Goodbye Selfie, Hello Thumbie!

When selfie was named Word of the Year for 2013 many folks understood it as the moment when narcissism officially became the new normal, correctly sensing that in the age of the selfie the world is diminished to background for my eternal Big Moment. Ironically, in shrinking the world down to background in order to make room for our inflated egos, the selfie diminishes the self while appearing to enlarge it. Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson sheds light on this tragedy of egos grown too big for the worlds they find themselves in:

“I claim that if you went in there (the planetarium) with no ego at all and then you saw the grandeur of the universe, recognizing that our molecules are traceable to stars that exploded and spread these elements across the galaxy, then you would see the universe as something you participate in, as this great unfolding of a cosmic story. And that, I think, should make you feel large, not small.” (http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=283443670)
How, of course, can you see the grandeur of the universe when you are too busy looking at your phone for your close-up?

What we seem to have lost is the art of being part of a larger story, insisting instead on being the whole story. It is perhaps not entirely our fault, as we watch the grand narratives of democracy and equality fast approaching what feels dangerously like a point of no return. What larger story remains for us to inhabit? But still.

So, for now, the path forward is retreat, maneuvering ourselves out of the foreground. In Brian Browne Walker’s translation of the I Ching, the text corresponding to hexagram 33 opens thusly: “It is inherent in the design of life that forces of darkness and disruption come into prominence from time to time. This hexagram indicates that this is such a time and advises you to respond by quietly retreating.”

To retreat is not to remove one’s self from the picture altogether. Just so, to accomplish the retreat from self(ie)-absorption, I propose a transition to the thumbie. There are a number of crucial differences between the selfie and the thumbie, beginning with the fact that the gaze in the thumbie is once again focused outward, towards the world, such as it is. Looking out, we are incapable of staring at our navels. (If the selfie accomplished anything it was the reorganization of our anatomy, displacing the third eye from its accustomed spot with the navel, which migrated up from the belly to the middle of our brows so that we could stare at it on the screens of our smart phones and in the selfies we post to Facebook and Instagram.) Because the thumb in a thumbie can, of course, point up or down, the thumbie restores the ego from its current debased status as permanent carnival barker, “Look at me!”, to its sacred role as the seat of conscious awareness. A world of which I approve or disapprove will always be a world which pushes back, a world with too much backbone to ever play background. A world worth fighting for, which ever seems to be the only reason we were put here. Which reason was not, assuredly, to star in our own private cinema.

So take thumbies endorsing the fabulous view from the room in your historic Boston hotel. Take thumbies of your heaven sent children watching The Empire Strikes Back for the very first time. Consider giving Sy the Dog a big thumbs down for pooping in the house yet again, but then give Sy the Dog a big thumbs up because you love him anyway. Save those thumbs down for chance encounters with Dick Cheney. Most importantly, take a thumbie and tell its story without using any of the five following words: “Me, me, me, me, me.”