Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
To be a sexually boundaried and principled woman nowadays is considered a shameful pathology. In the past, casual sex was optional, a choice - today it is the norm.
Women have always been the guardians of the status quo by internalizing male values, expectations and stereotypes.
Ironically, feminism fed into this traditional role, rendering women less empowered and more heartbroken and disillusioned than ever in their personal lives.
Women sought and attained equity and equality. Men had reacted by abandoning them en masse and by abrogating any commitment or investment. Both parties largely gave up on intimacy and relationships.
With men all but gone, women are attempting to become the new men (“stalled revolution”).
As newly converted zealous caricatured men, women are acting out male stereotypes, sexual scripts, and gender roles as the pillars of their newly defined femininity (“the self-objectifying slut in tank top, make up, and high heels”).
In a sad twist: to be an emancipated, empowered, modern woman is to give men what they had always dreamt of: no strings attached sex with an unboundaried partner.
Vociferous protestations aside, studies conclusively show that women had also assimilated the male double standard: they are conflicted about their conduct and secretly crave more in most instances of casual sex.
To resolve the cognitive dissonance that this lamentable state of affairs had created, women pretend to be agentic and carefree when in reality they are drunk and devastated in most of these encounters (Orenstein, Wade, Cohen, Armstrong, among many others).
Men take advantage on this self-inflicted injury: they are aggressive about demanding immediate sex and offer nothing in return.
Women end up with the worse of both worlds: they are being held responsible the way men are - but are suffering “slut shaming”, the double standard, and harassment as women always had.
Men manipulate women by falsely publicly supporting this transformation while privately still shaming them.
Western men especially lie and pretend to be tolerant of female unbridled sexuality in order to perpetuate these dysfunctional and self-defeating female behaviors.
The double standard is deplorable – but it is a fact. To ignore it is delusional, self-deceiving, and costly in terms of relationships prospects and reputation. The way to overcome it is not to outman men – but to teach men to be more considerate, compassionate, and respectful.
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People
comfort themselves: “This is merely a transitional period, things will settle
down soon”. But, of course, it is not and they won’t.
The Middle Ages had lasted 1000 years and they
constituted a total breakdown of civilization. We are on the precipice of a new such phase.
How can we tell the difference between transition
and disintegration?
Transitions engender a
ferment of new ideas and paradigm shifts. Breakdowns involve the impoverishment
of both culture and the individual’s inner experience. Human relationships fall
apart on every level. Narcissism, psychopathy, and other forms of mental
illness go off the charts.
The backlash is comprised of regressive,
totalitarian, and rigid doctrines enforced by total institutions. The former
social polarization and conflicts are suppressed and supplanted with
homogenizing authoritarianism.
Populism is another hallmark of dissolution: a
contumacious and defiant wave against authority and learning coupled with a
rise in willful, proud ignorance and obscurantism.
Periods of transition are the offspring of science
and knowledge. Eras of discomposure are characterized by an abundance of
unstructured information and empowering technologies. Creativity is on the wane
- replication, imitation, and narcissistic navel-gazing on the ascendance.
Gender roles shift and are often inverted when
social institutions and civilization itself crumble. Relations between men and
women degenerate into open warfare and abusive exploitation.
Finally, as Tonybee had noted, civilizations
decline when multiple natural and manmade calamities strike and grandiose,
self-depleting projects are embarked upon by societies who teeter on the brink
of utter dysfunction.
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People fail to appreciate the reputational halo effect: their notoriety or celebrity carry out into other,
ostensibly unrelated areas of their lives. Breaching social norms and mores
carries a lifelong all-pervasive sentence.
Consider the following common exclamations:
“I am a film or football star, so I can discuss
geopolitics or medicine.”
“I may be a career criminal, but I am a good
father.”
“When I am single, I have no sexual boundaries
whatsoever and am highly promiscuous. But when I am in a relationship, I can be
trusted to be self-respecting, decent, and boundaried.”
“I lie habitually only to members of my outgroup.
With my clan or friends, I am scrupulously honest.”
“I am cheating with you on my spouse, but I will
never cheat on you.”
“In sex, I am drunk and self-trashing with my
colleagues, but I expect them to respect me at work.”
“I steal only in department stores. You can safely
invite me to your home.”
“I have changed numerous jobs, but my marriage to
you will last forever.”
“I am scared of flying and heights, but I am a
bold decision maker in times of crisis.”
“I am a narcissist, but you can trust me as your
guru and guide to proper living.”
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No speech act
founded on science is hate speech. Wherever the data may lead, we are obligated to go.
If a preponderance of well crafted studies or a
meta analysis of such point to a conclusion that it politically incorrect, one
has the moral obligation to adhere to the facts, regardless of the prevailing
censorship, aka as cancel culture.
Consider, for example these FACTS, substantiated
by dozens of studies over decades, worldwide:
1. Casual sex has severe long-term deleterious
mental health effects on women only;
2. Victimhood movements are being infiltrated by covert narcissists
and secondary psychopaths;
3. Dark triad personality is common among people who engage
in sexual self-trashing such as compulsive sexting, group sex, self-porn, or
cheating;
4. All people lie all the time and, if they can get away with
it, cheat and self-interestedly misallocate resources;
5. Black men commit many more crimes per capita than their
white counterparts. Native Americans abuse alcohol way more than any other
group;
6. Jews constitute 0.002 of the global population, but 37% of
Nobel prize winners;
7. Women and men have the same IQ scores, but not blacks and
whites;
8. Women prefer to mate and date “beta” males - even in
casual sex. They find “alpha” males repulsive.
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Making
love is not a power play or a competition. It is
never aggressive, demanding, critical, comparative, or demeaning. NEVER!
Giving to the partner is often more gratifying
than getting!
