The other day, I mistakenly thought I had come up with a wholly novel quasi-religious term and it's "Meism". You have probably encountered members of this cult in your own life. Meists are people who only want to talk about themselves - their families, their achievements, their adventures, their homes, their ailments. They are not much interested in other people's lives. It's all, "Me, me, me, me"...endlessly.
To some extent, we are probably all a bit meist and cynics might argue that blogging is all about self-interest and trumpeting your thoughts and experiences to others who spend time here in Blogworld. Perhaps it's all just a question of degree.
So many times in my life, I have found myself listening to meists as they drone on about themselves and their lives. I am a very good listener and I believe that other people sense that. I react to what is being said and pose follow up questions but so often I reach a point in my head where I say to myself, "They have not asked me anything" or "They know nothing about me" or "Am I really so uninteresting, so unworthy that they just do not want to know?"
I could have titled this blogpost "Empathy" because I suppose that a lack of it is the foundation on which Meism is built. If you possess empathy you are aware of who you are communicating with. It's another human being whose view of the world may be delightfully different from your own. They are worthy of attention no matter what their station is in life. They could teach you something or give you food for thought. If you manage to hinder the meist flow and intervene with a point, a memory or an idea of your own, the meist will look slightly irritated as if to say, "Let us get back to the main subject". And the main subject is a combination of what I have done, where I have been, what I have spent money on, my family, what I have watched on television, my budgerigar, my car - on and on and on. Me-me-me-me.
I am not saying that meists are all bad. Maybe they just cannot help themselves. Perhaps their meism is connected with internal self-doubts - something like that. Maybe they became meists in meist family homes.
Being a meist is rather different from egomania but it's certainly edging in that extreme direction. This is how the dictionary defines egomania:-
...a psychological term for an obsessive, irrational, and excessive preoccupation with one’s own ego, self-importance, or needs. It is characterised by delusions of grandeur, extreme selfishness, and a lack of empathy, often manifesting as an intense, frantic desire for admiration and power.
Yes, meists are generally not that far gone but I can think of a current world leader who possesses all of those traits aplenty. Know who I mean?
People with ADHD are notoriously bad listeners, because they often want to interject something into the conversation before they forget it, so they interrupt a lot.
ReplyDeleteIt took me years to become a better listener but I can still go off on tangents quite easily. Nursing helped me the most to become a better listener, and to ask better questions.
I had to teach plenty of kids with ADHD but in the early years of my career that term did not exist in schools. Later, there was more awareness.
DeleteThe biggest "meist" of them all.
ReplyDeleteWho, me? Or did you mean The Big Orange Man Baby?
DeleteWhat can I do today, to make the world a better place for others?
ReplyDeleteYou can send me a thousand bucks by bank transfer... please!
DeleteThere is a healthy level of self-interest, and often drawing on our own experience in life helps us to relate to others when we read or hear about what they are going through. But I agree - the line to Meism is easily crossed, and from there it is not too far to egomania.
ReplyDeleteIn all the time that I have known you through blogging you have always shown great kindness, genuine interest and have always provided intelligent, respectful comments. On this evidence I would say that you are very far from being a Meist.
DeleteBy the way, the reason I asked for your Ripon dates was because I had the idea of driving up to see you one day. However, and this is what we call "Sod's Law" here in England, your dates coincide with our family holiday in Majorca. Drat!
Philosophically we are the centre of our own world so meism must be somewhat acceptable. One granddaughter has posed photos of herself on instagram and yes she does look gorgeous but I sigh with despair. There is a whole world though between. Humans have set out to explore everything outside their selves as well and their vision is something we learn from.
ReplyDeleteI think we all know people like this. It's almost like other people barely exist in their minds. The big orange buffoon is another level altogether, though. A raging, pathological narcissist is how I'd describe him.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I am meist but then I don't hear myself talk. I know I will interrupt a person who doesn't pause for a breath with a contribution to the one way conversation. I think often the meist might also be a braggart.
ReplyDeleteI think we are all a little meist but some of us take it too far and think the 'me' is all that matters.
ReplyDeleteYears I had a friend, Jane, who, as soon as she turned 18, her mother announced that Jane had to move out because her mother was moving to Hawaii by herself and she even changed her name to Mimi. I asked Jane why "Mimi" and Jane said it's pronounced "Me, Me."
As teachers , we had no time to be meist. Kids would have run over us if we were standing there blubbering about ourselves.. However, I liked hearing the kids and encouraging them to look at the world.
ReplyDeleteYour post has described my brother to a "T". That's why I never call him. He never asks me anything, it is always about himself. I have been told that I am a good listener myself, but after class #2 of memoir writing, I wonder.
ReplyDeleteAs you say bloggers could easily be viewed as meist (great word) because they write about what they have been doing and what they think. I agree it is a matter of degree. To think about The Weaver of Grass, one of my favourite bloggers, I can’t think of a less meist person. She was interested in what people thought, welcomed comments from people that held a contrary view and wanted to understand that contrary view.
ReplyDeleteThen you have people who present their opinion as fact, only publish supporting comments, and have the thinnest of meist skins.
Conversations (if it can even be called that) with "meists" do tend to leave the other party exhausted rather than feeling they got anything out of it.
ReplyDeleteThe Me Decade (Wikipedia) is a 1976 essay by Tom Wolfe.
ReplyDeleteIn 2025 I read the short book he was working on at the end of his life,
The Kingdom of Speech, which I warmly recommend.
I wish Tom Wolfe was writing about Disclosure and UAPs. He would see
the comic side to the coming Spielberg movie and all the crazy hype.
ARE THEY PRIMING US FOR DISCLOSURE ? Vanessa Mares.
ONE MAN EXPOSES REAL-LIFE COVER-UP IN SLEEPING DOG TRAILER.
THE TRUTH ABOUT UAPs ? INSIDE JEREMY CORBELL'S NEW DOCUMENTARY.
All three are on YouTube.
I'll eat my baseball cap if there are Interdimensional Entities who can read
our minds and have been watching the earth for hundreds of years, but I would
have liked to have read Tom Wolfe in search of a crashed flying saucer.
Vanessa Mares think it may be a massive scam.