The Narcissist In All Of Us

[groovedaddy]

Think you know what a narcissist is, and you're right—sort of. They're the preeners, the mirror-gazers, the blowhards, the braggarts, the colleagues or family members who go on and on about themselves but whose eyes take on a sleepy glaze the moment you find a crack of conversational daylight and try to talk about yourself. They're the reality show exhibitionists, the NFL end-zone dancers. They're the bosses who bully you, the friends who exhaust you, the lovers who charm the pants off you—sometimes literally—then never call again.

But narcissists, like it or not, are also all of us. You may not be a narcissist and no single member of your social circle may be a narcissist, but collectively—in our communities, our nations, our political parties, our sports team loyalties, and, scarily, in our races and religions—we are all narcissists. There's personal narcissism and tribal narcissism—and that second kind can be a global affliction.

The narcissism of a tribe can be a wonderful, terrible, lovely, bloody, life-giving, life-taking thing—sometimes all at once. It's present in the harmless exhibitionism of the sign-waving, face-painted fans at the Super Bowl or the World Cup. It's in the faintly darker, more jingoistic chants of "U.S.A! U.S.A.!" that may accompany an Olympic hockey win or an ill-planned invasion of Iraq. It's part of every company softball game ever played—techies versus sales, design versus manufacture—and every blue state versus red state argument ever had. It's the Whigs versus the Tories, the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks, the Union versus the Confederacy. It's soldiers who race into the field risking death and ducking crossfire to save a wounded comrade and then, that job done, turn their fire outward and take other lives with the same resolve and pride with which they just saved one.

Human beings are social creatures—a very important adaptation allowing soft, slow, fangless, clawless ground-dwellers like us to survive. But being social implies bands, and bands imply favoring your own above all others. And because we're rational creatures, too—creatures who like to feel good about ourselves and don't like to think we seize land and resources and mates simply because we're greedy—we tell ourselves that we favor our own kind because we're smarter, prettier, better, more virtuous, more caring—a superior breed of people in a world filled with lesser ones.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201408/the-narcissist-in-all-us

[JayhawkSD]

1. It's narcissism only when it becomes abnormal and destructive

It's notmal to work in one's own self interest; life would be impossible if that were not done. Democrats who advocate for their candidate and who work to convince others of the rightness of their propsed policies and principles are not narcissisists. When they go to the extent of knowing that not only are they right and that everyone else is wrong, that there is no possible course of action other than the one they propose, and have no argument other than calling anyong who does not agree with them dirty names, that the term narcissism applies.

Being a "social creature" doen not mean that one muct sacrifice one's own self interest in maintaining personal survival.

"...we tell ourselves that we favor our own kind because we're smarter, prettier, better, more virtuous, more caring—a superior breed of people in a world filled with lesser ones." Sick people do this, but there billions of people, whole societies of people, for whom this statement is utter nonsense.

[phil89]

2. The article's not exactly peer reviewed.

Just sounds like someone with a pop culture understanding of narcissism and no clinical knowledge whatsoever.