MMX2010
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RE: Jordan Owen fires Davis Aurini
(03-07-2015 03:52 PM)Aurini Wrote: (03-06-2015 10:46 PM)MMX2010 Wrote: If my former friend were successful through music, he'd be Alpha. But he's defined himself based on his successful marriage, which is dangerous not only because marital success is subjective but because you can carefully hide all evidence of your failure from others. I've lived in his house long enough to know how crazy his marriage is, but anyone else can judge his marriage by shallow appearances, which they both can easily maintain.
Is this not the very definition of narcissism? Projecting a false front at the world and hiding your secret shame, then raging at those who discover it? The only difference here is that you're seeing the overt mechanics of narcissism in his household, how it's meant to have a pretty facade, but it's a mess behind closed doors.
Absolutely.
If you haven't read TheLastPsychiatrist's musings on narcissism, you should; they're amazing.
The article most relevant to your question is either this one: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/11/a...ology.html
Quote:The narcissist feels unhappy because he thinks his life isn't as it should be, or things are going wrong; but all of those feelings find origin in frustration, a specific frustration: the inability to love the other person.
He's a man in a glass box, unable to connect. He thinks the problem is people don't like him, or not enough, so he exerts massive energy into the creation and maintenance of an identity: if they think of me as X...
But that attempt is always futile, not because you can't trick the other person-- you can, for an entire lifetime, it's quite easy. But even then, the man in the box is still unsatisfied, still frustrated, because no amount of identity maintenance will break that glass box.
If the other person is also in a glass box, then you have a serious problem. If everyone is in their own glass box, well, then you have America.
I guess Facebook is a kind of glass box?
Facebook is a neutral tool, it's what you do with it that matters. You think the "I'm better than everybody!" status updates are evidence of narcissism, and maybe they are, but the deeper pathology exists in those who derive their identities from that online presence while simultaneously retreating from the real world. Show me a man or woman who posts pictures of themselves in bathing suits and I shrug my shoulders. Show me a person who spends more than an hour a day on Facebook and it isn't their job and I'll show you a future divorce even if they're not married yet. Show me a middle aged person who spends >1 hr a day on facebook, and I'll show you someone who has been to a psychiatrist. It's not an insult, it is a statement of fact. Each person tries to find ways of affirming themselves; but when it is done through identity and not behavior, it always leads to misery.
Sure, you can convince 5000 people you're anything. Then what?
It is self-reinforcing. The type of person who withdraws into facebook is already stunted in their potential for happiness; and if you're spending all your energy on facebook then you're not spending it in ways that might actually work. The problem isn't facebook, the problem is you.
But that's how I met my last girlfriend...
Your last girlfriend. Narcissism has a fail-safe: since you know you tricked them to get them, you can't believe them when they say they love you. The fact that she loves you means she's not smart enough to know what love is. That's why you default to measurable quantities of love: how fast did she get into bed with the past guys?
Just because she thinks you're awesome, doesn't mean you can really feel her.
I know I can love, because I love my son and daughter, totally and unconditionally.
And so now I know your kids are young. No matter what you do to them: abuse them, yell at them, neglect them, abandon them, withdraw from them, they will love you unconditionally. But after puberty, when they start to love other people in different ways than you, or more than you (do you remember when you were 17?), even the best parent's status drops. How will your ego defend against that? Sports car and drinking? Cybersex? "I've started smoking pot again, it really helps me unwind."
What can psychiatry do about this?
Do about what? According to it there's nothing wrong with you, don't you see? You're not grandiose. Maybe you get diagnosed with "depression" or a touchy-feely therapist tells you you have "self-esteem issues" but that's like being told you have a hairy back, you make some cosmetic adjustments or you just don't go to the pool, life goes on. Psychiatry has nothing to say about why you get so enraged when you hear about welfare cheats, or how your wife's giggle at that one joke on TV hit you the wrong way, how everyone seems like shallow, phony jerks and no one is worth getting to know-- how adamant you are that the government do X or Y, neither of which are feasible or even matter but to you it's the most obvious thing in the world to do and the fact that they're not doing it must mean they are either idiots or corrupt-- and while you're yelling at the TV or the monitor or in your own head your wife is mauling a vibrator or you don't have a wife at all.
