We all know them. The people who are clinically self-centered and manipulative. They’re often quite charming (think: Bill Clinton), but they see people not as fellow human beings, but as objects to manipulate for their own advantage. I’m speaking, of course, of narcissists, and they seem to be flooding America.
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The term “narcissist” refers to the Greek mythological figure, Narcissus, a beautiful young man so cruel to the nymph Echo that the gods punished him by making him fall in love with his own reflection. Since that reflection could not love him back, he died from unrequited love.
In modern psych talk, when people suffer from true narcissistic personality disorder, the description is less poetic—and, I’m betting, as you look at the people around you and, especially in politics and public life, very familiar:
Grandiose, thick-skinned NPD patients show a sense of uniqueness or superiority, attitudes of entitlement, a belief that others envy their abilities or status, low empathy, social dominance, superficial charm, disdainfulness or snobbery, and an exploitative interpersonal style characterized by manipulation and selfishness.
Vulnerable, thin-skinned individuals with NPD also show entitlement, selfishness and low empathy, but uniquely, they demonstrate feelings of shame and inferiority, are envious of others’ abilities or status, tend to be shy, paranoid, vindictive, and emotionally dependent on admiration, and show extreme rage and hostility in response to rejection and criticism. This behavior stems from low-self esteem, a need for admiration and validation, and social belonging.
While vulnerable-type patients typically show extreme distress and dysfunction, grandiose variants tend to be associated with greater psychological wellbeing, often manifesting dysfunction by occupational conflict, harming others, antisocial behavior or emotional strain resulting from perfectionism.
I honestly feel as if I’ve just described the entire Democrat party, including those latest arrivals to the party in the form of the Democratic Socialists of America.
What’s baffling is why narcissism seems to have become something of a national pastime. Those of us older than 40 remember a time when fewer people seemed afflicted by these pathologies, especially in politics. Back then, there were still statesmen (what one might call altruistic visionaries) among the politicians. The statesmen might have the wrong ideas, but they were bigger than petty party politics.
In 2010, Barbara Oakley, a UCSF researcher, wrote a truly fascinating book called Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend. The book discusses personality disorders, which encompass everything from histrionic personality disorder (the drama queens) to narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy. Oakley concluded that the problem is a combination of nature and nurture. There are definite genetic traits, but a child’s upbringing can determine whether those traits manifest at all or, if they do manifest, if they can be steered into socially appropriate and non-harmful behaviors.
I’ve recently been thinking about the point about upbringing. In the 1960s, the left began very effectively to break down America’s societal foundations: Faith, family, and patriotism.
God was dead, so people became their own little gods. (The Marxist dream, and the central part of the whole “queer” movement.) Families were broken, sometimes for excellent reasons (one spouse was dangerous, violent, or otherwise dysfunctional) but often because one parent just “wasn’t happy” (as was the case with several women and men I met when raising my kids). And patriotism was, of course, replaced with a grinding antipathy toward America and its institutions.
With these anchors gone, new ones arose in their place: self-esteem and the absolute necessity of self-fulfillment. “The pursuit of happiness,” by which the Founding generation meant self-improvement by embracing virtue, was replaced with the navel-gazing belief that happiness flows from material comfort (not to be sneezed at) and a life where you always feel “good.”
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Nothing more clearly illustrates the difference between America’s old approach to education and its new one than the “readers. These were books of essays chosen to teach reading and elocution, and were standard in every classroom a hundred and more years ago. However, they also served to instill American values.
I wrote about them yesterday in connection with America’s push for assimilation during the mass (legal) immigration that flooded America from 1880 through 1920. Once the kids passed the “Dick and Jane“ stage, the books had essays intended to instill core American values.
My focus yesterday was patriotism, but I noticed in passing how many of the essays were about service to others. Probably the most widely known readers were from McGuffey, and the difference between then and now is striking, as seen in this reader aimed at the middle school age group:
McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader (Revised) (© 1879, 1896, 1907, 1920)
This book establishes that American public schools firmly sought to mold children’s character: love of God, country, and family was intertwined with a manifest duty to convert that love into service.
The contents included such historical, moral, and patriotic essays as Respect for the Sabbath Rewarded, The Battle of Blenheim, King Charles II and William Penn, The Righteous Never Forsaken, The Relief of Lucknow, The Goodness of God, The Hour of Prayer, The Blue and the Gray, Make Way for Liberty, How Sleep the Brave, Supposed Speech of John Adams, No Excellence Without Labor, The Boston Massacre, Sowing and Reaping, Religion the only Basis of Society, The Character of a Happy Life, and The Bible the Best of Classics.
In other words, our entire culture encouraged children to turn outwards, not inwards, and to embrace God and country.
In the same way, the most popular girls’ book of the era, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, had an overriding moral point: True happiness is found through serving others, not oneself, a lesson both of the book’s headstrong girls, Amy and Jo, must learn to find their “happily ever afters.” It wasn’t about self-abnegation to the point of female erasure, as the feminists would have it. It was, instead, about abandoning immature narcissism in favor of the kind of maturity that leads to a good and fulfilling life.
In today’s world, too many children, especially those struggling with broken homes, believe happiness comes from ever more material goods, from fame (I mean, isn’t every former Disney and Nickelodeon child star oozing happiness?), and from “influencing.”
They don’t understand, and society doesn’t teach them, that focusing on these things leaves a hollow core within you, because the best of you knows that these pursuits are meaningless, tearing you down, not building you up. And so the pathologies grow: depression because they’re not happy, anger at a world that’s let them down, the search for meaning in sexual cosplay and promiscuity, the rejection of humans through computer games, and so much more.
They grow up believing the world owes them, and they become increasingly disconnected from the individuals in that world. Having created a society that produces empty shells rather than fully realized people, the Marxists find these youngsters easy pickings for a promise that Big Government will fill the emptiness our culture has created within them.
Mommas (and Poppas), don’t let your babies grow up to be narcissists. Faith, family, patriotism, love, and service—exactly what classical American values taught—will help them understand that they are not the center of the universe, which is a cold, lonely, and ultimately unfulfilling place.
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