on Narcissism

0 – intro

i’m probably autistic, certainly codependent, and definitely have narcissistic traits

the autistic part means i spend incalculable time watching people. i want to understand people. hopefully someday, if i act good enough at it, i too can pass as a people

the codependent part means i’m only emotionally satisfied if i’m taking care of my people. i have a long history of it. my own modus operandi in love is that i find a boyfran who’s struggling in life, take him in and help him understand himself, and about the time he starts to think he doesn’t need me anymore, i let him go. i’ve done this with embarrassing regularity through my entire adulthood

in this way, i once caught a true narcissist

i was swept into the circle of a highly charismatic man who seemed really down on his luck. despite every red flag in front of me, i was fascinated by this man. in him, i saw a mind similar enough to my own that i believed i could help him, though absolutely everyone else he’d ever had in his life had long given up

he gave me a good three years to get away. i watched him go through an entire relationship, start to finish, in which he emotionally crushed his partner

i’m made of stronger stuff than her, i told myself

then one dim day he decided to hold his own life hostage, such that i would adopt him. i mean, i’d offered to let him move into my place several times before, even asked him once or twice. yet he had to threaten his own self before he could actually do it. but one way or another, i took him in

it was supposed to be for a year. ended up being two. there were many ups and downs. we barely managed

nevertheless, using me as support, he was able to clean up his life. he worked through his legal stuff. near the end, he even got off drugs for a while! he was the best him he’d been in probably a decade!

believe me, i patted myself on the back for each of his victories

yet, he was still a narcissist. even by the time he moved out, i would count good days versus bad days inside any given month

this dovetails back to my third self-accusation, the one where i acknowledge my own narcissistic traits, by declaring two interlocking points that i’ve come to believe:

1. narcissism is a spectrum
2. narcissism can come and go

narcissism is a spectrum, in that i believe everyone in our society manifests narcissistic traits. we’ve got it so engrained into our culture that we enshrine certain narcissisms as being good moral behavior

… but i get ahead. this is what i now call ‘macro-’ narcissism. more on this in part three

in part two, i’ll speculate on the physiology behind narcissism. i’ll throw you a book recommendation as well, as a bonus prize for you listening to me

that leaves part one, where we talk about narcissism in the individual, as i came to understand it

i’ll try to keep my anecdotes to a minimum. this is not my whole journal of living with my man. that is writ elsewhere. as much as i can, here i will focus on what i’ve learned, not so much how i learned it

ready?

let’s go

1 – micro -narcissim

in the individual

i just argued that most everybody has narcissistic traits. but what does it mean to be a narcissist?

that actually strikes the heart of one of the core behaviors i kept hearing my man do

i call it labeling

here’s a list of this, and other behaviors, that i came to understand:

• DARVO
• triangulation
• labeling
• facet-blindness
• unwillingness to learn
• pick me up and save me
• all of the attention
• controlling identity
• chooses who to abuse
• same punchline, always
• rage
• irrational actor
• gaslighting
• sealioning

i’ll go through each of these in turn. but again i want to call out: from what i saw, these traits could all come and go

was this unique to my man? i don’t think so. i’ve read stories of other narcissists who go through cycles of doing emotional or physical violence and then trying to make up for it

my man never tried to make up for any hurt he ever caused. yet he did have days when he seemed to recognize that i had a point of view. he even had days when he acted interested in hearing what i had to say

then he had other days when he would tell me my point of view, and disregard it anyway

but his good days gave me hope that he could grow out of it. each rare moment when he seemed to understand someone’s viewpoint felt like a glistening star, and my heart surged as i lept one such star to another as a trail of ethical breadcrumbs

right, no anecdotes. metaphors should be similarly off limits

okay then, let’s just list out a lot of bad behaviors

symptoms

DARVO

before i learned the name DARVO, or even acknowledged my man could be called a narcissist, i’d identified this linguistic pattern as something he did

i called it the kumquat syndrome, because in one frustrated argument i posed “anything i say to you, you say right back at me. the words don’t even have to make sense. if i called you a kumquat, within fifteen seconds you’d be explaining to me that i’m the real kumquat!”