But I never yell.
Your rage may not score on the decibels but it is triple digits on the wattage. Psychiatry can't measure that. And while this rage makes you miserable there's also a societal effect: hating black people, hating white people, blaming Goldman Sachs, blaming your parents, declaring war.
And deserving things: shouldn't you be in a nice car? Nautica/Zegna/Underarmor/Polo shirts? Restaurants? The fact that you can't get them is someone else's fault; but if you get them, why aren't you happier? Meanwhile there are bills to pay.
And you can't make the connection between these things at all. Even as I say it, you resist: it's not that simple, you don't know her, you don't know them......................................... it can't be all me.
It is you, it is all you, it is always you. Isn't it odd how narcissism turns everything inward, except blame?
It's not odd, it is by psychic design, and psychiatry has failed you all in this. If individual narcissism is self-defensive, one might presume that societal narcissism will find it's own way to hide in plain sight. Narcissism became synonymous with grandiosity because that facilitated its measurement. But in so doing, the most significant social pathology in two generations was rendered undetectable.
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This one:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/02/t...demic.html
Quote:How can a man who thinks "my wife is way smarter than me!"
or the guy who thinks, "I'm no ladies' man, but I would never use a woman, even if I could!"
or the woman who thinks, "I know I'm not a model, but I'm an attractive, intelligent, independent woman"
-- how can they all be narcissists?
I. I. I. Me. I. Me. I. I. I. I. Me. Me. Me. Enough, we get it, we all know who you are.
It's why happiness always seems out of reach, why love seems elusive or complicated. And sometimes why other people get hurt.
III.
Grandiosity is only one possible manifestation of a psychic process that went awry. The essence, the defining characteristic of narcissism is the isolated worldview, the one in which everyone else is not fully real, only part a person, and only the part the impacts you.
Narcissism is self-protective. It simultaneously allows for the reduction of the other to prop status, while reassuring you that this perspective is not wrong or dangerous because it's not about superiority.
You went to Haiti to help the refugees; great. You may have done it because you want to help; or you may have done it because it identifies you to yourself and others as a kind person, selfless, a helper. Which was it? The former comes from an external ethical structure that informs behavior. The latter is an internal identity that demands validation.
NB: the Haitians don't care either way, just show up.
Narcissism is morally neutral. Only the results can be judged. But it usually predicts: if the boat starts sinking, identity first.
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Or this one: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/t...issus.html
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Or this amazing one: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/06/a..._look.html
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The relevant parts of both articles, (relevant with regard to Jordan Owen and my former best friend), both point out the heavily identity-focused aspects of both men.
Jordan Owen screwed you, because he doesn't want to be seen as either a Roosh-supporter, Roosh-enabler, or Rape-supporter. And my former best friend doesn't want to talk to me, because I can reduce him to impotent rage by making him look frightfully stupid and self-absorbed in fewer than three questions/sentences.
Questions like, "Why didn't you just marry your ideal woman, instead of marrying the complete opposite of your ideal woman in order to craft her into your ideal woman?" are extraordinarily triggering for him.
So are sentences like, "It's rather ironic that your claim to love her as a person rests completely upon your deep commitment to change her into a completely opposite woman under your direction. Most women would define that as hatred, not love."
So, especially, are sentences like, "Here's this 25-year old woman I'm getting to know. She's interested in me romantically, and she's extremely smart, highly positive, hard-working, ultra low-notch count, and fourteen years younger than me, a.k.a. right around your age." (My loudest, most explosive implication would be, "She's the exact woman you've been claiming to want your entire life, but your entire personality structure is so repulsive to her that she'd want nothing to do with you. She prefers me over you, despite (or because of?) my constant use of Asshole Game and despite (or because of!?!?) the existence of my Mistress, the 25-year old woman I've been sleeping with for four years!")
Jordan and my former best friend can't handle the competition, but they nonetheless choose to compete. And we can beg and plead that they not make enormous asshats out of themselves, but they'll do it anyway because they've got their heads in the clouds and their noses in the air, but they don't have their feet on the ground.
And I understand our initial desire to not crush them like bugs, but we need to out-compete them. Reality will crush them just as surely as it'll float us to the top. And when we get there: brag.
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