U.S. diplomats report that the Prime Minister gets almost all his information from Islamist-leaning newspapers, ignoring the input of his own ministers. The Turkish military and intelligence services no longer share with him some of their reports. He trusts no one completely, surrounding himself with “an iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors.” Despite Erdogan’s macho behavior, he is reportedly terrified of losing his grip on power.
Once armed with a widget like the term “malignant narcissist” to bundle all of the world’s dictators together, or, my favorite (because it’s mine) “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)”, we may reach a point where knowing how such personalities work and the harm they bring to themselves, their gulled peers and supporters, and the world beyond their glorious and tightly controlled bubble full of pleasing mirrors demands some response.
In Egypt, I doubt Morsi & The Brothers got the message, denial and resistance to criticism partially defining this syndrome in personality, but The People of Egypt finally got ahead of what was being done to them and that with a military perhaps equally prescient as regards both cultural and institutional “human factors” and corresponding administrative and management choices and wisdom as regards good leadership well anchored and strong.
Not all autocrats are alike — Putin’s my favorite; Mugabe’s the worst — nor or all military organizations alike in their affection, alignment, and integration with the greater spirit of the people they defend (to keep this parallel, Egypt’s infernal opposite might be Syria’s defense forces whipped on by Maher al-Assad — there hasn’t been much display of affection or regard for noncombatant Syrians on the part of that murderous outfit).
Where people come to know what they are seeing when confronted by a personality exhibiting a dangerous narcissism, then they become responsible for keeping themselves from too easily following the same.
In developing states afflicted with potential or already self-serving “presidents for life”, how to drive this perception of the peacock through the streets with either the language or technologies available becomes a challenge.
It’s not easily done or Zimbabweans would have it done it a long, long time ago.
One of my Facebook buddies wrote in relation to the Hamas missile battery pictured to the left, “I love to hear the muslim’s [STET] cry about how offended they are! They can start a war by launching rockets at Israel and then they cry about it when they get retaliation for their acts.”
By now it should dawn on the infidel (and “The People of the Book” AKA “The People of the Five Books” AKA “the people who have written thousands of books” AKA “the people who write books, grow up to be doctors, and win Nobel Prizes out of all proportion to their small number” AKA etc.) that whatever Islam is or will be, it’s most conservative expression goes hardest on Muslims, and they’re not unaware of this.
So I responded:
All legacies in culture, language, philosophy, and religion evolve, and it’s good that they do. While we Jews have been a leading part of that — a light among the nations — ours may be not the only nation or only light, and it may be part of our character-in-eternal-myth to find that light in others as well.
Some, like Hamas and Hezbollah, make finding that light difficult for us, but it would be a mistake to think for a minute that others do not suffer before the strident and violent expressions in speech and in reality of such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban, not to completely equate the two but to suggest than an INCLUSIVE universalism is greater in latency within our species than so many attempts by fascist entrepreneurs to leverage exclusive and deeply narcissistic programs, whether by way of nationalist or religious ambitions, into their own power or wealth. Some get away with what they do on the backs of others: Robert Mugabe foremost to my turn of mind. 🙂
I’ll tell you a not-so-secret secret: it’s not the dictator who destroys his people; it’s the dictator’s people who allow themselves to be destroyed, either in their humanity or in fact.
So it is with Hamas and others: they’re gettin’ rich (or they’re getting weapons, at least) while “their people” are allowing themselves to “get owned” in the worst ways imaginable. The day will dawn when they know they can fight back and will.
Contributing to that thought this morning was this reported this morning in the Los Angeles Times: “I’m demanding that Morsi sit down with the opposition and listen to the different people of Egypt. He must also retract his decree and reform the police system,” said Arafat Moawad, a protester in Tahrir. “He needs to do these things in order to become a president for all Egyptians. Now, he is just a president for [his] Muslim Brotherhood movement.” (“Egyptian stock exchange falls, protesters converge on Tahrir Square”).
To be clear: there is the voice (supported on the “Arab Street” by the presence of the body) protesting both the latest power grab by dictator wannabe (President-for-Life) Morsi and, associated with him, the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It’s not the dictator, is it?