that’s DARVO, in a nutshell. it’s actually an acronym, and it stands for:

• Defend
• Attack
• Reversal of Victim and Offender

i was reading a story writ by a woman who referred to her own abusive ex as Mr. DARVO, and that’s what made me look up the term. it hit me in instant recognition, that’s exactly what my man did

anything that damages the narcissist’s ego, we should expect them to turn around and explain to us that it’s all our fault they do that. also, not only is it our fault, it’s also because we are a much stronger example of the bad behavior than they are

triangulation

triangulation is another pattern i’d picked up early then learned the name of later

the lecture i was listening to said triangulation is when the narcissist tells us that it’s not just their opinion we’re up against, but it’s also someone else’s opinion too

the way she was talking, she meant someone else with specific titles or names. like the narcissist will tell us that it’s their therapist who agrees with them, that such-and-such is what’s wrong with us

in my man, he never credited anyone specific, but he’d often credit a nebulous “everyone” who agreed with him, on everything

“everyone” would be mad at me, he’d tell me, because of what i did the other day. or it didn’t have to be me. “everyone” at his place of work would be mad at whichever other worker he happened to be mad at that day

i believe this is the same thing though. that is, he is not presenting his feelings, he is an impassive third party who carries the judgement of others. if i disagree, well, he’s just the messenger

rarely, it could even be a good thing. one time, me and some of his friends had been playing a game together, and he explained that “everyone” was impressed that my character was more advanced than the hardcore gamer’s character in our group

labeling

this i never learned a formal name for, so we’ll go with mine: labeling

my man assigned labels to everyone. i’ll spare you the ones he called me

any time someone did something he didn’t like, it’s because they were some label

• someone driving bad? it’s because they are a woman
• someone makes a bad decision? it’s because they are stupid

ultimately i realized this was a dehumanizing technique. when he labeled someone, they became a lesser human, bound by some condition. their behavior was fully explained by their label. there was no need to try to understand any deeper reasoning

this is the risk then

when we label someone a narcissist, do we say nothing more can be understood about why they do what they do?

i say no

that’s the whole point of what this long talk is about: trying to justify why i believe narcissists are, and how we might be able to improve ourselves around this concept

we just have a lot more symptoms to get through before we get there

facet-blindness

facet-blindness is another name of my making

maybe depth-blindness?

the idea is a narcissist does not see our person as any deeper than whatever facet we have currently on display

it does not matter what we have done in the past, have a resume full of doing, and can demonstrate ability to do, at any time. if we are not doing it right now, then we are fully incapable of doing it

but! – this applies to themself as well. there is no truth other than the truth the narcissist is currently thinking about at this moment. in the case of mine, he could change his mind from one sentence to the next, with no awareness he’d ever held any other conviction

unwillingness to learn

one thing the narcissist does not do is study narcissism. nor study anything else, as far as i can tell

mine would very occasionally be open to my opinion on a topic. like once every couple moons or so

yet he also would tell his mom how to be a mom. he told his sister how to be a mom. he told doctors how to practice medicine, therapists how to do therapy, and anyone basically anything. he shunned every field of learning, and referred to anyone who believed in anything as sheep. he disregarded book studies as worthless, counted actual experience as meaningful only if it was his experience, and so on and so forth

a narcissist truly believes their gut instinct is superior to any knowledge anyone else has ever had, or ever shall have

pick me up and save me

i have him on recording once, during some argument, where he grants outright that he’s going out and hurting himself because i’m not giving him enough attention

this was my man’s modus operandi in love: he would dramatically throw himself down, then wait to be picked up and reassured that he’s appreciated

related to this, he would not ask for help if he needed it. on small things, he would demand help, and argue vehemently these two concepts were the exact same thing. on big topics, he would expect help to be his automatically

i speculated two possible origins for this:

