Yes, I find section on "selective compassion" illuminating. Most of outrage over war crimes is pretty one sided and selective, I believe. It would take a person with truly internalized universal ethics to literally feel pain of own and enemy's civilian victims alike.
I refused to take the covid vax, and the management of my employer of over 30 years, who I thought were friends, bullied me into early retirement, which meant I lost over $1.25 million in foregone income.
Seeing half a dozen of my colleagues mysteriously drop dead without warning in the space of 6 months after being vaccinated made the experience slightly easier, but I'm still bitter about how I was treated.
Given the penchant of many people's willingness to either "go with the crowd" or remain out of the fray, perhaps the best antidote to "Communal Narcissism" and its malignant drive to social conformity must necessarily be an individual overt narcissist, one who is not only impervious to the critiques of certain groups, but actually thrives on them?
Some have argued that only a person with a character like Trump could stand up to the Progressive left and take that entire edifice head on?
History seems to have quite a few examples of what you suggest here David. In fact Victor Davis Hanson calls such people "flawed, tragic heroes". Narcissists like Trump, Churchill, The Seven Samurai, Dirty Harry, John Wayne, all the way back to Ajax have been called in by polite society being preyed upon by predators or authoritarians of whatever persuasion. Such "heroic narcissists" are unconcerned with how they present or what impression they make. They have work to do. They see the threat and confront it, even when it means that the same polite society would like to show them the door after the work is done.
"Narcissists like Trump, Churchill, The Seven Samurai, Dirty Harry, John Wayne, all the way back to Ajax have been called in by polite society being preyed upon by predators or authoritarians of whatever persuasion."
I liked the part where you say collective narcissism is on a continuum, because wanting to do the right thing for oneself and/or society is a good impulse; even if we sometimes enjoy the collective adulation. Therefore I would suggest that a better assessment or diagnosis of communal narcissism must include the term, “addiction”. In this case, an impervious resistance to rational doubt being fed by the drug of righteous pleasure within a circle of Superiority. Yikes! What on earth to do?
Here in the land of Substack we have examples of refugees from “wokeism”, so we know that just trying to get wokeists to see reason, or appealing to their better selves does not usually end well for us. Perhaps we need to admit that our former friends and loved ones are just like us! Have we not been addicted to our own set of mistaken issues? It’s just that they cannot yet admit that “woke” is an addiction just as we could not see the log in our own eyes. Like maybe we are addicted to “MAGA”??.
WOKE communities are addicted to their condition. We must empathize and yet separate. We have to believe that addicts need to accept their condition and want recovery before any solution is palatable. Until then, we just need to win, baby! But that’s just me.
The addiction moniker meets the mark. What any narcissist is addicted to is knowing that he or she is right about what they believe and whatever they are up to. Not having the "faith to doubt" the absolute certainty of one's position reflects an egoic addiction to my identity as someone who is correct about they see themselves and their world. This is why, what is also mentioned in these responses is an actual immunity to what would be the antidote of evidence-based information, data and facts. Only intentions, feelings and beliefs sustain the addiction.
In Episodes 1 and 2 of my youtube series, Unfriended, I describe a co-worker at the Institute of Higher Stupidity that I left last year, who got on my case in a private message for quoting the detectives who'd come to my door when a black infant was slain in gang crossfire. I also quoted the black grandmother of the dead child saying that she did not want the police defunded.
Imagine going after someone for posting QUOTES -- from BLACK PEOPLE -- (the detectives included) -- without showing a shred of sympathy for the grandmother of the dead baby -- or even exhibiting an ounce of concern that a child had been killed!
He finally unfriended me for suggesting that people donate to a person with exorbitant medical bills, as opposed to Luigi Mangioni, who didn't need the money.
Of course, why would anyone take seriously a grown man in his early 50s who reads TEEN VOGUE...
"Yet a path forward exists, illuminated by two men who were both assassinated at the age of 39. Malcolm X experienced a crisis of faith after discovering abuses within the Nation of Islam, but found clarity in his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he prayed alongside “blue-eyed blonds and black skinned Africans”. Upon his return, he offered the following statement: “I’m for the truth, no matter who tells it; I’m for justice no matter who it’s for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such, I stand for what benefits humanity as a whole.”