Teaching and demonstrating and exploring together
everything the two bodies have to offer is 99% of the joy!
Making love is exactly like talking - but with our
bodies: communicating emotions, moods, and needs.
If there is a discrepancy in experience, the more experienced
partner simply suggests a new, enhanced vocabulary for the consideration of the
less experienced partner.
There are no expectations in making love: only
openness to the partner.
Gentleness, kindness, understanding, and a very
gradual approach are indispensable keys to the experience of lovemaking.
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Grandiosity is often
confused with aggression and sadism because it
is intertwined with these behavior patterns.
When grandiosity is challenged, narcissists,
psychopaths, and borderlines feel slighted, threatened, and frustrated and
react with rage as they attempt to punish, modify the behavior of, or eliminate
altogether the source of frustration. Overt hostility is less common among
covert narcissists who are usually passive-aggressive.
A sadist leverages grandiosity to humiliate, shame
in public, and discomfort his target.
But grandiosity in itself is a cognitive
distortion, much like a defense mechanism gone awry. It reframes information
and reality to buttress the grandiose person’s fantastic and inflated view or
perception of himself/herself.
Narcissists transition from an overt state to a covert one
via a process of collapse (systemic and prolonged failure to secure
narcissistic supply).
But some narcissists remain stuck in the interim
period and create a binary system: a sadistic,
grandiose overt which dominates and humiliates the covert self-state, acting as a kind of harsh inner critic gone awry.
The overt subpersonality is in charge of
sustaining the grandiosity cognitive distortion by interacting with potential
sources of supply. But it then colludes with them and weaponizes them to
further depress the covert.
Aware of the role of the overt as a fifth column
or a Trojan horse, the covert pseudoidentity preemptively devalues everyone the
overt is in touch with, defanging them this way and denying them the ability to
cause narcissistic injury.
As distinct from reactive devaluation, the
preemptive variant is solely interiorized, a part of the passive-aggressive
arsenal of the covert.
The covert also easily gets bored and loses
interest (decathects) in various undertakings in order to deny the overt the
opportunities to be in touch with people and turn them against the covert.
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Is parental alienation for real? Are Alienators narcissists or psychopaths? Why do
children collude with the alienating parent? What are the lifelong effects on
children?
Andy Martens and Mary Kovacs in the Andy Martens
Show.
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We are all depleted and exhausted. The species will die out because of FATIGUE, not any great natural or manmade
disaster. We even ran out of desire to procreate.
The core problem is a toxic combo of malignant
tolerance, malignant egalitarianism, and moral relativism.
We are left with no standards of how to be a good
person and how lead an appropriate life (eudaimonia).
When we perceive our actions to have been the
outcomes of akrasia (weak willed misbehavior contrary to our best judgment) and
not of phronesis (good judgment, excellence of character, habits conducive to a
good life and practical virtue), we experience dissonance.
When we can’t tell the difference - we fall apart
into a state of dystopian meltdown.
We no longer apply qualitative or normative tests
and criteria to traits and behaviors - only quantitative ones. Anything goes as
long as it is not harmful or truly extreme.
This is a suicidal recipe because we have no way
of gauging all the deleterious consequences of our actions - and no method to
agree on what constitutes “extremes”.
One of the greatest frustrations of the therapist is the
inability to induce insight in an otherwise intelligent patient.
Mental illness is often compartmentalized and
firewalled from the rest of the personality and immune to reasoning and
evidence.
Trying to communicate with such a person regarding
his or her disorder is like dealing with two or more individuals, one of whom
is obtuse and obdurate to the point of infuriating pseudo-stupidity.
Moreover: the pathology turns the patient’s intelligence against him, leverages this resource to orchestrate the resistance to any healing and personal growth.
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Informal survey of 276 of my students, ages 18-31 in 6 countries: Russia, Nigeria, USA, UK,
Australia, and Israel.
Q: How long on average before you have sex with a
person you have just met?
Less than 2 hours (112)
5-10 hours (94)
More than 10 hours (21)
Depends (31)
I don’t know or decline to answer (18)
Q: Do you consider sex in a one night stand sex an
intimate act?
Very intimate (156)
Intimate (76)
Can be intimate or not (34)
Not intimate (8)
Don’t know (2)
Q. Do you consider sex in a long-term relationship
more intimate than in casual sex?
No (132)
Yes (97)
Sometimes (37)
Not sure (10)
Q. Quantitatively, did you have more sexual encounters
in committed relationships or in casual sex?
In casual sex (192)
In relationships (21)
I abstain from sex (11)
Don’t remember (52)
Q. Where do you pick up partners for casual sex?
Clubs and bars (46)
Parties (93)
Dating apps (36)
Workplace (44)
In transport (buses, trains, planes) (17)
Everywhere I meet people (40)
Q. Is casual sex less good than sex in long-term
relationships?
Less good (193)
Better (67)
Can’t decide (16)
Q. Did you ever participate in group sex?
Yes (48)
No (212)
Decline to respond (16)
Q. Do you sext or cam with strangers on a regular
basis?
Yes (12)
No (79)
Only when I am in a phase (82)
Decline to answer (103)
Q. Do you consume porn daily?
Yes (154)
No (36)
Decline to respond (86)
Q. How often do you get very drunk before you have
casual sex?
100% of the time (177)
50% of the time (87)
Fewer than half the times (12)
Q. How many times did you end up having sex in an
alcoholic blackout and have had no memory of it?
1-2 times (11)
3-6 times (45)
7-10 times (127)
Never (76)
Refused to answer (17)
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The narcissist prefers to be in dead relationships because he is utterly dead inside.
Being no more than a walking-talking corpse, the
narcissist feels safe only in a cemetery.
The narcissist’s inability to give life and to
partake in it is a major narcissistic injury and the fount of mortification.
