On the appearance of a living buddha in Hobart, Tasmania
On the appearance of a living buddha in Hobart, Tasmania
Narcissism is regarded as a personality disorder, but what if we regard it as a worlding disorder, an inability to world, or world-build.
For some time in Hobart, Tasmania, a small Buddhist group has been given the benefit of the doubt. This last week some survivor stories are making their appearance in news reports—
I have had no interaction with them. So I will make some general comments with a reminder that I am not diagnosing anyone.
The narcissist seeks power because there is a contingently available coherence between themselves and that ‘to which they are entitled’. The position that is sought is commensurate with the view they have of themselves, but what is on offer depends on what fat pig the world offers up on high: king, president, pope, gang leader, or living buddha.
Even narcissists make do with what is on offer. What is on offer depends on who gives whom the benefit of the doubt.
Narcissists do not know what they do, that is, when they kill the fatted calf in their own honour, they have no insight that you were the fatted calf. Others do not exist, except as obstacles, or food for glory.
We can rightly call this a lack of empathy —into how it is for others… how it might be to travel in another’s shoes. But that is from our point of view, from our point of view of having empathy, being empathic, from our point of view of being the in the world, from the point of view of having a point of view in the world. Whereas the narcissist the POV and the world are the same “lump’ of stuff that is nothing.
It is also solipsistic, but not as a point of view (POV) for whom reality exists as some personal reality streaming device, a theatre for one.
It is solipsistic in that the theatre of the world and the POV are a singularity. Singulipsistic? For a narcissist the world does not mediate reality.
It is here that the disorder of narcissism provides an insight into how it is for us, who live in the world with others, and who share that work of building the world, and are so embedded within this all, we have difficulty noticing what/where/how we live.
Narcissism is regarded as a personality disorder, but what if we regard it as a worlding disorder, an inability to world, or world-build. The refusal or failure to carve out their own self from the world when ‘reality’ approaches. You can call it a retreat, but that assumes they split a little bit and then gave up. This is possible, and likely, especially in the more covert less openly grandiose forms of narcissism. It’s yet another spectrum after all.
For the narcissist, as an ideal type, where no hint of a choice is involved, there is no difference between the self and the world.
At least, it is possible that there are types or positions on a spectrum of self-centredness, for whom the world and self are the same thing. So their lack of empathy is not a cause of psychopathy, nor any attendant sociopathy, it is merely the symptom of an inability to world, let alone world along with others, get along in beloning, regardless if these others are their own children, or parents. The reality principle cannot break through, or is not allowed to.
For the rest of us who grow up, we split into self and world, we do that, we do that in the world, and regard the world as not us, such that at times “hell is other people”. For the narcissist there are no people, there is no world, there is just…
Princess, VIP, king, president, pope, god-emperor, living buddha.
If the self is a delusion, or illusion, and so is the world, then it is possible they are not just the same type of thing, but the same delusion/illusion. And in narcissists this has not been split into self and world, because the reality principle cannot break through. They are a unitary delusion, unable to share their delusions with others and thus create the world. All they can do is be themselves as god-emporer of creation and play us for fools.
If we are to world better we must guard it from from those who would be gods.
We need to talk.
We have learned of narcissists and psychopaths because of psychology which focusses on the individual and a therapeutic set of patient-centred values, which is a worlding practice. However the work in individual-nessiness has silo-ed knowledge about narcissists and psychopaths out of other areas of knowledge, especially like those sociologies which, in turn, in recent centuries, avert their eyes from the lived granularity of the socius, preferring well-read gnostic POVs into various animism-like structuralisms.
Chaos theory / complexity theory based methodologies might be a better bet, looking at how societies and worlds emerge from the iterated choices and decisions of individuals and their families within the very structures that emerge from that suite of interactions, and in which we may contingent choices when we make do with it all.
Hunting the forest for the trees may not work in saving us from the wolves.
Wisdom is more than hindsight, logic is only hindsight.
When we notice order in the flow, we have merely noticed what we have noticed.
When we impose order on the order, we have noticed in the flow that we world and make things, and so attend to things already flowing.
We call this making order out of chaos when we have noticed what we have done, repeatedly.
When we impose order as a duty we have failed to worldbuild in a good way.
Order is never a duty, there is no duty to order anything.
Duty is a deflection the narcissists uses to send others into to their deaths, distraction as hope monkeyed.
To throw things into the… —gap is simply to world, as much as being alive is to breathe out.