Martin Luther King likewise sought to combine the disparate values comprising his “big tent”—love from Southern Baptist congregants and the Nietzschean “will to power” from secular allies. In his famous sermon of 1967, he forged a synthesis: “Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love, implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power, correcting everything that stands against love.”
"
This all sounds could but in practice could not have lasted because the inevitable result of integration is people encountering the hard cold reality of biological inequality. It emerges most strongly in the young, hyper charged sexual environments of universities (all of which are elite in some sense-many americans don't even graduate), black youth start realising for all the rhetoric of equality, at the point of their lives when looks and desire are most intense, they're lowest on the totem pole, desired at times for sexual variety (from not all but a section of whites) or to prove anti racist commitments but not more. They realise they can't academically compete with other ethnic groups. And as envy goes, one competes with ones relative neighbor (whites) not the outsider who is further away (Jews and asians).
If there is to be any kind of reconciliation it needs to be based on facts or a willingness to simply look away and accept the consequences of reality.
"It had previously been assumed that these characteristics were healthy—unlike the well-known characteristics of overt narcissism so readily apparent in people like Trump."
Trump's bloviating narcissism is so extreme as to be comical. Talk about no self-awareness. The guy is stupid on a stick, as are his supporters!
Good point Jack. It is meant to suggest "Despite the victim's (imagined) dedication to peace". I'm reminded of a Steely Dan song about John Lennon's "Imagine". It's called "Only a Fool Would Say That". As Tom Sowell might say "Ideals are peaceful. History is violent".
Yes, I find section on "selective compassion" illuminating. Most of outrage over war crimes is pretty one sided and selective, I believe. It would take a person with truly internalized universal ethics to literally feel pain of own and enemy's civilian victims alike.
I refused to take the covid vax, and the management of my employer of over 30 years, who I thought were friends, bullied me into early retirement, which meant I lost over $1.25 million in foregone income.
Seeing half a dozen of my colleagues mysteriously drop dead without warning in the space of 6 months after being vaccinated made the experience slightly easier, but I'm still bitter about how I was treated.
Soft totalitarianism, exactly.
Well presented, thank you!
Given the penchant of many people's willingness to either "go with the crowd" or remain out of the fray, perhaps the best antidote to "Communal Narcissism" and its malignant drive to social conformity must necessarily be an individual overt narcissist, one who is not only impervious to the critiques of certain groups, but actually thrives on them?
Some have argued that only a person with a character like Trump could stand up to the Progressive left and take that entire edifice head on?
History seems to have quite a few examples of what you suggest here David. In fact Victor Davis Hanson calls such people "flawed, tragic heroes". Narcissists like Trump, Churchill, The Seven Samurai, Dirty Harry, John Wayne, all the way back to Ajax have been called in by polite society being preyed upon by predators or authoritarians of whatever persuasion. Such "heroic narcissists" are unconcerned with how they present or what impression they make. They have work to do. They see the threat and confront it, even when it means that the same polite society would like to show them the door after the work is done.
"Narcissists like Trump, Churchill, The Seven Samurai, Dirty Harry, John Wayne, all the way back to Ajax have been called in by polite society being preyed upon by predators or authoritarians of whatever persuasion."
Trump does not belong on that list.
I liked the part where you say collective narcissism is on a continuum, because wanting to do the right thing for oneself and/or society is a good impulse; even if we sometimes enjoy the collective adulation. Therefore I would suggest that a better assessment or diagnosis of communal narcissism must include the term, “addiction”. In this case, an impervious resistance to rational doubt being fed by the drug of righteous pleasure within a circle of Superiority. Yikes! What on earth to do?
Here in the land of Substack we have examples of refugees from “wokeism”, so we know that just trying to get wokeists to see reason, or appealing to their better selves does not usually end well for us. Perhaps we need to admit that our former friends and loved ones are just like us! Have we not been addicted to our own set of mistaken issues? It’s just that they cannot yet admit that “woke” is an addiction just as we could not see the log in our own eyes. Like maybe we are addicted to “MAGA”??.
