A parent who is narcissistic wants their child to be just like them, to be an extension of them, and, in the spirit of latent but very real violence, to serve as the repository for all of the unprocessed emotional needs they feel the need to “outsource”. In a broken child, the parent/child is an emotional complex in which neither exists fully.
I was thinking, though, about traditional cultures. Let’s take a Sikh family from the Punjab. There are certain expectations for both boys and girls, certain ways of being, of dressing, of relating to others. There are certain beliefs that one is expected to share, and ritual and traditional roles to play.
Is a father’s demand that his son internalize these roles narcissistic? No, in my view, for the reason that these are generalized roles, and the son is being acculturated for inclusion into a tribe, a group of people who share the same ideas and values. The “narcissism”, and I am expanding the word here, is that of the WHOLE GROUP.
In our Western family, we have one father, one son, and a tribe of two (I am simplying the numbers for clarity; self evidently there are usually mothers, siblings, grandparents, etc.). In our Punjabi family, we have a tribe that is quite large, probably in the millions, although of course there are likely hundreds of sub-tribes, which account for regional variations of various sorts which are both class and geographically determined.
Given this setup, I got to thinking about ethics. For a Punjabi Sikh, there are certain absolutes. Values are listed on a proverbial card, and there is no need for individuals to interpret them, outside the legal parameters provided in their culture. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and the sanction for ignoring either BEGINS with social exclusion and shame.
In a two person monad, where one person has effectively stolen the spirit of another, there is no ethical content whatever, outside conformity to the mutable wishes of the pupper master. This, I would submit, is roughly the cultural substrate of what gets called multiculturalism or moral relativism.
Now, the broader point I wanted to make is that I don’t think any ethical absolutes with very specific content (thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife) will INVARIABLY result in what is best for all involved. I therefore reject moral absolutes.
Yet, plainly judgement is often needed. If you are unwilling to speak up, you are at some point going to contribute to evil.
Historically, morality was encoded in external behavioral codes. But today I would reference our psychological culture and submit better is possible.
Specifically, I have somehow wound up in a position where I am again reading self help books and benefiting from them. This is a surprise.
You read “he said this, and I felt that, harkening back to when I . . .” and on some level I want to shout “shut the fuck up and deal with it.”
Yet, when I look at my own behavioral limitations, I plainly need this sort of thing. Where in some other day and age I would have been told who to be and how to be, now I must create an autonomous self that makes its own decisions based on chosen principles.
I would submit this is progress. The moral ideal is for each individual to interact with every other individual not as subject to external absolutes, but as subject to the well being of both individuals. Morality is something that is constantly negotiated, with no final answers possible or desirable.
We are currently in a stage culturally where we (the westernized world generally) have rejected many external behavioral standards–particularly those associated with religion–but lack collectively the psycholgical maturity to negotiate with one another in substantive ways. Practically, people trade one set of absolutes for another. Try reasoning with a dogmatic leftist or atheist. It can’t be done.
In my view, leaving behind the chains of absolute moral codes is a good thing, but that brings the problem of narcissism to the fore.
Let me offer another thought on this topic. In large measure, narcissism is the result of unprocessed emotion, things felt by the child that the man lives but cannot remember.
Prior to all the technology surrounding us, most people spent a lot of time in silence. In silence, you cannot still persistent thoughts. I think a credible argument can be made that many people stop short their emotional development process simply because they CAN, because the endless distractions made available to modern man work effectively to silence unwanted emotion. What is Twitter, but a way to reach out to others and kill time, without saying anything substantive, or truly connecting with anyone? It is emotional styrofoam: plastic, dry, tasteless, lifeless.
Thus in a time when we need to be becoming more emotionally intelligent, we are getting dumber. This is not a necessary outcome.
Overall, we do seem to be much less brutal than previous generations of humankind. The cultural/tribal narcissism that enabled, say the conquest of the American Indians, or the Chinese invasion of Tibet, has largely faded. The old tribal bonds have loosened.
We do need to look forward, though, to something new, untried, and likely better than anything we see looking backward. Those who would return us to Feudalism are acting as narcissists, unable to differentiate between their own emotional need for control and order, and what is actually needed by humankind.
This is rambling, as I tried to incorporate multiple ideas, but I am tired and do not want to edit it. What normally in any event happens with me, is the same ideas will get developed on separate lines, and posted on at a later date. Hopefully this is useful to someone.