So, he attempts to deaden his partner, assassinate
her enthusiasm and joie de vivre, constrict her autonomy and exploratory
spirit, and stunt her growth.
The narcissist is like rot or gangrene, spreading
through his partner’s healthy parts until she is no more - like him, rendered
an automaton with faulty programming.
The narcissist
devalues you because you won’t freeze, play dead, and
conform to your snapshot in his mind. This challenges his grandiosity and
amplifies his separation insecurity (abandonment or separation anxiety).
But there is another reason: the narcissist wants
you dead because he is already dead and it is lonely out there, in the void, in
oblivion.
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The narcissist conjures his
intimate partner in the shared fantasy - and then dematerializes her.
The shared fantasy is both a template and a
matrix: a rigidly coded simulation which, like many other AI applications,
yields unexpected results.
The shared fantasy is also both a network and a
hierarchy.
The hierarchical rigidity of the shared fantasy is
manifest in the conjuring act: the narcissist coerces his mate to be and to
behave in regimented, micromanaged, and minutely specified ways.
But, being the simulation that it is, the
narcissist desubstantiates his partner, forces her to renounce reality and
herself.
Thus caught in a dreamlike cobweb, both parties
develop paranoid ideation. In the cultlike settings of the shared fantasy, life
itself is the enemy.
And though the narcissist/programmer seems to be
in control, actually anything is possible in the nightmare that evolves.
The network effects of this form of lucid dreaming
as psychogenic illness are unforetold.
Hence the hallucinatory crazymaking and
cataclysmic dénouements of all romantic relationships with the narcissist.
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Narcissism is a fantasy defense gone awry.
There are two
types of narcissistic fantasies: grandeur
(money, sex, power, access, and/or adulation) and shared (“perfect love” with a
“soulmate”).
The narcissist is far more prone to engage in the latter
when he is in the throes of the former. He is also far more psychopathic when
mired in the grandiose fantasy.
The demise of either fantasy leads to the ultimate
unraveling of the other. But the grandeur fantasy is more resilient and takes
longer to fold.
When a shared fantasy goes bunk abruptly, the
narcissist embarks on frantic and indiscriminate efforts to find an alternative.
Only when he fails at the “discard and replace”
phase is the grandiose fantasy adversely affected, too.
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My blood boils when I peruse some of the
pseudointellectual trash meted out by the practitioners of the increasingly
more dubious field of gender “studies”.
Consider, for example, the current dogma, spawned
by Hanna Rosin and supported by the studies of Elizabeth Armstrong and others:
“Hookups are a great thing for women because they let them focus on their
careers rather than on men”.
Several problems with this inane statement:
1. Hookups ARE about men. The way most women
describe them, hookups are a form of sexual slavery on men’s terms and
conditions;
2. Women are not giving up on men in hookups!
Women are giving up on intimacy, investment, commitment, succor, and
relationships;
3. The sex in hookups sucks for the overwhelming
majority of women - twice less so for men.
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Both the Borderline and the
narcissist idealize their partners, but for
very different reasons (etiology) and through disparate psychodynamic
processes. Yet, the outcome is the same: abuse and breakup. How come?
The Borderline truly loves her mate and outsources
to him the regulation of her moods and affects (emotions).
Consequently, her dependence on him is absolute
which amplifies both her separation insecurity (abandonment anxiety) and her
fear of engulfment (losing herself in him).
Subject to the torsion of these twin terrors, the
Borderline decompensates and acts out abusively and then seeks the dissolution
of the bond both aggressively and passive-aggressively.
The narcissist idealizes his target in order to
idealize himself. Co-idealization: my partner is ideal, therefore I am ideal.
There are no emotions at play - just the elation of grandiosity affirmed.
But, over time and inevitably, the narcissist’s
mate diverges and deviates from her idealized rendition (the introject or
“snapshot”).
The narcissist reacts to any such discrepancy with
fury (narcissistic rage) and starts to devalue the source of the incessant
frustration.
The resulting relentless assaultive abuse ends up
decimating the bond (shared fantasy).
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Cancel
culture is the ineluctable toxic outcome and the
thought police of the Whatever culture.
Punitively silencing politically incorrect and
dissenting voices by proactively ignoring or blocking their access to social and
mass media is driven by rampant conformism gone awry: the hallmark of
totalitarianism, according to all scholarship. It often devolves into a
sadistic witch hunt.
The Whatever culture rests on two pillars: malignant
tolerance (“anything goes”) and moral relativism (“no such thing as absolute
values, everything is context-dependent and can be deconstructed”).
Anyone who dares dispute these two pernicious -
and utterly counterfactual - assertions is immediately and viciously cancelled.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube actively censor and derank
“wayward” creators (“shadowbanning”) - myself and @richard.grannon included.
Recent brave studies prove conclusively that
victimhood movements which resort to cancel culture are permeated through and
through with dark triad activists: narcissists and psychopaths.
In nature, monocultures are much more susceptible
to decay and disease. We are seeing proof of that in human societies as well
recently.
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Humanity’s
four monumental discoveries over the past 40 years:
1. Relationships and intimacy are very hard work,
they suck and should be actively shunned and discouraged (relationship
aversion);
2. Children are carbon-based, life-restricting
mini-monsters best avoided;
3. Curiosity and learning are for the
feeble-minded: study the minimum to make the minimal amount of money required
to survive minimally in your cocoon;
4. The joys of technologically-empowered solitude
far outweigh anything anyone can ever offer. Casual drunk sex with total
strangers and porn can take care of one’s unfortunate physiological urges.
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The frequency of casual sex among Millennials and the Z-gen is LOWER than among the Baby Boomers (my generation) and
generation X.