(1) i wondered if it was a responsibility dodge. if he asked for help, then he’s taking responsibility for fixing his problems, thus it’s his fault if things don’t work out. but if he demands help or expects help, then when things don’t work out, it’s entirely our fault for neglecting him

(2) i also wondered if he could conceive of love between equals at all, as opposed to say, the love between a parent and a child. he’d regularly flop back and forth on whether he wanted to be the parent or the child, but any emotional interaction always had to have a power dynamic

nevertheless, this trait is undoubtedly how i was caught: i’m vulnerable to taking care of my people

all off the attention

the narcissist requires all of our attention. they consider it a moral violation if we are not present when they want us

worse yet is to be present and demonstrably disregard them

worst of all: run away when they’re trying to actively hurt us

mine, to my face, defined it as abusive to him if i ran away when he was tying to hurt me

controlling identity

a narcissist believes it is their mission to tell us who we are

within one month of moving into my house, mine told me in so many words. he claimed it was his mission to get me to give up all my stupid ideas

the context was i had just mentioned which holiday was most special to me

to this day, i’m not sure which part of what i said he took offense to. was it where i believed in a holiday at all? was it that i had a special holiday that he had forgotten to account for, and thus couldn’t celebrate with me? i suspect this latter. i think he felt like he’d failed me somehow, and that’s why he took it out on me

most of two years later, i watched him go through a 24-hour crush on someone. you know, massive crush. the kind where in his mind, my man has already gotten the other guy to break up with their mate for his benefit, and then they both run off and live happily together forever

mine also told me, in so many words, that he was going to make this other guy change his name. because the man had a stupid name, he said

there are no limits or boundaries. the narcissist gets to tinker with the very core identity of anyone to whom they are close

this leads directly to:

narcissists pick and choose whom to abuse

i read this on some victim services paperwork. it was a lot of words on a faded, photocopied page, trying to get the reader to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship

sure, i told myself. i opted into this, i reminded myself

then i made myself start checking things off on their list anyway

one thing this paper claimed was that abusers pick and choose whom to abuse

this is so true. in one moment, mine could be calling me the worst names in history, and probing for any emotional weakness to throw abuse at. then in the next, he’d go outside and have a joking conversation with the neighbor, probably about how intolerable i was. then he’d ride off to work in a seeming good mood

i hear you asking: how could i have missed so many red flags?

how could i have opted into this?

my answer is: — the worst of this didn’t manifest until after we started living together

he lived off me for a few years, sure, financially and emotionally. still, the moment he moved in with me, some switch flipped inside of him, and all the worst all came to be. i suddenly was his property to redefine as he wanted

i was reading a social media thread. this woman was writing about the intuitions she’d gained from a lifetime of experience working in victim advocacy. to put no finer point on it, her words scared the living shit out of me

she wrote about people who did extremely violent crimes, like murdering their own family sort of things. she said these people universally defined themselves as being the victims of the situation. when asked to define how they were the victims, the most common answer was “they wouldn’t listen to me”

mine tried to beat the crap out of me a few times, yes. but beyond that, i could not even estimate a count of how many times he was mad at me for “not listening” to him, in those exact words

this woman went on to talk about how we fail the narcissist by not letting them define who we are. then she left me with an analogy that’s stuck with me hard:

“we are not real people to them. we are beachballs, thrown into the lion’s enclosure, for the enrichment of the lion”

i feel that

the moment i let mine move in, he’d decided i’d graduated to some inner circle. thus it was okay to claw me, he reasoned, for the sake that he felt like clawing someone that day. it would be fun even! clawing someone is fun!

why will i not understand how much fun it is when he claws me‽

same punchline, always

i realized every story my man ever told me always had the exact same punchline

that is: every story was about the glory of him

maybe he was telling how he’d pushed his ex-wife beyond her limits, and how she’d lost several dress sizes in a single week as a result… but glory to him for challenging her!

or maybe he is telling me about chaos at work, yet despite that, he was zen-like, doing his own thing while in charge of multiple stations at once… glory to him!

