymoron, because sexual attraction has nothing to do with identity) because he or she or they can identify with their humanity, and not their sexual organ.

Who you are attracted to should not (and does not) define who you are, because if that were true, then the detractors of any relationships outside of Biblical norms would be right. They have been using this argument to ostracise the LGBQT+ community since day dot. Besides, if you let your hormones or the biological rules of attraction define who you are, then you are already working from the common lowest denominator.

And then, we really will have to start asking ourselves as a species, who do we think we are? How filled are we with our own self-importance that we waste our words on defending the pretentious posturing of our egos, while thinking with our backsides. Or worse, call it art. Or worse still, dress up the worst aspects of the human condition with labels of "validation", as though this will fix any or all problems that stem from an embellished view of ourselves.

No human being is the living embodiment of the truth of its contents. Validation at its origin is the action of checking or proving the validity or accuracy of something, so even using the word validation in a human context is a misnomer. The only thing you can validate is that you exist, and if you ask a philosopher, they wouldn't even go that far.

So, when we talk about self-validation, it's just another form of self-worship. Just a lot of verbal grunts and chest beating. And seeking or giving validation is deepfake trickery, and wasting words on it just makes me think that those who mentally masturbate in public really should do it in private for the wellbeing of others.

Because what they spit out for others to swallow really can infect the mass population, especially when we have corrupted the methods of academic validation used to protect us from our own bull. Fake has now become deepfake, and we need stronger methods of protection. We've even made words complicit by loading them with double meanings. Sometimes triple. To the point they become meaningless.

I love words. I love words more than I love people. Which isn't hard - I love trees and dogs more than I love people - but to waste words on propping up our already firmly erect egos should be a criminal offence in a day and age where words matter more than ever before.

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