Amerika

In the Age of Symbolism, we have “isms” like objectivism or communism. The “ism” means that one symbol, usually representing a small detail, becomes more important than everything else and as a result, crowds the rest out of the way. That symbol explains life and what is good and should be done for those who believe in it.

Few understand that individualism destroys human societies; people are either motivated toward a goal, or they fall into individualism of either the me-first or “collectivist” types. Individualism rejects reality and individualists only feel good when they are actively denying reality in a contrarian mindframe.

Science understands individualism as “narcissism” because to call it by the right name would alienate most parties, although when you think about it, history was created by those who cared more about achieving things than indulging their egos.

It turns out that narcissists are drawn to communal ideologies as camouflage for their bad behavior and a means of manipulating others because others are seduced by those ideologies:

The results of multiple regression analyses showed that a strong ideological view, according to which a violent revolution against existing societal structures is legitimate (i.e., anti-hierarchical aggression), was associated with antagonistic narcissism (Study 1) and psychopathy (Study 2). However, neither dispositional altruism nor social justice commitment was related to left-wing anti-hierarchical aggression. Considering these results, we assume that some leftist political activists do not actually strive for social justice and equality but rather use political activism to endorse or exercise violence against others to satisfy their own ego-focused needs. We discuss these results in relation to the dark-ego-vehicle principle.

Contrary to popular image, narcissists are social climbers who care a great deal about identifying what others want and using it to manipulate them in order to make personal ascent in the social hierarchy:

Narcissists vigilantly attend to cues related to the status they and others have in these situations and, on the basis of these perceived cues, appraise whether they can elevate their status or reduce the status of others. Narcissists engage in self-promotion (admiration pathway) or other-derogation (rivalry pathway) in accordance with these appraisals. Each pathway has unique consequences for how narcissists are perceived by others, thus shaping their social status over time. The model demonstrates how narcissism manifests itself as a stable and consistent cluster of behaviors in pursuit of social status and how it develops and maintains itself over time.

Because their philosophy is based on the conjecture that the individual is more important than reality, narcissists are always defensive and react with aggression to those who do not indulge their illusions:

Theoretically, these results indicate that provocation is a key moderator of the link between narcissism and aggression. Individuals high in narcissism have “thin skins” and are prone to aggression when they are provoked. Practically, these results suggest that narcissism is an important risk factor for aggression and violence.

The root of their motivation combines resentment and competition; they are driven by envy for those who are naturally successful:

Vulnerable narcissism was strongly and consistently related to dispositional envy and schadenfreude (Studies 1–2), as well as to all cognitive-affective components of envy (Study 2). Furthermore, it facilitated envy and schadenfreude toward a high-status peer (Study 3). Grandiose narcissism was slightly negatively related to dispositional envy (Studies 1–2), and it did not predict informant reports of envy or cognitive-affective components of the emotion (Study 2). Finally, it did not exacerbate envy, hostility, or resentment toward a high-status peer (Study 3). The results suggest envy is a central emotion in the lives of those with narcissistic vulnerability and imply that envy should be reconsidered as a symptom accompanying grandiose features in the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.

Not surprisingly, this shows us that narcissists are acting out personal drama through externalized interactions with others:

The model casts narcissism in terms of motivated self-construction, in that the narcissist’s self is shaped by the dynamic interaction of cognitive and affective intrapersonal processes and interpersonal self-regulatory strategies that are played out in the social arena. A grandiose yet vulnerable self-concept appears to underlie the chronic goal of obtaining continuous external self-affirmation.

That in turn makes them dependent on convincing those others of the importance of the narcissist. Narcissists can therefore take two types, the “rugged individualist” who wants to conquer or the “communal individualist” who wants to be popular for being altruistic, as a means of gaining power:

An agency-communion model of narcissism distinguishes between agentic narcissists (individuals satisfying self-motives of grandiosity, esteem, entitlement, and power in agentic domains) and communal narcissists (individuals satisfying the same self-motives in communal domains). Five studies supported the model. In Study 1, participants listed their grandiose self-thoughts. Two distinct types emerged: agentic (“I am the most intelligent person”) and communal (“I am the most helpful person”). In Study 2, we relied on the listed communal grandiose self-thoughts to construct the Communal Narcissism Inventory. It was psychometrically sound, stable over time, and largely independent of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory—the standard measure of agentic narcissism. In Studies 3 and 4, agentic and communal narcissists shared the same self-motives, while crucially differing in their means for need satisfaction: Agentic narcissists capitalized on agentic means, communal narcissists on communal means.

Almost all of what we see in public today is the struggle by individualists to gain power. Since they are opposed to having goals outside of themselves, this means that civilization dies a death of a thousand cuts (a tragedy of the commons) as each person uses it for their own ends.

At first, this has minimal import, but over time Crowd pathologies predominate and peer pressure drives people away from realistic thinking. This initiates the decay cycle, which persists until radical realism returns.

Tags: crowdism, dark triad, individualism, narcissism, peer pressure, prosociality, psychopathology, solipsism