[FRIAM] narcissism

[Jochen Fromm]

The manipulation aspect is interesting. It is true that narcissists manipulate others to do what they want. They know all tricks of marketing, PR and propaganda.In authoritarian systems dictators use propaganda to create some kind of personality cult. Citizens are manipulated to believe that the authoritarian ruler is infallible and irreplaceable (for example for Lukashenko in Belarus or for Putin in Russia).Have you noticed that Trump uses a lot of subjective adjectives in his vocabulary like terrific or tremendous? He is a one-dimensional person. I believe the only dimension he can think of is himself and if something is good or bad for him. He uses subjective adjectives to express his own subjective judgements and to manipulate others.-J.
-------- Original message --------From: uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> Date: 4/27/20  20:13  (GMT+01:00) To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com> Subject: [FRIAM] narcissism Wacohttps://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/waco/s01I don't know much about Koresh or the Branch Davidians. I remember watching it (and the Ruby Ridge coverage) on TV back then. (I was pretty libertarian back then ... but that was back when the word "libertarian" meant something ... it's a useless word these days. So my understanding of these events was heavily biased by that.) This TV show does a good job, I think, of showing Koresh simply edit out his abuse of the flock while maintaining an air of authenticity in other domains. And the supporting character (Paul Sparks/Steve Schneider) states it explicitly when he says something like "I wish God had chosen someone else" or somesuch ... because Koresh was such a jerk.My conscious attempt to empathize with everyone, in every context, no matter how deplorable it might be, prevents me from accusing someone like Koresh of *rational* manipulation. I tend to think his manipulation of others is the *same* as his manipulation of himself. In programming, we use the term "reflection" or "introspection" to talk about an object manipulating itself in the same way it manipulates other objects (and vice versa). In some circles, it's called "reflexive", which I think is misleading. The idea is that you treat yourself as other or you treat others as yourself.When I hear descriptions of narcissism, this self-other mixing seems absent, which makes all the descriptions of narcissists seem cartoonish and wrong. They portray narcissists as hyper-rational, manipulate others to get what you want, sociopaths [†]. But if all people do a little bit of self-manipulation as well as other-manipulation (and it's the same tools/anatomy that does the manipulation), then narcissists are *not* hyper-rational sociopaths. They can't be if they *feel* hurt by the words of others, insecure, self-important, grandiosity, etc. If they have feelings at all *and* they manipulate their self like they manipulate others, then they can't be these hyper-rational sociopaths. It's either a contradiction or a paradox that needs resolving.We can see this in the DSM 5 _Alternative_ model. The 1st two trait categories (section A, 1-4) are other-centric, whereas the 2nd two are self-centric. Section B's categories seem to flip too, where grandiosity seems self-centric and attention seeking seems to be other-centric. It leaves me wondering if there are really 2, fundamentally different types of narcissism, that driven by an external locus vs. that drive by an internal locus, where the former cares deeply what others think/feel and the latter is totally apathetic to (or denies outright) others' thoughts/feelings. If that's plausible, then former-type narcissists would (as Frank said last week) live horrifying lives, but the latter-types might get a bit frustrated by the complexity of the machine they have to live inside, but could live very happy, solipsistic lives.[†] By "sociopath", I mean something like: someone who doesn't mirror the feelings of others in themselves. Sorry if that's non-standard. I'm using it because I don't have a better word for such a person.-- ☣ uǝlƃ.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservZoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriamunsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comarchives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
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