And I got in a flash why Dostoevsky’s Underground Man would rather be miserable in his way, than happy in the manner of everyone else.
This, you see, is the outcome of long term exposure to narcissism, particularly in parents. They take your emotions from you. You no longer own your sadness, and certainly not your happiness. Everything belongs to them. Nothing is yours.
And if you are properly indoctrinated, you more or less do the right things: go to school, then work, then live sensibly and die at a sensible age in a sensible way. But all of this is foreign to you. You are not emotionally connected to it. You do not belong. You were flattened, and no matter where you go or what you do, it feels foreign. And true emotion feels like a sickness..
I would like to argue this: narcissism is THE modern illness. It is, perhaps, a necessary cultural transition from no sense of self, as seen in traditional communities–in which one is assigned at birth a sense of place and duty–to a distributed sense of self, which is the Liberal ideal we have for now stopped pursuing.
No totalitarianism can be understood without recourse to narcissism, to the inability to separate one’s own ideas, ideals, and feelings, from those of others. Every person sent to the gas chamber or gulag WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD, if they could only see things from the correct perspective of the narcissist, or so they would argue.
And violence is a form of connection for those who lack it otherwise. I have realized that as a child I vastly preferred being punished, and the sense of being hated, to the sense of being completely alone and disconnected from emotionally distant parents.
In recent days I have been getting very, very close to core feelings, at the root of which is the ability to feel openly and honestly itself.
And I get microseconds of absolute happiness, unreasonable happiness, happiness of the sort you read about but never see; flashes that tell me it is possible, if I can just unlock this combination safe.
I feel strongly–and I say feel, but this is an intellectual/intutive sense–that I will one day be able to see in the darkness. At that point I will become truly useful.
I am drawing a weekly Tarot card, as I think I mentioned. My goal is to connect with time, and specifically the future, but also to provide a flavor, an aroma, to the week. Whether there is anything to it or not, I can MAKE something from it, by imaginative interaction.
And I have drawn the Fool again. 1 in 72 chance. I think there is something in that.