This is a really great watch about how people often make a big deal out of nothing and like to create an agenda of us vs them when really they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Dives into NPD a bit, but mostly it’s about the made up idea of every{one/many} being a ‘narcissist’ nowadays.
This was a really interesting video which I had a lot of thoughts about.
I think that discussing narcissistic personality traits that appear commonly among many in our culture is valuable, just as I believe discussions concerning safe spaces, triggers, and what it means to be woke are valuable. The thing that all these have in common is that conservatives took these terms over and made them meaningless to suit themselves. This video features dozens of instances of American con artists and cult leaders leveraging a valuable discussion to their own benefit.
The experts in the video believed that they and people like them were inherently superior, or deserved to be considered among the elite group. They expressed no empathy or compassion toward the people they dehumanized. Since they make their money from the people they lie to through lying to them, they are skilled exploiters. I would call all these narcissistic tendencies even if none of them had diagnosed NPD.
The reality is that many Americans, especially those in business, don’t care how they get what they want as long as they get it, and have no qualms about doing whatever they can get away with. I think this is a consequence of our culture and economic system rather than individual moral failings.
I don’t accept that no one should be called out for their greedy and selfish behavior. I don’t accept the most greedy and selfish in our society are once again trying to blame their own vices on their victims. I don’t think it’s monstrous to behave the way that countless nobles, gangsters, and capitalists have throughout history have because it’s clearly very human behavior in the circumstances that allowed these people to thrive at the cost of others. It’s the circumstances that allow and/or encourage this behavior which are a problem.
Thanks for sharing! I was thinking about posting after the banger intro but hadn’t yet finished the video, what I’d seen in the first ~20min was so refreshing to hear compared to the usual discourse.
I’ll have to finish it tonight!
Also, nebula link: https://nebula.tv/videos/sarahz-the-narcissist-scare
Yeah we actually watched it on nebula first and were waiting for it to release on youtube so we could share it more broadly.
We do agree, we know people with NPD and hate the abuse they get and how little understood they are. But the whole “everyone is a narcissist” stuff nowadays has very little to do with the actual diagnosis and more to do with people trying to create a whole us vs them thing for some reason? Probably money or just plain old hate and the desire to create division for no good reason, same as it ever was.
I think that it just makes it super easy to condemn anyone you dislike. Anyone can be matched to one or more of the behavioral indicators for NPD, individually, because many of them are just regular human behaviors. Selfishness, callousness, anger, egotism, not taking criticism well, etc, are all normal things to experience, and everyone does them, so if you want to condemn someone you can just subjectively and selectively label instances of that behavior as being an indicator of NPD, ignoring any absent or incongruous patterns or criteria.
Yes, exactly!
The DSM and ‘pop’ psychology has done more harm than good when it’s used to invalidate or drive a wedge between people.