every story, ever, the unspoken punchline was glory to him

rage

always my narcissist was mad

some of this because the universe was ignoring him, or mistreating him. it was always someone else’s fault that anything bad happened to him, of course. see DARVO, that we started this list with, and see not asking for help, just a bit above

but even beyond that, he’d be mad as a background state of being

on some level even he was aware of this. more than once he wished to me that he wasn’t just mad all the time. he’d wake up mad, he’d say, and stay mad all day

only sometimes could he get past anger

sad as it is, i observed a correlation with days he was feeling worn down, or even actually physically sick. on those days, he would be more likely to understand the feelings of other people, and less likely to be mad about it

when he would tell me he was feeling normal again, then his tendency to not understand that i was a person would likewise return in full force

irrational actor

the science of economics defines a rational actor as someone who acts in their own best interests. in this way, during his worst of times, mine became an irrational actor

over time, i came to think about the old phrase, “he would cut off his own nose to spite his face”

see, my man could be going okay for weeks, or even months. he’d be doing well in life, and be on track for more. then out of seeming nowhere, he’d start throwing shit at every ally he had. i would watch as he’d knowingly undermine every plan and opportunity he had open to him, seemingly for fifteen more seconds of being mad

i can not over-emphasize how utterly crazy it feels to be on the receiving end of this

we always believe a person should be aware of the consequences of their actions. yet on his worst days, mine would take consequences as more encouragement to be more destructive yet. some sort of bring it on complex. bring on the consequences, he’ll prove he’s better than anything that any of us can throw at him

but to say it another way: the narcissist will at times knowingly and deliberately work against their own best interests

this is the very definition of an irrational actor

gaslighting & sealioning

i’ll finish on these terms, because they’re often mentioned when talking about narcissistic behavior. have i seen examples? totally. but i think each is a little inapplicable in its own way

gaslighting is the idea of controlling someone’s belief in the truth. absolutely, i noticed this. it’s why i started keeping a journal in the first place, and would record some of our arguments. my man would habitually tell me i’d said or done things that i clearly remembered different. i started logging life so i’d have evidence for my own recall of what had happened

but i think gaslighting is locked up in the deeper issue of controlling identity. that is, i feel like we’ve covered it already. i should be him, and so anything i do that disagrees with his memory of what happened is inherently wrong. or i should be a toy for him to claw, and it’s okay for him to mislead me on anything he wants, just to see if he can

that’s one i saw him do to his ex rather often: he’d feed her a fiction, then ridicule her for being so gullible as to believe him

sealioning i feel is similar, just outside the family unit instead of inside

sealioning is when the narcissist walks up on a couple in a bar, flirts with the girl, then explains meticulously to the girl, her guy, the bartender, and everyone else who’s listening that he’s just having a conversation, and there’s no need for anyone to take any offense

that’s the key words of sealioning: just having a conversation

what this all means

so what ties all of this together?

i’ve been suggesting it the whole way through but i’ll say it in words:

the narcissist has no ability to empathize with others

they literally can not recognize our point of view as valid, reasoned, nor relevant

they may observe our feelings, but only so much as to manipulate us, or more often yet, to explain to us why our feelings are wrong, and fail them

now let’s talk about why all this might be

2 – physiology… and implications

looking up the biological mechanics of narcissism, nobody seems to have posed any ideas that really have stuck

i found one study that relates narcissistic personality disorder with borderline personality disorder, because they both show similar levels of the same trace neuro-metabolite. the authors didn’t really seem to say if this meant anything. i found it interesting though, because borderline personality disorder was one of the ideas i cycled through while trying to decide what label best applied to mine

borderline disorder can be described as ‘feeling too much.’ that is, any small feeling, happy or sad, is amped up to maximum. it skews the person’s entire day, or week, or more

this too, i’d seen in mine

when he was happy, he was authentically happy. it was a clarity of happiness, fully undiluted by any nuance. this is a large part of why he is so charismatic, because he could be an absolute joy to be around

but in his default state, he’d be mad at everything, and would impassively explain how whatever emotional vulnerability i’d just shown was my worst character flaw ever