But there are some fundamental differences:
1. Casual sex is now the normative practice, not
one of many options: “having fun” is the imperative;
2. Nowadays, hookup sex leads to an intimate
relationship (albeit rarely), not the other way;
3. My generation put love, intimacy, and
couplehood above career. Not so today’s youth who remain single a decade longer
- or for life;
4. Currently, stranger sex is used to establish a
social ranking or status within a reference peer group (relative positioning).
Like information (Wikipedia), Facebook likes, a
sense of self-worth (narcissistic supply), or quality control (Yelp), the potential
partner’s attractiveness is now crowdsourced: peer opinions outweigh one’s own
(see Lisa Wade’s seminal work);
5. With the borders between public and private all
but gone (aka social media), sex is increasingly becoming a public act
(technically, dogging): in parties, group sex, clubs, even bars and restaurants.
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The orthodoxy is that sexual orientation is inherent and immutable.
But when many homosexuals get seriously drunk and,
therefore, disinhibited, they become heterosexuals. And vice versa: inebriated,
heterosexuals engage in same sex acts.
Inhibitions are internalized social strictures.
They are an integral part and outcome of the socialization process. Alcohol
removes them.
This raises an intriguing possibility: can all
sexual orientations be merely socially-determined scripts and roles? And, if
they are, what are the implications?
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That latter day feminism is an ideological cult is confirmed by the demented
responses I have been receiving. So, here are my ripostes:
1. Hookups are not rendering women equal to men:
in all formats of casual sex, women are 10 times more likely than men to be
sexually assaulted, half as likely to orgasm, and give way more oral sex than
they receive.
2. Both men and women are unable to transition
from the hookup culture to dating and to intimate relationships.
They endure a string of failed liaisons and,
having been burned repeatedly, about half of them end up being lifelong largely
celibate singles. At least one quarter develop anxiety disorders, depression,
and substance abuse disorders.
3. Ultimately, to avoid ineluctable hurt and
heartbreak, the refugees of the hookup culture either opt for a life of drunken
promiscuity (emotionless and meaningless sex) - or total phobic abstinence and
sex aversion.
Fallaciously, feminism casts these two
dysfunctional behavioral patterns in terms of “female empowerment”.
4. Studies and learning feature in less than half
of college advertising and promotional materials. Fun is the keyword and it is
clearly equated with sex. Hookups are a marketing tool intended to intoxicate
the youth with the promise of unbridled “freedom” and loose women as a lure.
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Ideological cults
involve a switch from full-fledged rationality and bounded rationality to “herd
rationality”: there is safety in numbers and it makes eminent sense to belong
to a like-minded group even if it requires self-defeating behaviors and the
suspension of critical thinking.
Cults also induce in their members pseudostupidity:
the passive aggressive rejection of data and arguments by repeating formulaic
and usually counterfactual slogans or mantras.
Group affiliation soothes persecutory delusions
(“we against the world”). Cults leverage the latter to foster the former.
Cults are the reifications of organizing and
explanatory (hermeneutic) principles: they imbue reality with meaning and are
both prescriptive and proscriptive.
Examples of modern day cults: radical feminism,
conspiracy theories, followers of Jordan Peterson and Tony Robbins, the
hardcore supporters of Donald Trump, free market fundamentalists, and all
religions.
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Here is another moronic pearl of “wisdom” from
the cult
of feminism: hookups are good because they render the
participants more resilient even when they end up being raped and more sexually
experienced, even if most of these experiences are bad.
But why acquire resilience and experience this
way? Why not simply warn the youth that hookups both suck and are risky?
It is like saying: “Jumping from multiple tall
cliffs without a glider or a parachute taught me a lot about my body and about
the nature of cliffs out there”.
Moreover: “dating” among the young is merely
glorified hooking up. It has nothing to do with the way it had been done since
the 1920s. “Dates” nowadays are way shorter, the two parties are plastered,
they invariably end in penetrative sex (or sexual assault), and they rarely
lead to a second encounter.
So, once a youth gets hooked on hookups, there is
no way back.
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Women
are postponing having a committed relationship (such as marriage) until they are in their early 30s. They
focus on their careers instead and cherish their freedom to make all manner of
choices.
In the meantime, these young women avoid intimacy
and emotions as they sleep around with strangers or with friends with benefits.
But then, by the time they decide to team up with
an intimate partner, about half of these women discover to their horror that it
is way too late.
They end up as embittered and misandrist lifelong
singles. The other half cycle through a series of disastrous liaisons.
The rate of infidelity has more than doubled as
women thrash about in growing panic in search of male alternatives while
betraying their nominal mates.
Why this predicament? For three reasons:
1. Men prefer no strings attached sex with the
crops of much younger women who flood the sexual marketplace every year;
2. The double standard is still alive and kicking.
Western men lie to women when they pretend that it is a thing of the past. No
one wants to team up for life with a slut, her reputation irreparably tarnished
by years of unbridled “whoring”; and
3. After decades of meaningless sex, reduced
affect. and zero intimacy, very few women (and men) constitute relationship
material. They lack the most basic relevant skills or practice.
Men are going their own way: they reject any
commitment or investment as they prey on the hordes of sexually available
females.
When they grow old, some men marry conservative
and submissive women, including gold-diggers imported from overseas.
Some Feminists claim that hookup culture led to
positive outcomes: most young people still want to get married, teenagers today
are far less likely than their parents were to have sex or get pregnant.
But these “accomplishments” are illusory: most
young people fail to get married or even form long-term relationships. And the
young are so turned off by casual sex that, according to Pew Center, a whopping
38% of them end up adopting solitude and celibacy as the default lifestyle.
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Sex
has always been transactional: from time
immemorial, women have been trading it for protection and provision.
Now, according to studies and interviews, they are
swapping sex for free drinks and a place to crash when they are too hammered to
return home.
