We live in a difficult era marked by terrorism, environmental degradation, worsening human deprivation problems and sundry other grim issues, and yet we show no signs of concern or of getting bogged down. If anything, we are on a high of unprecedented euphoria--about ourselves, about our material possessions, about our abilities, just about 'our' anything.

The operative word here is I/Me/Myself. We are basking in our imagined greatness while the world is falling apart. There must be an explanation for this self-love.

Have we become the modern days' Narcissus in myriad avatars? Or is our dismissive attitude an ostrich like reaction to our hidden insecurities?

Of these, the narcissism phenomenon is real. The era of orkutised lives have dawned on us, with our airbrushed photos gracing our own biography that is half-fiction, half-truth. And yes, truth be told, we all are chasing that one dream: five-minute fame by presenting our best foot forward and trampling upon those of others.

The Generation Me is obsessed with success, youth, looks, status, wealth and all those underpinnings of achievement. No wonder, self-help books dominate the best-seller list and fly off the shelves in the bookstores as if they contain the key to our salvation, and the name of that salvation is not some spiritual nirvana but an elusive concept called happiness.

Happiness is the new Hippiness. In the pursuit of happiness, we have forgotten to appreciate the value of melancholy, which had spurred on great poetry, drama and film in the past. "Our greatest songs are those that tell of the saddest thoughts," wrote P.B Shelley.

Alas, we are too 'happy' to bother about them or create new masterpieces. We are numbed by an artificial sensation of mirth. Our darlings are the New Age Gurus who exhort us: Forget the Past, Be Happy, Every Single Day is a Celebration. Worry is abolished.

But is it possible? Can we completely snap our umbilical cord with our past however unflattering it may be? When we wipe out unpleasant memories, are we not losing sight of the valuable lessons we learnt from them?

The great thing about our past is they have made us what we are today, something to tell our grandchildren with all their trials and tribulations. If there were no past, there would have been no present for the same reason that had there been no melancholy, we would not have known what its opposite is.

The moments of joy that come after overcoming the pain, anxious struggle and suffering can't ever be bought nor experienced by popping anti-depression pills. As human beings, we can go through a multitude of emotions and feelings that animals can't possibly mimic.

This ability to emote and feel is a uniquely human trait. That's why we invent emoticons to add a touch of our personality in our instant messenger messages, otherwise a string of computer generated lifeless characters.

The problem with our narcissistic culture is that we seek to deny this fundamental truth about humanity, which is: We can never be sad or happy perpetually. The cult of happiness asserts that we can be happy forever as though there was a miraculous pond of high spirits from which we can drink endlessly.

The cult rejects any vocabulary with the flimsiest shade of human frailty. So if you worry about your diabetes, just think the disease doesn't exist. If you are in debts, just fool yourself into believing that you are rich.

If you are ugly, just assume you are gorgeous. (I can quote many such funny anthems from the current international bestseller guide for the Narcissus, "The Secrets" by Rhonda Brynes, one among many such books).

Which leads us to the sad fact that the happiness industry is mostly a fraud. It's nothing less than a purveyor of fantasies and escapism couched in attractive phrases like Positive Thinking, Laws of Attraction, Dream Big, Live in the Present and so on.

Another keystone of the narcissistic culture is the belief that others are bad, inferior and ugly and we, and only we, are the epitome of all desirable qualities. This is the attitude that is most repugnant in the repertoire of quirks of self-centered pigs.

The courtesy of acknowledgement, if not the art of appreciation, is now an endangered virtue. We play our own trumpets at the slightest opportunity but reserve our compliments for others' accomplishments like it is a favour to be given once in a lifetime grudgingly.

We have stopped patting and have started spitting. Here's the new commandment etched in stones for self-proclaimed demigods by self-proclaimed demigods: Thou Shalt Love Yourself Before Thou Think About Others.

What fuels the epidemic of narcissism is the easy access to technology, especially the web. If you look at the social networking websites, the fastest growing segment of the internet, it's all about satisfying one's ego and finding the voyeuristic pleasure.

The Web 2.0 is a boon to all the die-hard descendants of Narcissus by pandering to their desire of exhibitionism. It lets them broadcast every pixel of their self from their bathroom antics to their photoshopped images for the world to see and they seem to be screaming: "Hey look at me. I am better than you."

I don't dismiss all the self-help books and the internet social networking websites as the devil that breed the culture of narcissism. Indeed, many of them are genuine tonics for the souls in distress.

And maybe they are popular because people need them in this chaotic world with full of problems in their daily lives--at home and at workplace. We need an escape route and they are one of the cheap distractions available to us.

But they are not the cure of our maladies; they are only a morphine that keeps us on a high momentarily. My plea is not that we should reject them but that we should follow them sparingly using our good judgment in grappling with the complexity of life.

Self-help books tell us to deny the existence of a problem while web 2.0 inflates our ego--two approaches to solving problems that are deeply flawed. We can't wish away our insecurities by feeding a constant stream of lies to ourselves and others.

Mistaking pleasure for happiness is the greatest folly of our times. Like fast food, it gives no lasting benefits but makes us feel guilty when we wake up the next day. Phoney greatness never last.

The best way of coping with life's vicissitudes is by facing them head on and going through them. Sometimes we win, sometimes we will lose too. But whatever it is, let's not deny our true feelings and emotions.

Let's not get drowned in the artificial happiness soup and easy limelight. The actual seeds of happiness are in our blues, when we triumph over them. And greatness lies in our humility. Others are only footnotes in our lives' journey.

Enjoy the process of living. True happiness lies in the journey not the destination, warts and all.

*** E-mail may be quoted by name in Ranjan Yumnam's readers section, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise.