Most disagreements come from how we define things.

So narcissism has definitions.

One is: excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance.

And the other also is: selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.

(The way I found these for the sake of time was through a simple “define narcissism” in Google).

I understand narcissism as either of these things.

The reason I don’t think narcissism is the problem is because too much of what makes someone successful in our system (capitalism) aligns with narcissism. Which means, it’s hard to tell if people are narcissists or if the internal logic of our system conditions people to align with narcissistic thinking or behaviour.

A simple example is any office job or environment. It has all the constraints and incentives put in place to encourage people to act like narcissists. But that doesn’t mean they are narcissists.

In an office, in corporate culture, perception is everything. Also, everyone is competing against everyone. While corporate offices use the ceremonies of collectivists, talking about teams and openness and collaboration, underpinning all of that is competition and the reality is that if you fail you will be fired. There’s that underlying economic “violence” waiting at all moments.

And so what we see as a result is people aligning themselves with that system. In truth corporate systems are inherently fascistic systems. Corporations and Fascist states have a lot of in common. Cult of personality, top down, focus on ceremony and tradition, male oriented and deeply antagonistic to violations of expected norms, expansionist, exploitative and mechanistic and process oriented.

…and so, as a matter of survival or maybe a form of sickness, people eventually internalize the logic of the system which effectively dehumanizes them and others.

It takes a very destructive level of conditioning to see immigrants as something to be feared. To see outsiders and other cultures are dangerous. It takes a destructive level of conditioning to walk past the homeless every day. It takes a destructive level of conditioning to ignore the fact that many homeless are in fact, people who are very sick and the system’s doesn’t include their humanity.

The logic of our system and the subsystems we live in: capitalism and corporations, is one where people are commodifying every aspect of their humanity to survive and that commodification forces us to be hyper focused on ourselves because WE are product. We are the thing being sold and the logic of the system tells us only the desirable products get sold.

Is it narcissistic to be that way? Yeah. But are people narcissistic? No.

I’m a new dad. I have daughter 11 months old. I came across these meme about parenting online that I think sums up what it means to be in the system.

The text of the meme was “You’re a morning person with a baby the same way you’re a runner with a bear chasing you.”.

People are narcissistic because the system requires it and if they don’t align, then the internal logic of the system will punish people with violence: poverty.

Poverty is a byproduct of this system. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature and its design is explicit. If you fail, you will starve and struggle. You will invite violence upon yourself for not conforming.

This is, ultimately, why I can’t say all this is a result of just narcissism. Because another byproduct of the system is loneliness, depression and alienation. Millions of people trust nothing. Millions of people carry deep sadness. Because they have to live as cruel people in a cruel system because kindness isn’t profitable.

It’s not a coincidence that in some circles in Western culture that empathy is considered a bad thing. That’s the internal logic of capitalism and fascism. You cannot feel for others. You should put yourself in their shoes and see the world from their perspective. Don’t even attempt it. Because ultimately, that’s what builds solidarity.

That’s why, for me anyways, it’s not narcissism. I think it’s too narrow or too simple an explanation. I think people are as they are because their spirits are misaligned with the intent of the surrounding systems which are designed to be cruel which leads people to endure a spiritual decay and then death. Because cruelty diminishes us all.