This extreme cheapening and commoditization of sex
engenders a cognitive dissonance which modern women resolve by reframing the
sordid proceedings as a "liberating choice".
Both women and men nowadays decouple sex from
emotions and meaning for an average period of 15 years.
This recurrent practice hardwires the association
into their neuroplastic brains indelibly.
When they ardently want to change - they no longer
can. Even in committed intimate and loving relationships, the sex is mechanical
and impersonal.
When asked to link specific activities to
intimacy, people under the age of 30 most frequently list "talking".
Not one of them mentions sex!
Consequently, as they grow out of their casual sex
days, they devolve into celibacy, a sexless relationship, or serial cheating.
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As individualism has
metamorphesized into narcissism, the “right
to choose” had come to be identified with freedom itself.
But, like everything else in our postmodern
reality, freedom of choice had undergone several cancerous transformations
(“malignant libertarianism”).
For example: it is now used as a way to reframe
reality in order to resolve profound cognitive dissonance (“It is my choice to
be objectified and abused in hookup sex”).
Free choice is extended to self-harm (“I have a
right to do with and to my body as I freely elect”).
Most worryingly, the freedom to choose is now
extended to justify harming others. A most recent example is the anti-vaxxer
movement.
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Some narcissists devalue and discard their partners during a pregnancy or shortly after childbirth. What gives?
A pregnant female is an autonomous, agentic woman. This challenges and
undermines the inert and malleable internal object that represents her in the
narcissist's mind (her "snapshot" or introject).
The narcissist reacts with separation insecurity
(abandonment anxiety) to this divergence. He is humiliated at his exposed
dependence and helplessness.
In an attempt to rid himself of these negative
affects and the attendant frustration, he aggressively devalues his partner and
then dumps her unceremoniously.
The narcissist typically protests his victimhood,
claiming to have been "neglected and ignored".
Moreover, the narcissist cannot control the
processes and emotions unfolding in his partner's body and mind. He cannot
outdo or outcompete her (he cannot get pregnant or give childbirth). This
comparative inferiority constitutes a protracted narcissistic injury best
avoided.
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There are two periods in a Western woman’s life
when she is confronted with an overwhelming shortage of eligible men: during the college or university years - and when wants to
transition from 15 years of casual sex or short-term liaisons to a long-term
and committed intimate relationship, usually as she turns 30.
These imbalances in gender ratios disempower women
and reduce them to abject and unboundaried sex slavery as the only way to
secure a mate.
Naturally, men leverage this despair and refuse to
commit or to invest even as they extort and coerce no strings attached one
night stands from their reluctant “dates”.
Ultimately, about two fifths of women remain
lifelong singles, having missed the love train by focusing on their cherished
careers instead.
Inundated by much younger entries, older women
find it increasingly difficult to compete for male attention until they finally
succumb and opt for celibacy, Netflix, and their pets.
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The alternative to old-fashioned relationships
is not necessarily self-sufficient loneliness. There are other options.
True: not everyone is built to do full scale
intimacy and cohabitation.
But extremely few people are really happy all by
themselves, never mind how much they protest otherwise in order to resolve
their embittering cognitive dissonance.
In her book “American Hookup”, Lisa Wade quotes
the historian Stephanie Coontz as she argues that “never in the history of
humanity have so many different ways of loving been allowed”. Example: LDR
(long distance relationships).
In her essay “The World Historical Transformation
of Marriage,” Coontz writes:
“Almost any separate way of organizing caregiving,
childrearing, residential arrangements, sexual interactions, or interpersonal
redistribution of resources has been tried by some society at some point in
time.
But the coexistence in one society of so many
alternative ways of doing all of these different things—and the comparative
legitimacy accorded to many of them—has never been seen before.”
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Any social movement that acts as a cult and yields disastrous outcomes in terms of mental health, interpersonal functioning, and self-harming behaviors should be outlawed. I would start with feminism.
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Tomorrow at 13:30, I will be giving the first
public lecture ever about “Nothingness: A Philosophy
for Life”. Next week on YouTube.
The event is organized by Zoran Vitanov @zoran.vitanov and will be held in Ragusa 360 Rooftop @ragusa360 in Skopje, Macedonia.
Entry is free, subject to a reservation (owing to
Covid 19 capacity restrictions).
Last month, the documentary filmmaker Paula
Lekuona interviewed me about Nothingness for her forthcoming series of
documentaries on various socio-ethical issues.
Nothingness is not about being a nobody and doing nothing.
It is about choosing to be human, not a lobster.
It is about putting firm boundaries between you
and the world.
It is about choosing happiness - not dominance.
It is accomplishing from within, not from without.
It is about not letting others regulate your
emotions, moods, and thinking.
It is about being an authentic YOU.
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Toxic
masculinity is now the norm among women, as well as men.
Coupled with unrestricted sociosexuality (fancy name for promiscuity), it is
very common among dark triad personalities.
Surprisingly, though, this unsavory mix does not
always automatically translate into infidelity. If the intimate partner is
boundaried and committed to the relationship, the risk is no higher than
average.
The problem is that few people bearing this
psychological profile are either.
They tend to bail out and cheat with the first
sign of serious difficulties and, accustomed to meaningless and unemotional
sex, they hold a more permissive and dismissive view of extramarital casual
encounters.
Consequently, most of them are serial cheaters.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get fully informed
regarding the relationship and sexual histories of a potential intimate partner. Past misbehavior is an infallible predictor of future
misbehavior, period.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In aggregate, women are now earning more than men, are way more educated, had
monopolized certain critical professions, and prefer their careers to any man
for much longer than before.
About two fifths of women across the lifespan
remain single for life and either go celibate or do casual sex (Pew Center).