Dictators, generally speaking, are but common assholes who have managed to elevate themselves above all others — not for nothing do we call them “malignant narcissists” — by way of intimidation, theft, and murder.
It’s The People, Los Pueblos, the Every Man and Woman, who allow them their outrageous license, which I believe they do in relation to their own cultural or social disorganization and lack of comprehension and prescience. No one alone and innately possessed of a decent ethics and humanity can stand up to a thug; anyone alone, however, may band with others to shut down the same, and then, when that happens, the movement, the True Revolution, may be called an expression of righteous political will, this provided the same is itself possessed of a broad scope and related insight.
From the Haggadah with which I grew up: “With every generation, a little more freedom is won.”
Moses left Egypt with not only the Jews but a “mixed multitude” — i.e., all who wished to abandon the world constructed around and for Pharaoh, as malignant a narcissist as any who has ever existed. That story, intact, transmitted faithfully across generations for now thousands of years, remains eternal, true, and adaptable.
Those who remember, know the band well and true name of the music: Yes and “I’ve Seen All Good People”.
Theirs was a part of the ethos of the English-borne 1970s.
And here, 2012, far from those halcyon days, their art for the ears continues to resonate.
“Don’t surround yourself with yourself” — I should take the advice and perhaps others should take it for themselves as well.
My interest in the narcissistic dimension of political psychology started off with the direct and real space experience of personalities exhibiting mild to severe bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder while in cyberspace I happened to be surfing conflicts and discovering for myself any number of autocratic regimes and the mess and misery they were able to bring to their hapless constituents.
(For this blog, the “Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology” category should suffice, as I hope the whole production will not be so all over the place as the other, which I had created to showcase some other things I could do).
(In science, it is generally taken as a good thing to arrive at similar observations and insights by way of separate tracks — remember: theories stand until disproved, always, but they may be strengthened too by the arrival of new data — and that appears to be what has happened).
To move on: politics draw a variety of social competitors — advisers, leaders, warriors — and among the same, some may carry within themselves the over-the-top, unconstrained, boundary-confused, and often sadistic egotism of the malignant narcissist, and these too full of themselves no one needs.
As I type this, the intelligence of the world moves quickly in tens upon tens of thousands of communications per hour, and so it is I happen to participate in the Facebook presence of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (the organizational site has been listed to the left). One of my Facebook buddies, Lakhkar Khan Hoti, posted there a statement by President Obama extolling the contributions made by Islam to humanity, which I interpret as part of the President’s promise to “extend the hand of peace” to Islam, and requested comment.
As professionals in a social-networking community may do, the original poster was asked to cite his source.
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”
There are some things humans — individually, in aggregate, without regard to legacy — may wish to entertain as twined language, technology, and trade capacities continue to contract and integrate lives and lifestyles across our ever gregarious species. Start with the meaning and significance of self-concept in relation to others and whether certain degrees of glorious narcissistic self-aggrandizement have a place in anyone’s better future, not least of all Pakistan’s.
My interest in political psychology and the dimension referred to as “narcissism” was inspired by encountering in my web-borne travels so many tawdry dictatorships — the junta in Burma; Robert Mugabe (thank him for reintroducing cholera to his people) in Zimbabwe; Paul Biya whose French connections and chateau keep him comfy while his people starve in Cameroon; etc. Copy and paste “African Dictator” into your browser, and you should come up with a blog titled and devoted to just that subject, quite colorful. And awful.
One might suggest there’s some difference too between overt religiosity and deep and rightly cherished spirituality.
There may be a good track in humanity enforced by our natural and overwhelming propensity to enjoy one another despite whatever hardships we may be enduring.
Where conditions have become untenable, whether by the hand of Pharaoh or through the failure of ambition as represented by the will to war — other ideas and policies proving bankrupt beneath the hands of lost autocrats and warmongers both — most people resign themselves to suffering or leave for what they hope will prove a healthier situation.
A bully anywhere — schoolyard, saloon, state, tribe, region — drives humanity away, and one may suggest that even God’s love goes with those who leave.
Time and again, and without understanding the sources of their own ruin, time reduces the malignant and all they have done to rags and relics, not to mention the diminishing of their reputation down into the class of assorted “bad examples” in lessons to new generations.
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