Narcissi

People are pleasant at the folk nights in my local pubs. There is a host who is kind and welcoming. 

A man recently started singing The Centurion, a long solo song about the long life of a man nearly a hundred years old.  He forgot the words, tried again, gave up and when it was next his turn, redid the whole thing again.

 

I choose this particular episode only as illustrative or something more general.  Most people want to be heard, whether that's singing or in some more general sense. Seen, heard, accepted. It is that recognition, that dignity that Fukuyama thinks is more enabled by liberal democracy than any other form of government, other forms, I suppose tending to lead to oppression. 

I don't know whether people need to be understood; that's another level again. 

The song, to this listener, is not loveable.  It's a bit trite, a bit clichéd, a bit forced, a bit shallow. But our tolerance for sentiment, mawkishness perhaps grows with age as we become more forgiving and changes anyway, between cultures. 

I am not sorry to have heard 'The Centurion' and  I admire more the good humour and tolerance of the group. Still, it causes me to wonder again where the balance is between going to listen and going to be heard (Mono v inter). 

Or going to join in - that old chestnut again.  In the Johnny Collins version (above), people join in the chorus.  In my pub nobody did, although there are six opportunities to do so and I wonder why.   There was no hostility, no obvious reason why.  Occasionally a singer or player seems to seek or find connection with listeners and it is usually found in the same people or maybe it is just that they do it more through playing than singing.  But the connection I notice is not always in the strongest singers and it may well be that while I connect with one person, someone else connects invisibly with another.  

The man I heard sings fine, plays well.  He is very quiet, one of the quietest there, seems unassuming. I suppose it was the contrast between the man and the choice of this long song, which which, again, nobody really joined in.  Many people do long solos.  It sets off my warnings signals.   Why? The human brain made to seek pattern and connection.

There are much stronger musical personalities even in local pubs, people not just who are acknowledged as good musicians, but who know it. It's not that the pubs are packed with narcissists but having come too close in recent years I keep that long distance at the slightest suggestion of ego. 

Ego often seems to be a barrier to connection.  Narcissism is what used to be called selfishness, not the occasional self-interested act but a consistent disregard for other people, a putting oneself first.  Before they were known as narcissists, they used to be identified as people who were self-centered, egotistical and attention-seeking, often in different balances.They say narcissism - the grandiose version - can be caused by neglect or erratic care in childhood.  The child develops a compensatory self, attracting attention with overblown claims. Or, it can be caused by overvaluation and excessive praise.  Either way, children grow up with an inflated sense of self.  

I wonder if the same can happen in adult life, if, say, people can get too used to respect, compliments, adulation, fawning and come to expect it.  Combine that with a familial or genetic tendency to assertiveness or dominance or a culture of individualism, self-promotion and celebrity and things look bleak for the personality.

Having been sucked into the destructive whirlpool of the narcissist more than once, I know that it can initially feel as though the narcissist seeks connection, particularly the vulnerable narcissist. It can be well-disguised. But they don't want connection, they want attention and they have a nose for, empathy and openness. They know the easiest people to manipulate. All narcissists seek attention. Their accomplishments rarely recognise the help they have had, unless it makes them look good, but rather be about those accomplishments.

There is much condemnation of narcissists because they are so manipulative and destructive. Anyone is wise to keep a long distance particularly as few narcissists seem able to change, but there are reasons often stemming from childhood for this personality problem. It seems to me they suffer a profound kind of disability. It must be incredibly lonely. There ought to be other stories about narcissism. It isn't just that they gaze into a pool because that implies self-sufficiency. But the narcissist never has enough. They are condemned to a permanent absence of genuine connection because for them connection is a one way street. They are not able to connect back. They can fake it, even believe it is connection, but it is only a sort of feedback pathway - a way to nourish themselves.

We think of people with disabilities as vulnerable and because of the harm they cause, the narcissist does not seem vulnerable yet those walls are constructed out of profound insecurity. But the personality may not be hiding behind the defence. Through long habit, the personality may have become the defense.

It isn't clear why Narcissus, the youth who fell in love with his own reflection and turned into the eponymous flower is so-called.   They do grow by river banks but their habitat is wide ranging. Some think the bent over flower head resembles the youth gazing at himself in the water. There is an interesting etymological connection with numbness.  Because the narcissist is primarily concerned with themselves, they have to be largely numb to the emotions of others more commonly characterised as a lacking empathy, a key trait of psychopathy. Another warning sign of the psychopath is cynicism. The narcissist also uses cynicism as a way of fading out attention on other things and fading up attention on themselves.  Because the psychopath is clever, both are commonly masked by charm.  The key tool of both psychopath and narcissist is manipulation. Manipulation is a form of exploitation.  Both involve deceit which itself commonly requires a lack of empathy and  manipulation in order to get attention.  

Thus these traits feed off, require and complement each other in a diabolical ecosystem. In the last twenty years, narcissism, psychopathy and machiavellianism are known as the 'dark triad' in psychology theory.  Since these traits are not uncommon in the world and cause so much harm, I for one have become alert to their signs.