One thing I’ve learned from personal experience with genuinely crazy people—mostly bipolar / borderline types—is that they quickly drive almost everyone around them batty, too. When nutjobs commit hostile, selfish acts, it’s hard not to be miffed. Most normal, so-called “healthy” folks would like to hold such others to account. We don’t quickly accept “unacceptable behavior,” unless finally—out of weariness and frustration—we’re forced to face the fact that these intense gluteal pangs aren’t really human after all when they break rules. They’re maladjusted mechanisms. Wayward behavior—and our knee-jerk reaction against it—point out the fragile, easily disrupted nature of sanity and civilization.
Most animal behavior is instinctively self-centered: Do what you want. Get what you can. But humans are acculturated to be more empathic and altruistic. Socialization represses normal animal instinct. Aberrant behavior is a surprisingly corrosive solvent which can cut through our own kindness and forbearance in minutes, if not instantaneously. That’s why most societies stigmatize and isolate deviant behavior.
The pathological self-centeredness known as narcissism is growing more common, these days. Not considered true psychosis (like schizophrenia, for instance) narcissism is classified as “a character disorder,” but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. We’re slow to realize that certain persons in our midst do not share the normally presumed preference for peace and harmony. Some individuals, as the result of bad parenting (overindulgence/inconsistency) are programmed for lifetimes of stirring up strife. Since conflict is a common form of human-contact, too, some folks who can’t get love will opt for animus, instead.
Attention is a nutrient which all of us must have, and there are many ways to get it. Negativity works. Bullying (physical or intellectual) breaking rules, violating expectations, or hurting feelings—all yield inverted social juice. One reason it takes normal people so long to fathom this perverse game is that most of us graduate from infancy desiring to be “good” and to be liked, and we go to great lengths to achieve it. That is the norm. When dealing with a narcissist or certain other loons, it’s hard to realize that your provocateur is less concerned with issues over which you disagree than with disagreement itself—for intensity’s sake.
Sociopathic narcissism is psychic vampirism. Unrestrained by humility or pity (except self-pity) the vampire feeds on the discomfort of others. As noted above, it’s an odd, upsidedown way of life, which parodies normal, me-first, animal behavior. That may be why it’s so upsetting. It reminds us “good” boys and girls of something deep inside that we renounced when we were young. Some tame and neutered part of us admires feral, antisocial spunk; and envies those who do what they damn please — folks like our so-called President.
Some people see as heroes those who “stay true to themselves ” (to use a questionable
phrase) more than to prevailing social norms. A narcissist thinks that he’s better than everyone else, and better than, in fact, he really is. His hunger for adulation, if thwarted, can boomerang back as a thirst for revenge, to punish those who don’t endorse his grandiosity. So, keep in mind, dear friends, that when a monster of this sort has got his middle finger poised above the big red button which can launch apocalypse, unless someone can rein him in or soothe his starving heart, we could well have a barbecue, complete with sautéed cities and resplendent mushroom clouds.
Would you like something cold to drink with that?