WOKE communities are addicted to their condition. We must empathize and yet separate. We have to believe that addicts need to accept their condition and want recovery before any solution is palatable. Until then, we just need to win, baby! But that’s just me.
The addiction moniker meets the mark. What any narcissist is addicted to is knowing that he or she is right about what they believe and whatever they are up to. Not having the "faith to doubt" the absolute certainty of one's position reflects an egoic addiction to my identity as someone who is correct about they see themselves and their world. This is why, what is also mentioned in these responses is an actual immunity to what would be the antidote of evidence-based information, data and facts. Only intentions, feelings and beliefs sustain the addiction.
The only known antidote to narcissism, regardless of its variety, is a dose of reality.
The narcissist has an elaborate image he projects. Anything that challenges this is thwarted and rejected, regardless of its veracity.
But real life actually exists. That really is the only thing that can penetrate their delusional worldview.
"That really is the only thing that can penetrate their delusional worldview."
It is sure as hell having a hard time penetrating Trump's delusional worldview
All narcissists have this problem. Most underestimate the lengths a narcissist will go to to preserve their image of themselves. Extreme distortions.
Trump remains unmoved by all the evidence against the vaccines. He still boasts about the operation and his part in it. That is typical.
That said, real life does exist. But the last to convert will always be the narc.
This is spot on and is the reason I left academia. It has only gotten worse. I will never be able to go back. A leopard does not change his spots.
In Episodes 1 and 2 of my youtube series, Unfriended, I describe a co-worker at the Institute of Higher Stupidity that I left last year, who got on my case in a private message for quoting the detectives who'd come to my door when a black infant was slain in gang crossfire. I also quoted the black grandmother of the dead child saying that she did not want the police defunded.
Imagine going after someone for posting QUOTES -- from BLACK PEOPLE -- (the detectives included) -- without showing a shred of sympathy for the grandmother of the dead baby -- or even exhibiting an ounce of concern that a child had been killed!
He finally unfriended me for suggesting that people donate to a person with exorbitant medical bills, as opposed to Luigi Mangioni, who didn't need the money.
Of course, why would anyone take seriously a grown man in his early 50s who reads TEEN VOGUE...
"Yet a path forward exists, illuminated by two men who were both assassinated at the age of 39. Malcolm X experienced a crisis of faith after discovering abuses within the Nation of Islam, but found clarity in his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he prayed alongside “blue-eyed blonds and black skinned Africans”. Upon his return, he offered the following statement: “I’m for the truth, no matter who tells it; I’m for justice no matter who it’s for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such, I stand for what benefits humanity as a whole.”
Martin Luther King likewise sought to combine the disparate values comprising his “big tent”—love from Southern Baptist congregants and the Nietzschean “will to power” from secular allies. In his famous sermon of 1967, he forged a synthesis: “Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love, implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power, correcting everything that stands against love.”
"
This all sounds could but in practice could not have lasted because the inevitable result of integration is people encountering the hard cold reality of biological inequality. It emerges most strongly in the young, hyper charged sexual environments of universities (all of which are elite in some sense-many americans don't even graduate), black youth start realising for all the rhetoric of equality, at the point of their lives when looks and desire are most intense, they're lowest on the totem pole, desired at times for sexual variety (from not all but a section of whites) or to prove anti racist commitments but not more. They realise they can't academically compete with other ethnic groups. And as envy goes, one competes with ones relative neighbor (whites) not the outsider who is further away (Jews and asians).
If there is to be any kind of reconciliation it needs to be based on facts or a willingness to simply look away and accept the consequences of reality.
"It had previously been assumed that these characteristics were healthy—unlike the well-known characteristics of overt narcissism so readily apparent in people like Trump."
Trump's bloviating narcissism is so extreme as to be comical. Talk about no self-awareness. The guy is stupid on a stick, as are his supporters!
"Despite the victims’ dedication to peace"
This is not serious at all. One can explore leftist hypocrisy without venturing into the realm of make-believe.
Good point Jack. It is meant to suggest "Despite the victim's (imagined) dedication to peace". I'm reminded of a Steely Dan song about John Lennon's "Imagine". It's called "Only a Fool Would Say That". As Tom Sowell might say "Ideals are peaceful. History is violent".