it was seriously like this man had two different modes of emotional control

apparently the real, textbook difference between narcissistic and borderline personality disorders is self-esteem. that is, to put another word on it: ego. borderline sufferers have low self-esteem, while narcissists have unassailably high self-esteem

this too, correlates with mine

in his down times, he hated himself

on his amped-up days, he was the only real person in an otherwise simulated world

his words, not mine

two half-brains

i have come to have a very deep appreciation for the idea that we are each two half-brains

in neurology, this is accepted as fact. when talking about physical brain structures, our science first and foremost identifies which hemisphere something is in

language centers, for instance, are in the left prefrontal cortex. this is also where a lot of logic and reasoning happens. it’s also the home of what one book that i read called our “interpreter module”

book recommendation

a book i’d like to recommend is: “Who’s In Charge?” by Dr. Gazzaniga

Dr. G. is the head of neuroscience at some major university. he’s spent most of his career doing research on people who’d had their left and right brains severed from each other, for one medical reason or another. “Who’s In Charge?” is the last book he’s writ

a very large part of the text is spent discussing the “interpreter module.” this module of our brain Dr. G. describes like a storyteller. the job of this part is to make up a good story as to why our own behavior is reasonable

the punchline of the book is that – according to all modern science – our logic and reason do not choose our behavior. our behavior is chosen by the deeper parts of the brain, parts that have no capacity for logic, nor language. about ten or so milliseconds after we’ve decided to do something, our interpreter module kicks-in and justifies to us why we are deciding to do it

oh, and by the by, our interpreter module will totally lie, and even completely manufacture evidence if it needs to, in order to maintain a world view that we have acted rationally

the basic structure and purpose of this brain module is to make us make sense to ourselves, at all costs

as earth-shaking as this idea was, i’d run across the edges of it in past things i’d read, so i didn’t find it all that shocking. i mean, some of the words i used right here i borrowed from a Simon Sinek TED talk

what really rocked me though was when Dr. G mentioned, almost offhandedly, that our empathic center of our brain, the part able to recognize other people’s thoughts and feelings, is located in our right hemisphere

that is the other side of our brain from our egos

what if, just going out on a rhetorical limb, someone’s left brain had totally taken charge of them, and blocked out their own right brain, to the best of their intentions?

would the person demonstrate an inability to empathize with those whom they abuse? is it possible this would manifest as narcissism?

what if the right brain was really mad about being blocked out and ignored?

could this potentially manifest as a background state of rage?

hearing voices

my man no longer hears voices. he used to though. he did not enjoy the experience

he said the voices were always terrible things. in the middle of anything he was doing, he might stop, hold his head, and say “shut up!,” out loud, but to himself. it was the only thing that worked, he said

Dr. G’s book also had something about this

in patients who’s brain hemispheres were disconnected, he observed that talking to themselves out loud was one technique they learned to cope. it seems that although our main language center is in the our left hemisphere, that only means that the left hemisphere is what produces speach

each of our hemispheres, it seems, can understand speach

i watched a fascinating TED talk on hearing voices. the presenter described her own experience as hearing a continuous commentary on what she was doing, as if from a third-party observer. she said she had to learn that the self-judging voice in her head was highly metaphorical. that is, things didn’t usually mean their most obvious first thing

do i hear voices? not really? but yes? -ish?

most definitely not in this way though

for one, i don’t hear a voice, plain of day, like these folk talk about

mine is on the quiet. it’s in the same way i might read quietly, keeping the words on the inside. but there is more there than just an inner monolog. i also get sounds, visual or spatial impressions, and sometimes even phrases that don’t make immediate sense, nor seem to originate from anywhere

they are highly metaphorical though

do you know that one robot in the Transformers movie? i think he’s a yellow car. he’s got a busted speech center, and he can’t really make normal words. instead, he tunes his radio to a bunch of different stations, and assembles what he wants to say by piecing together unrelated snippets of songs

there’s a point many years ago where i realized a part of my own brain did exactly that. though, instead of radio, the base input sounds were anything i had ever heard and remembered

there’s a point a lot more recently where i realized the part of my brain that does this is probably my right hemisphere

likewise, the part of my brain that reasons about it being a separate part of my brain is most likely my ego module, in my left hemisphere

years before he moved in with me, i remember quipping to my man that the best thing that ever happened was when the different parts of my brain learned to use words to argue things out with each other. this was long before he admitted hearing voices, though i suspected. but i remember he got the most abhorrent expression on his face, looked me straight in the eye, and just said, “no!”

