{"id":800,"date":"2012-01-30T07:37:39","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T14:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=800"},"modified":"2013-01-08T08:25:58","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T13:25:58","slug":"the-self-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=800","title":{"rendered":"The ‘self’ virus"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n

I live in Washington DC. \u00a0I work in public relations. \u00a0I used to work in politics.\u00a0I am a human being. \u00a0Consider me an expert in the self-driven life.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about that a lot lately; trying to stitch together and make sense of some crazy things I saw at work, around me outside of work, on television, on the campaign trail. \u00a0Have you seen it? \u00a0Man, there’s some absolutely crazy stuff going on out there. \u00a0 How could we get so dysfunctional? \u00a0I’m thinking that there’s a new disease, worse than HIV\/AIDS, ebola, and avian flu combined. \u00a0It is the attack of the self-driven and the self-absorbed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is a bad thing, by the way. \u00a0A very bad thing. \u00a0I’ve a sense that we’re all infected with this virus in some form. \u00a0Because it is all about me, right! \u00a0But what happens when everyone, all around you, say the same thing: \u00a0“It’s all about ME!” \u00a0Well, when that happens you have a lot of the madness that is going on right now.<\/p>\n

As best I can tell, here are the main symptoms of this virus:<\/p>\n

A warped perspective of reality.<\/strong> If it is all about you, the reality of the outside world slowly begins to fade. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because you can’t see the important things happen that don’t relate to you. \u00a0Just like pre-Copernicus\u00a0astrologers, you have this mistaken impression that life evolves around you and your well-being. \u00a0The ‘other’ is only a consideration in as much as they (a) cross your path; or (b) provide you a stepping stone to the other side. \u00a0After awhile, this is not only a sick way of looking at life it is a false way of looking at life. \u00a0Living in your own self-absorbed cocoon, everything looks rosey. \u00a0You can’t see outside yourself (another word for ‘outside yourself’ … ‘reality’!) \u00a0Then, BAM! \u00a0That nasty real world slams you up side the head. \u00a0And you never saw it coming.<\/p>\n

Destruction of meaningful and lasting relationships. <\/strong> This is close to a tautology but worth noting. \u00a0You can’t have a meaningful relationship with anyone or any thing if you are the #1, #2, and #3 most important things on your daily todo list. \u00a0When you hold the top position of what’s important in your life, relationships become shallow and matters of convenience. \u00a0People no longer become people. \u00a0We’ll all playing a game of “Survivor” or “Big Brother”. \u00a0People are disposable. \u00a0Relationships are transitory. \u00a0And you wake up one morning and there’s no body around you. \u00a0Go figure!<\/p>\n

Death of moral values<\/strong>. \u00a0Objective moral values – universal truths of right and wrong – suffocate in the oppressive and feckless nature of the self-absorption. \u00a0Self sucks up all the oxygen. \u00a0The old fashion ideas of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ have about as much chance as a polar bear on a melting ice cap. \u00a0When it is all about you, concepts like honesty, integrity, service, dependability, and trust eventually lose their original meaning. \u00a0Everything becomes a function of what is good for you.<\/p>\n

It is a nasty, nasty illness.<\/p>\n

So what does any of this have about companies, organizations, and brands?<\/p>\n

A lot. \u00a0I’ve seen this virus spread to them as well. \u00a0In this I’d go so far as to agree with Governor Romney. \u00a0Companies are, indeed, people. \u00a0And when they turn inward and begin organizing around self, they lose perspective of what is going on in the marketplace, the bonds they’ve built with their customers begin to fray, and they end up making really dumb decisions.<\/p>\n

The vaccine? \u00a0Try putting something or someone ahead of yourself. \u00a0Maybe even more than one!<\/p>\n

The people I admire are those who put themselves last, and put others first. \u00a0The same is true for companies, organizations and brands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in Washington DC. \u00a0I work in public relations. \u00a0I used to work in politics.\u00a0I am a human being. \u00a0Consider me an expert in the self-driven life. I was thinking about that a lot lately; trying to stitch together and make sense of some crazy things I saw at work, around me outside of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,34,1],"tags":[10,113,153,18,114,6,112,148,29,156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":992,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}