They are catching up with men when it comes to infidelity, narcissism,
promiscuity, substance abuse, and antisocial behaviors.
Women are empowered in all fields of life bar one:
sex and interpersonal relationships.
To attract men and keep them, women still
self-objectify, groom and titivate themselves, go under the knife (plastic and
cosmetic surgery), and succumb, inebriated, to the most degrading sexual
demands of men, even total strangers in hookups or in group sex.
Sex and intimacy are men’s Alamo: the last stand
in an ever shrinking enclave of virility and erstwhile dominance, a vengeful
throwback.
Men now exaggerate and caricature waning
chauvinistic machoism as a way to punish uppity women for their inexorable
ascendance and “put them in their place, reduce them to size”.
Being sexually and emotionally abusive to women is
men’s way of restoring their challenged grandiose superiority. They are
wielding the good old reliable double standard: slut shaming and pathologizing
women as “not relationship material”.
Women increasingly go their own way. Every year
since 2016, a majority of women in the USA had avoided men altogether.
Lesbianism has tripled in the past 20 years. Other parts of the world are
following suit with alacrity.
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Merry Christmas! May all your gifts come true!
The narcissist depends on his
coterie for Narcissistic Supply. He resents
this addictive dependence and himself for being so frail and impotent. It
negates his self-delusional grandiose fantasy of omnipotence.
To compensate for this shameful neediness, the
narcissist holds his sycophantic acolytes in contempt. He finds his fans,
admirers, and followers repulsive and holds them to be inferior.
He sees himself reflected in their presumptuousness
and sense of entitlement and resents this constant and tawdry reminder.
Fans often claim to possess inside information
about their idol and to have special rights to privileged access simply by
virtue of their unbridled adulation and time-tested loyalty.
But, the narcissist, not being a mere mortal,
believes himself to be beyond human comprehension and refuses to render anyone
special by granting him or her concessions denied to others.
Being special is his exclusive prerogative. His
followers’s conduct implies a certain egalitarian camaraderie which the
narcissist finds abhorrent, humiliating, and infuriating.
Groupies and hangers-on somehow fancy themselves
entitled to the narcissist's favour and largesse, his time, attention, and
other resources. They convince themselves that they are exempt from the
narcissist's rage and wrath and immune to his vagaries and abuse.
This self-imputed and self-conferred status irritates
the narcissist no end as it challenges and encroaches on his standing as the
only source of preferential treatment and the sole decision-maker when it comes
to the allocation of his precious and cosmically significant wherewithal.
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Is loneliness - the emotional reaction to being alone - merely a form of social engineering, a culture-bound syndrome?
Do we naturally prefer to be alone in order to maximize the efficient allocation of scarce resources?
Is there a difference between loneliness and aloneness? And are these bad or self-defeating lifestyle choices?
Hopelessness and abuse render self-isolation and no children rational choices.
First, the facts:
North America is the harbinger of global trends, the canary in the mine.
Men and women postpone having committed relationships in order to focus on their studies, careers, having fun, and travelling.
By the time women start to seek intimate partners, men are used to no strings attached sex and solitude: they refuse to commit or to invest.
Almost half the adult population in the USA are singles. About 31% have never been in a long-term committed relationship, including marriage or even cohabitation.
Marriage rates are down by half and about 60% of such unions end in a divorce within a few years (taking into account second and third marriages). Marriage had become just another form of a non-committal medium-term relationship and extradyadic sex is very common (about 40%). Childbirth rates have collapsed.
Friends IRL are also way rarer than before. People spend a lot more time alone and at home, consuming entertainment and consorting with a bewildering assortment of pets.
Sex in all its forms – including casual sex - is on the decline and celibacy or sexless relationships are the norm. There is a marked rise in sex with AI apps, sex dolls, and in the production and consumption of online pornography, including self-pornography.
Telecommuting, Flextime, and the pandemic conspired to force us to work from home. The last thread of human contact - the workplace - has been severed.
Other parts of the world are getting there. Contemporary singles are likely to end their lives this way.
Atomization, malignant individualism, and technological self-sufficiency conspire to render us irremediably lonely.
The solitude of singles adversely affects their income and health, both mental and physical.
These shocking data reflect terminal deficiencies in the skillset required in order to maintain intimacy and relationships.
Decades of casual sex and placing career above love hardwired our neuroplastic brain to shun both.
But what are these missing skills? The ability to compromise, set boundaries, be vulnerable, tolerate frustration, give space, trust, and cooperate.
In short: everything that the narcissists and psychopaths we are all becoming are bad at.
Reactions to loneliness
Busyness and routines
Creativity
Magical thinking
Itinerancy
Paracosm (metaverse, multiplayer games)
Imaginary friends (social media)
Relative positioning (social media, video games)
Skill acquisition and self-improvement (self-help)
Conspiracism
Religion and occult
Mental illness (impaired reality testing), including avoidance and withdrawal
Narcissism
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From my draft syllabus of “Youth Sexuality: Trends and
Issues” (Outreach program of SIAS-CIAPS: Centre for
International Advanced Professional Studies).
GENDER RELATIONS STRIP
WOMEN: Let’s hang out and have fun!
MEN: OK, but only if you act as total drunk sluts
and have no strings attached sex with us on demand.
70% of WOMEN: You got yourselves a deal! We will
do anything to secure free drinks, have a social life, get male attention and
some sex, however bad.
15 years of hookups and “dates” (glorified
hookups) later
WOMEN: We now want to have a long-term intimate
relationship with one man. Maybe even a child.
MEN: But you are sluts! You said so! You trashed
yourself with us! We feel deceived by your about-face! We feel led on, teased, and
played! We don’t want any commitment or emotions! We are having great fun!