bicameral mind

there is a theory called the bicameral mind

it goes like this: consciousness is a very modern thing, evolution-wise

we’re talking like, consciousness as we know it has come about in just the last five thousand years

yes, writing itself is older than that

but before then, this idea proposes, our left brains were like an agent on the ground, handling moment-to-moment decisions. our right brains were the controller in the sky, observing and directing our longer-term behavior

when old literature says people heard commands from god? that was literal, this theory presents. the left brain would hear words, from the right brain, that came with a sense of otherness and commandment. then the left brain would obey, because that’s what one did, when commanded by god

at some point though, some evolution happened, and the left brain came to understand metaphor. we as a people grew to recognize these words from beyond the veil were, in fact, open to interpretation

our left brain then began to do a little self-glorying, even if the other side got upset about it

poof, we suddenly have modern humans, building modern ego-maximizing civilization

i fully recognize that all this is what a good science explainer might call “woo-woo land.” bicameral mind is a theory explored in a popular sci-fi story to explain how robots might be guided towards sapience

among real psychologists, does it have a lot of attention?

no, it does not

why is this though? i propose bicameral mind is unpopular specifically because we have idealized the notion that identity is singular, and the very concept of bicameral mind says our identity is otherwise

said another way: bicameral mind theory makes our ego uncomfortable, thus we reject it

i’ll have more on this too, later

for now, let’s talk society

3 – macro -narcissism

in the broader web of us all, let’s talk about ego

i pose the word ‘ego’ as an exact synonym for the interpreter module of our brain. the interpreter structure describes to each of us how we ourself are rational, logical, and perfect. everyone else is flawed, and merely needs adjusted to our own point of view

if this is not ego, what is?

yes, it’s finally time to discuss the sausage dangling in this room

— masculinity

my man is, well, a man

he is very obsessed with that

is it necessary to be male, to be a narcissist?

absolutely not. we even have a specific name in our culture for a female narcissist. we call them Karen. my pity to anyone actually named that

yet masculinity and narcissism are deeply entwined. grabbing just a handful of examples that come to mind, please consider these typically masculine behaviors to be my argument:

• women are possessions
• establish dominance
• repress feelings
• boast

my man was obsessed with his masculinity

he saw his partner – me, priors, and future alike – as being his bitch

he was always mad at me for not being submissive enough. that’s why he needed to find a new bitch. his words

his favorite story of his ex-wife involved her helplessness while he swooped in and rescued her entire family from a minor inconvenience

at another moment he told me that if he thought of me as a woman, he’d no longer see it as okay to lay hands on me when i deserved it. similarly, he claimed in many other times that women were bad drivers, and had weaker lungs and weaker circulation than men

masculinity was quintessential to my man. i’m convinced that part of the reason he hated himself so much was his endless struggle to accept that he is not straight, and thus on some level, is inherently un-masculine

— patriarchy

masculinity flows into patriarchy

the idea that the most dominant man should be in charge is so deeply writ into our society that all the world’s leaders are men, and have been men, for thousands of years. one has to go back to ancient times to find matriarchal societies

bicameral mind? anyone? maybe? that’s my claim anyway

i claim that since the ego evolved, those who have believed its internal self-aggrandizing the most have been men, and said men have all managed to gaslight and intimidate everyone else into believing that men in specific should be allowed to make the rules, and aggression is how to prove which men should do it

in fact this is not even just men in general, but specializes for men who exhibit the most ego-centric behaviors of all. our entire world economy sways by the whims of ego maximizers

if inherited lineages of wealth and power aren’t entrenched narcissism, what is?

can anyone really make an argument that because someone’s grandfather won a few wars, to this day that someone as an individual should have his ideas given any extra credence?

or that particular someone deserves any more opportunities than a common anyone?

really?

