We’ve spoken on several occasions about narcissism. This way of being close to the pathological refers to those people whose admiration for themselves is exaggerated .

Of course, this way of thinking also crystallizes into actions and attitudes that are palpable in everyday life. As the classic slogan of the shampoo brand L’Oreal says, they are individuals who move through life flaunting the maxim “because I’m worth it”. This is where the concept of “porqueyolovalguismo” comes from, which I will stop to explain in today’s article .

Opportunities and context

Let’s put it in context. Both in Spain and in most Latin American nations, we have suffered serious economic crises that have plunged us into a cultural situation where a job is almost a blessing. With an unemployment rate of over 25% and almost 50% among young people in southern Europe, it is not surprising that their mentality towards work has mutated.

In the previous context of relatively abundant employment opportunities, workers had the possibility of rejecting certain offers that did not meet certain requirements (salary, hours, distance)… Workers could refuse to accept certain jobs that did not provide them with a stimulus; in the end, in a short period of time, they could find something more in line with their preferences and demands. After the ravages of the crisis, this is no longer the case.

Unfortunately, and until there is a Universal Basic Income that guarantees the material subsistence of the citizens, we have to continue working “from whatever” to be able to support ourselves. In a scenario of total scarcity of job opportunities, this mentality has almost completely disappeared: we are totally forced to accept any work proposal , even if the remuneration or other characteristics of the offer are of our displeasure.

The “why-valguism” in the culture of non-effort

Of course, the fact that there is an urgent need to accept any job offer is very bad news for our society. It is a clear sign that a country does not have enough development of the productive fabric to provide a variety of proposals and projects (work and life) to its citizens.

How do we react to this situation? Most people try to adapt to this new reality and, resigned, assume that there is no choice but to move on and accept “whatever there is”. It is a mentality that runs the risk of falling into what the psychologist Bertrand Regader calls the ‘syndrome of the satisfied slave’, that is, into a neuroticism adapted to a directly unacceptable situation.

At the other extreme we find “porqueyolovalguism”. Individuals who basically believe that they deserve all the best and who are not willing to accept that their employer does not pay them what they think they deserve. They are individuals who have a very high concept of themselves , to the point of showing aggressive tendencies towards those who do not recognize and praise their supposed “qualities”; people who believe that this planet has been put at their disposal for their complete enjoyment and pleasure, so that they can take from it as many benefits as possible and, if possible, at a cost of personal effort equivalent to zero.

We are talking about a symptom not only present in the work environment, but also generalized to practically all aspects of life in which the “porqueyolovalguista” individual can show off his so peculiar way of being.

The attitudes of the individual “because of” and “because of”

We are not going to look for culprits or perpetrators, because we do not consider that to be the function of this writing. However, it would not be unreasonable to point out that, in the globalized world we live in (in which concepts such as “privacy” or “intimacy” have been relegated to oblivion), social networks have influenced the behaviour of many people who already had a tendency towards a heightened ego .

The possibility of publishing our experiences on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter has caused a change in the needs of these people eager for the approval of others: the search for “likes” or positive comments from friends in the RRSS in photos, comments or personal opinions contribute to increase the ego and self-esteem of those who receive it, which reinforces the possibility of repeating the action in the future, always with the mentality of achieving as much impact as possible.

The more attention these people receive, the more they will have reason to assume that they must tell more about themselves and show as many ‘relevant’ aspects of their day-to-day life as they can, in an assumed fantasy that their ‘followers’ are eager to know what is new in the life of the ‘why’.

Protagonists of their own life… and that of others

In their mentality, in which they are the absolute protagonists and everything revolves around them, the “porqueyolovalgo” legitimize their arrogance based on a false belief (but very real to them) that they should be thanked for having existed and for giving others the gift of their mere presence, as a new form of vassalage in the 21st century, in which we are expected to bow down and kiss the ground they walk on and applaud all their behaviour, however reprehensible.

As we say in Spain, these subjects are “delighted to meet each other”, which is the expression par excellence that catalogues and defines the attitude towards life of those who consider that their way of thinking, criteria, competence or talent is better than the rest.

By way of conclusion: rejecting moral superiority

Of course, this text is not intended to target those people who love themselves or believe they can contribute to the society in which they are integrated. A distinction must be made between healthy self-esteem and inflated and exaggerated self-esteem .

What is reprehensible about individuals “because” they tend to exhibit their moral superiority over other people. Free will cannot be blindly justified in a context of coexistence and sharing of common spaces and resources. As we said at the beginning of this writing, although many consider that they can dispose of the greatest number of benefits at will without making any contribution in this respect (we do not know whether this is due to a lack of sensitivity, maturity, empathy or pure and simple unconsciousness), we the rest of us are not obliged to, nor should we allow subjects to trample on our rights or try to justify their privileges on the basis of their arrogance.