And anyhow your are nothing but used goods: older
and uglier. We will go find younger, prettier women, “fresh meat”, who just
want to have fun with us. Don’t ever contact us again: go find a cat!
RAPE VICTIMHOOD SCHEMATICS
All rape and sexual assault perpetrators should be
punished harshly.
But most victims are victimized multiple times. By
refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions and choices, they are
setting themselves up for future abuse.
Examples of self-exculpating fare:
“The rape just happened (I had contributed nothing
to it happening)”
“The rape does not define who I am (even though I
had made a series of decisions that put me in harm’s way or in a highly
ambiguous situation - and I keep repeating these behaviors time and again)”
“I went to a frat house or a club whose members
are notorious for their sexual aggression, I got myself blackout drunk there, I
wore the skimpiest of clothing, I gave blow jobs in public to several guys. I
then agreed to go with several of them to their rooms and public showers.
But, despite all the above, I bear no
responsibility for my rape: I may have said “yes” (I can’t remember), but even
if I did, I had been taken advantage of”.
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This is the age of victimhood. No one takes personal responsibility or agrees to be held
accountable. Bad things mysteriously just “happen”. The passive voice is all
the rage.
Well, here is some breaking news for you:
You are nothing but the sum of your informed
choices and decisions. They define you for good and for life;
There is no going back in time and there is never
a second chance. Your present shapes your future inexorably;
You bear full responsibility for the foreseeable
outcomes of your informed choices and decisions;
Past behavior is the only infallible
prognosticator of future conduct: you WILL relapse into old behavior patterns
and habits. It is only a question of time and the right circumstances. Don’t
trust people to change: they won’t;
The world couldn’t care less about you. You are on
your own, in charge, alone forever. Get a grip. Wake up. Think before you act.
Strangers are not kind, they are predators. Don’t be their prey.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Derek Walcott: Love After Love (poem)
Micro-relationships: casual and stranger sex,
including modern "dates" (glorified hookups)
Real relationships: vulnerability and hurt
acceptance; dreams, goals, and planning - not fantasy; realistic perception of
the partner, not idealization or devaluation;
Pseudo-relationships: shared fantasies
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Affirmative
consent (“yes means yes”) is the newest piece of
nonsense, trying to square the circle of decaying gender relations.
Here are the facts:
1. When it comes to sex, men still dominate,
dictate, coerce, and have the upper hand. Women comply and try to please them;
2. In a haze of alcohol and drugs, there is no
credible way to establish consent. Most contemporary sex takes place among
participants nearly incapacitated by substances;
3. Alcohol affects women much faster and more
profoundly than it affects men;
4. In the absence of sexual scripts, both men and
women are bewildered as to their own motivations, decisions, and choices and
are heavily influenced by women objectifying and despoiling porn;
5. Young men hold women in utter contempt and
treat them as so much inebriated trash.
One third of men say that they would force a woman
to have sex, one in seven would rape her, one fourth of women in college had
been sexually assaulted, a majority of men find the sexual degradation of
intoxicated women to be “hilarious” or “funny”;
6. Faced with such attitudes and a staunch refusal
to commit, invest, emote, and reciprocate in relationships - women react with
anger bordering on misandry (man-hating). About one third of women
choose to remain single and one sixth are lesbians;
7. Many men lie and future fake and so obtain
consent under false premises, a breach of contract in all but name. Tough
technically consent had been given, it was conditioned upon the fulfillment of
certain promises and should be considered to have been retroactively revoked.
Not very conducive to mature, negotiated,
consensual sex.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Breaking news: You must choose between having a
career and having a life. You cannot have both.
It is a zero sum tradeoff, not a game.
You can either have a meteoric career with a sputtering,
dysfunctional private sphere - or a happy, balanced life replete with
functional relationships but a mediocre career. Never both.
Relationships require time, patience, resilience,
reciprocity, and investment and compete for these scarce resources head on with
your career.
Make your choice. Don’t believe the
self-interested hype out there: you cannot have both.
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There is a thin red line between compromise
(healthy, necessary, and functional) and self-sacrifice (pathological, self-defeating, and dysfunctional).
How to tell them apart?
Compromise reflects the needs, priorities, and
preferences of both parties. Self-sacrifice is always asymmetrical: skewed in
favour of the recipient.
Compromise never involves a power play, mind games,
or test of allegiance and fealty. Self-sacrifice is often focused precisely on
these.
Finally, compromise enhances compatibility,
cooperation, and the wellbeing of everyone. Self-sacrifice, being one-sided,
produces in the giver or people pleaser bitter resentment, passive aggression,
and disillusionment.
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It is no coincidence that periods of female sexual liberation (some call it promiscuity or self-objectification) went and
still go hand in hand with women’s labor participation.
Until recently, women had been earning less than
men on an adjusted and aggregate basis. They constituted cheap, qualified labor
(and consumers) - but were highly distracted by the demands of hearth and home.
It rendered women unreliable laborers.
Employers then and now much prefer women to be
single, emotionally unattached, childless, and sexually fulfilled.
Enter the sexual revolution and women’s
“empowerment”: an ideology of self-sufficiency which champions the elevation of
career above patriarchal institutions such as marriage and the family and
promotes no strings attached, emotion-free, casual sex.
Good for business, if not always for women.
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Most abnormal (“crazy”)
behaviors are actually normative and common among
healthy folk. So, how to tell the difference? I am going to use sex as a useful
litmus test.
1. Quantity becomes quality. Repeating some
patterns incessantly renders suspect the psychosexuality of the person involved.
Thus: having sex with multiple partners is one
thing - having sex with many different strangers or with groups of strangers
within a very short period of time is probably indicative of the existence of a
problem.