— hierarchy

patriarchy flows into hierarchy

when we define the point of life as being better than everyone else, for some ill-defined measure of being better, then the very meaning of life becomes climbing ladders, endlessly trying to prove we’re worthy

we measure success not by contentment, but entirely by who’s achieving more of what we don’t have

we shit on those beneath us just to prove we’re superior

we know that above a certain economic level, happiness doesn’t correlate with any metric of wealth. all of psychology tells us this. yet our whole society is defined by, and ruled by, the need to prove our place by earning wealth

the upward gradient is what matters. having wealth isn’t sufficient. one must demonstrate ability at all times to earn even more wealth

yet if we look close, all of capitalism – and colonialism before it – is based on taking things from out-groups and bringing the prizes home to share with our own personal in-group

is this cooperative behavior?

not even

is this narcissistic behavior, where we find dehumanizing labels such as “customers” or “developing nations” to justify why it’s okay to exploit those other people over there, in order to make ourselves feel better?

absolutely it’s narcissistic

— narcissism is the mind virus

narcissism is the mind virus that has evolved our culture into what we are today

without our egos learning to argue back against the voices from across the veil, we’d still all be taking commands from god. for this evolution, we should be thankful

but the ego is a maximizer

the ego, left in charge, has demonstrably lead to all of earth’s resources being subjugated into a massive economic battle, just to prove who’s more masculine than whom

just to be clear, you and i are consumable resources in this economic war

i pose this is bad

the left brain narcissist would hear my word and see an attack. i’m obviously out to destroy them, because i don’t want them to be in charge. the idea of not being in charge literally feels like destruction to an ego

yet i’m hoping the broader you are able to stick with me here, and consider my point of view

let’s get a little more radical yet

4 – is there a cure?

they say we only ever hate others for reflecting aspects we do not like about ourself

who “they” is who said that, i’m not really sure. a little googling gave me multiple origins for that set of words

i like it though. i think it’s true. we all have narcissistic traits. it’s core to being a functioning person in our society. to even survive, we all have to be out for our own benefit on some level

we brush up now against the issue of morality, and what it means to be a good person. i can point to a whole youtube channel dedicated to philosophy that still hasn’t weighed-in on how to be a good person. yet, today, i will do so

my partial answer is bioethics

bioethics

say you invite a bunch of medical doctors, psychologists, philosophers, and so forth, all into one room and charge them to come up with a common morality

in this way, “bioethics” is the name for the cross-disciplinary field of all modern social sciences piled together into one heap

bioethicists study a lot of really hard questions, about actual real people, in really tough corner cases that have actually come up in real life. beginning- and end-of-life questions usually dominate

just for a couple, low-ball, easy examples, consider:

• is it okay for a mother to abort a fetus when diagnosis of down syndrome is confirmed?
  • bear in mind, down syndrome is a random chance genetic abnormality that guarantees the child will have inhibited physical and mental development

or,

• under what conditions is medically assisted suicide a reasonable option?

these are both broad, nebulous questions. individual case depths are about individual specific persons who faced very real life gnarly circumstances. bioethics is the science of trying to find a universal code of ethics that works no matter how deep into any specific rabbit’s crusty and stinky personal hole we actually go

i can not do any real justice to the field here, in the closing arc of my talk

i’ll try to summarize best i can then, when i say that bioethicists tend to believe a handful of tenants that we all need to strive toward. these change a little depending on who you read, but my personal favorite list is:

• beneficence
• non-maleficence
• autonomy
• justice

beneficence means: try to do things that help others

non-maleficence means: try to not do things that would hurt others

autonomy means: we respect each other’s agency as individuals in charge of our own lives

justice means: we respect the social debt we owe each other

i believe that if we could somehow codify these principles, or something like them, into our highest guiding levels of our society, we’d be on the right track

if we all came to agree upon some sort of world-wide charter of ethics, even if not this, could we somehow tame even capitalism?

