AA and the Culture of Narcissism

In the New York Times of Friday July 15 David Brooks had a fascinating column on the recent Mel Gibson scandal. Most commentators on the Gibson Tapes talk about the racism, sexism, and violence that is expressed. All well and good, but Brooks goes deeper, to the narcissism Gibson flaunts and what it says about our society.
I have often said that in many ways living the AA way of life puts us at odds with our current popular culture. Nowhere is this more true than in the contrast between the humility that AA tells us forms the foundation of recovery and a fulfilled, loving, useful life, and the self-centeredness culminating in full blown narcissism that our culture promotes.
And our culture does promote it. Reality TV shows are consistently among the highest rated shows, and what are they but platforms for exhibitionism? In my years in the textbook business one of the most consistent messages I heard was that we have to make the kids feel good about themselves whatever their performance. Failure is not seen as what it is: a learning experience. And yet our whole program is based on admitting our powerlessness approaching addiction unaided, recognizing and dealing with our character defects, learning from our failures, and through all this work becoming contributing members of our society ("practicing these principles in all our affairs").
In a sense the whole point of AA is learning that we are not special as individuals, but that we are part of something very special - call it God, the Tao, Being, whatever you want. It is our being 'part of' that is our grace. I hope I am not misusing Bonhoeffer in saying that this grace does not come cheap. It is costly, demanding the surrender of self, and that means a lot of work.
This is, of course the opposite of what our culture wants us to believe. Brooks cites an astounding statistic:

In their book, “The Narcissism Epidemic,” Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell cite ...my favorite piece of sociological data: In 1950, thousands of teenagers were asked if they considered themselves an “important person.” Twelve percent said yes. In the late 1980s, another few thousand were asked. This time, 80 percent of girls and 77 percent of boys said yes.

I certainly am not immune to egocentrism and a desire for praise. Somewhere in The Seven Story Mountain Merton says that paradoxically the most admired monks in the monastery were the ones who were least noticed. That goes against my grain in a big way. What good is being a Trappist if you can't be Thomas Merton? I mean, spiritual progress is all well and good, but a little attention wouldn't hurt! Once again I return to my hope that I will some day truly internalize the 'banality of good' and do the small things in my small way that I can do because I should do them. I am working at this costly grace.
The current conventional wisdom about the path to joy is that you must love yourself before you can love another. In contrast, humility teaches that you must love others before you can learn to love yourself. You can only finally truly love yourself when you know that loving yourself is a byproduct of loving the whole of which you are a part.