2. Age inappropriate activities usually hark back
to mental health issues. Hookups and one night stands on “dates” may be OK in
college but they should raise more than one eyebrow if they persist as an
exclusive sexual script beyond one’s early twenties;
3. Antisocial behaviors such as serial
infidelities, constant lying, or stealing are probably the manifestations of
deeper problems;
4. Recklessness, compulsive risk-taking, acting
out, substance abuse, and unboundaried novelty-seeking are all artifacts and
symptoms of mental health disorders and self-destructiveness.
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Choose happiness over dominance (be human, not a lobster);
Choose Meaning over complexity;
Choose fuzziness, incompleteness, imperfection,
uncertainty, and unpredictability (in short: choose life) over illusory and
fallacious order, structure, rules, and perfection imposed on reality (in
short: death);
Choose the path over any destination, the journey
over any goal, the process over any outcome, the questions over any answers;
Be an authentic person with a single inner voice,
proud of the internal, not the external.
(Lecture dated December 23, 2021 in Ragusa 360,
Skopje, North Macedonia, organized by Zoran Vitanov @zoran.vitanov , cinematography Marijan Ognenovski).
Nothingness: Antidote to Narcissism channel
Nothingness playlist on my main YouTube channel.
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Cold Therapy is a treatment modality for Depression and for Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD).
Developed by Sam Vaknin, Cold Therapy is based on
two premises: (1) That narcissistic disorders are actually forms of complex
post-traumatic conditions; and (2) That narcissists are the outcomes of
arrested development and attachment dysfunctions. Consequently, Cold Therapy
borrows techniques from child psychology and from treatment modalities used to
deal with PTSD.
Cold Therapy consists of the re-traumatization of
the narcissistic client in a hostile, non-holding environment which resembles
the ambience of the original trauma. The adult patient successfully tackles
this second round of hurt and thus resolves early childhood conflicts and
achieves closure rendering his now maladaptive narcissistic defenses redundant,
unnecessary, and obsolete. It was found to also be effective with major
depressive episodes.
Cold Therapy makes use of proprietary techniques
such as erasure (suppressing the client’s speech and free expression and
gaining clinical information and insights from his reactions to being so
stifled). Other techniques include: grandiosity reframing, guided imagery,
negative iteration, other-scoring, happiness map, mirroring, escalation, role
play, assimilative confabulation, hypervigilant referencing, and re-parenting.
It is proving to be an effective treatment for major depressive episodes (see
this article about the link between pathological narcissism and depression and
this article about depression and regulatory narcissistic supply in narcissism).
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In a futile attempt at closure, the narcissist
keeps re-enacting, throughout his adult life, early childhood conflicts
with his parents, who are also important sources of
narcissistic supply.
Naturally, the narcissist has a mixed reaction to
the passing away of his parents. It is composed of elation and a sense of
overwhelming freedom mixed with grief.
The narcissist is attached to his parents in much
the same way as a hostage gets "attached" to his captors (the
Stockholm syndrome), the tormented to his tormentors, or the prisoner to his
wardens.
When this bondage ceases, the narcissist feels
lost and released, saddened and euphoric, empowered and drained.
Narcissistic parents treat their children as
extensions, or mere instruments of gratification. They disrespect the child’s
emerging boundaries and are, thus, abusive.
Narcissistic parents control and emotionally
blackmail their offspring and instill in them guilt, shame and codependence.
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Personal
growth, self development, and healing crucially
depend on vulnerability and the willingness to accept hurt and loss.
This is especially true in family settings and
intimate relationships.
This is the age of pervasive distrust: of experts, of science, of the authorities, of the future,
and of each other. Everyone is wary of being played. Every has a pet conspiracy
theory.
Nowhere is the mistrust more profound than between
men and women in all age groups, from all backgrounds, everywhere in the world.
Around 70% of men and women say that they deeply
or somewhat distrust the opposite sex. The remainder totally or “somewhat”
trust their counterparties.
Women complain that men are “feminine”: not
committed or invested, weak, ineffectual, and craven. The vagaries of online
dating served to augment this inauspicious view of men.
Men describe women as sexually unboundaried, prone
to cheating and drunkenness, and cunning.
A whopping 16% of people under age 25 cheat in
their relationships every year (compared to 2% per annum in the 1980s).
Cheating had become a default casual sex behavior and is now intimately coupled
with excessive drinking.
This supernova of infidelity is driven by
empowered and financially independent women who no longer tolerate male abuse
and bad or no sex in their primary dyads.
This abysmal mutual resentment and hypervigilance
has dire outcomes: about one third of the surveyed in Pew Center studies are
lifelong singles, another 15% are in between rapidfire pseudorelationships.
The marriage rate is at an all time low, having
declined by 50% since 1990. Birth rates in industrial countries have plummeted
and the populations in many nations are aging and declining at dizzying speeds.
Since 2016, aloneness is the new normal for the
majority of men and women worldwide.
“Happy New Year” is beginning to sound like a
morbid and very bad joke.
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Mislabelling
and misidentifying internal dynamics is a common
cognitive distortion among cluster B patients. Self-deceiving mental artifacts
and self-gaslighting are the hallmarks of several personality disorders,
including Narcissistic and Borderline.
Consider, for example the interpersonal dimension.
The personality disordered are totally incapable
of any intimacy and of any emotions whatsoever in sex and, more generally, with
people.
They habitually confuse dependence, limerence,
novelty, infatuation (rush), having sex, exhibitionism, masochism, defiance,
competitiveness, possessiveness, neediness, and people pleasing with love and intimacy. These, of course, are not the same things, not by a long
shot. Actually, they are the antonyms of love and intimacy.
It FEELS like emotions and intimacy to these
patients because they know no better and no different.
When they attempt to identify and label their dim
stirrings, they simply resort to the vocabulary of healthier, normal folk. But
this linguistic sleight of hand doesn’t make it so, needless to say.