this is hypothetical, and on the macro scale, which is really hard to reason about. let’s jump back to the micro scale, and the individual

mine

truth: the opposite of narcissism is empathy

we’ve covered this from beachballs thrown into a lion’s enclosure, to the brain structures that might be a reasoning behind it

i also have narcissism in me. the very idea that i am somehow better than all mine’s prior exes, able to handle what they could not? oh yes, i’ve got this in me

i can not in any good conscience recommend you do what i did. please do not adopt someone, hoping to help them better understand themself. the damages i took were real

yet, despite the trauma, i have indeed gained understanding. specifically i have gained understanding on parts of myself that i do not like.

i have seen what happens if these traits are allowed to dominate

actual advice

over the last many years i’ve come to write a lot

beyond this essay, and the journal that inspired it, i write a lot of fiction. i believe that through writing i’ve been able to somewhat force open my own perspective. as pure exercise, i’ve sometimes made myself rewrite entire story scenes from a different character’s viewpoint. inevitably, i’ve kept the new version over the old, because it has more nuance

this has been my path though. writing may not be an art that binds for you

other things i’ve found meaningful are flow arts, like spinning poi, and martial arts, like aikido. plus, of course, yoga. truly, any physical thing that requires coordination between both sides of the body

a semi-famous artist once said that they’d never believed the thing where the left and right sides of the brain did tasks different. (despite neuroscience saying it’s true, ya know?) i replied back that when i was learning to spin poi, it became clear real fast that my right and left hands learned technique different from each other. on my right i had to reason out how the poi was to move. on my left, i had to feel my way through a motion

buddhism says to starve the ego

buddhism is a powerful school of thought, if you want one. i found large parts of it useful. i meditate daily, for one thing

but i couldn’t starve my ego, i had to swallow it. that is, there is a specific day i can point to where part of me that had been in charge utterly gave up, and let the new me whom i was trying to be take over. at the moment of it, it felt like being consumed, as well as doing the consuming

ultimately, to end this ramble, here’s my proposed cure: the theory of many minds

5 – The Theory of Many Minds

the idea of the bicameral mind is interesting, intellectually, but it doesn’t address what it feels like on the inside. for years i’ve been obsessed with left side versus right. i was spinning poi almost a decade before i even met my man

the problem was, i never knew which part of my thoughts came from the left and what part was right

my recent gain came when i gave up caring. i came to accept it’s all me. yes, i have a left and right side, and they probably don’t agree on what i should be doing. but they’re still both me

more subtly, i am not able to tell the difference

my ego side has the complete ability to pretend the other side doesn’t exist, and be utterly unaware that i’m doing it. this i can do while processing perceptions, and full on reasoned interpretation from the other side

so my real advice is this: seek cooperation inside

find ways to start trusting our own self. there may be a lot of rage built up from being ignored for so long. but over time, trust can be built. we only have one body, and we really do better if we cooperate on steering it

the nuance here is i don’t feel like two. instead i feel like many. my identity doesn’t seem tied to left or right, it seems tied to whatever circuit of memory is running right about now

who’s in charge can vary a dozen times in as many minutes

i never know which part of me any idea comes from. trying to figure out which part of my complex past inspires any particular idea is shear distraction, and leads to bias

i’m all me. i should be considering ideas from all of me, all of the time. i just have to accept that i am not one, i am many. i switch at any time on which aspect of me is in charge

it feels heavy sometimes

but we’re all generally aligned to most of the same goals these days

as a downside, over the last several years i may have manifested a moderate case of ADHD. yay for neuroplasticity!

maybe, just maybe, some of these words might be helpful to you, reader. please keep the ones that are useful, and disregard the rest

good luck to you, on dealing with whichever ego in your life has inspired you to find my words. i mean this whether it’s a whole person or even a fragment of your own self. just, good luck to you

all my love as well

thank you for reading my story