If I'm not mistaken, Barack Obama is the 1st politician and high profile person to practice narcissistic selfie without a shame..! However, it was planned as part of the sociopolitical image as tailored by his aids and advisers.. What matters is how many politician do the same at their bedrooms, bathrooms and make-up rooms.. Certainly all of them..
Grandiose Narcissism sounds essential for leadership and domination, which no political establishment would survive without..
Vulnerable Narcissism sounds spreading around the world with inadequate education philosophies and moral systems; generating floods of incompetence, vulgarism and criminality everywhere..
Yet, I think it is not only a personal psychological disorder, but a community one too.. many nations are narcissistic some way or another.. Some nations are disconnected from the universe.. Some nations are unable to coexist with others.. Some only stand up by plural hostility.. Most nations can't accept peaceful resolutions for border, geopolitical or resources conflicts..
but why..?
Simply because of Politicians and Media, which survive on peoples' anxiety and ignorance.. Survive on the 70% commons who truly care only for shelter, bread and reproduction.. Whenever a need to feel free from these urban slavery; politician and media would create national confrontations or dreams..
It seems immortal characteristic of our Mankind legacy...
Narcissism isn’t just a personality type that shows up in advice columns; it’s actually a set of traits classified and studied by psychologists. But what causes it? And can narcissists improve on their negative traits? W. Keith Campbell describes the psychology behind the elevated and sometimes detrimental self-involvement of narcissists.
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ReplyDeleteHisham Musa You introduced the idea that narcissism affects not only individuals but scales up to affects communities and countries. There's a term for this that was coined by Freud-The Narcissism of Small Differences (NSD)!. Isn't this just amazing? Yesterday I was reasoning with someone who is a bit of a bigot and I said to her that each human being has basic priorities of food, shelter, dreams and such pursuits regardless of them being Muslim, Jew, white, black...etc. Your politicians and my politicians understand the rules of the game much better than gullible you and gullible me and they make us believe we are enemies. Reflecting on this I see how NSD becomes an enhanced (negative enhancement) collective of individuals narcissism and definitely our stupidity (not mere ignorance) doesn't make the situation any better. Just another relevant link here :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.intellectualtakeout.org/.../bonhoeffer...
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/bonhoeffer-stupidity-led-hitlers-rise
ReplyDeleteAlthough he was in power for only a handful of years, Hitler and his Nazi government slaughtered millions. One of the more well-known victims of that slaughter was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed on April 8th, 1945, a few short weeks before Hitler’s own death.
Unlike many of Hitler’s victims, Bonhoeffer was not a Jew, but a Lutheran minister, scholar, and theologian who boldly spoke against Hitler’s policies. Bonhoeffer landed a position in the German government during WWII and subsequently used that position as cover for assassination attempts against Hitler.
While awaiting execution, Bonhoeffer recorded a number of his thoughts in a work we now know as Letters and Papers from Prison. One of these essays, entitled On Stupidity, records some of the problems which Bonhoeffer likely saw at work in Hitler’s rise to power:
“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
Americans today might do well to heed Bonhoeffer’s warning.