Vanity: The Seven Deadly Sins Of Society

Since the beginning of time,vanity, one of the seven deadly sins, plagued society. The Bible illustrates this through the tales of tragic horrors of vanity by people who are excessively conceited and overly proud of their appearance, qualities, and achievements: “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). This recurrent theme of boastful pride, encompassing oneself is an even more common theme in today’s society. From endless, painful plastic surgery to never ending hours spent taking and photo-shopping selfies to post, just to acquire more likes and followers, pinpointing where major populations of society went astray is difficult. People are consumed with themselves instead

Millennials and Generation Z have come under the severe criticism by previous generations for being overly obsessed with themselves and their technology. Generation Me as they have been nicknamed, are notoriously selfish and self-absorbed. With changes in society, due to technology, new sentiments have arisen: “Modesty is out. Humility is discouraged, hubris is in. Blame it on the baby boomers spoiling their children. Or even all those self-esteem gurus who argue that if you make young people feel good about themselves, they will “release their potential” ” (Furnham). Narcissism, the inflated sense of self-importance, correlates to the excessive vanity of the current younger generation. However, while most people may believe that narcissists have a tough shell, most have fragile egos, that “requires abnormal amounts of admiration and praise from others to survive...caught up in their fantasies of power, prestige, and popularity that they are impervious to the needs of those around that. Your job is to worship them; to see them as perfect people. To feed and support their grand self-image” (Furnham). This behavior is seen all throughout social media outlets, people posting vaniful selfies just for the admiration of others to feed their own egos. Perfection is strived for to get the most attention and people will jump through hoops, not minding who they may be harming in the process just to get a breath of veneration. The rise of narcissistic personality disorder is parallel to the rise of general vanity in today’s society, “diagnoses of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) have risen sharply over the past 10 years: the rate of increase is comparable to the rise in the rate of obesity” (Fishwick). A certain amount of narcissism is necessary, especially in the age group of seventeen to twenty-one as they find their place in society; however, their drastic increase in the use of technology has made this short phase