Tag Archives: narcissism

FTAC – Sawing On — and On and On — (Malignant, Political, Civilizational) Narcissism

14 Monday Apr 2014

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In Egypt, the government that “came to power in a fair election” represented the only party with a program at the time, such had been the character of Mubarak’s suppression of all political competition, and, indeed, it proved its identity in values by immediate rewriting the state’s constitution to serve its own most undemocratic ends. Notably, it not only maintained Mubarak’s torture chambers but made them its own.

While “the problem” may be labeled “authoritarianism” and attention deflected away from Islam thereby, the primary driver in both unconstrained military and theocratic ambition has been “malignant narcissism” AKA “political narcissism” AKA “civilizational narcissism”. In individuals diagnosed with “narcissistic personality disorder” the signal that is “grandiose messianic delusion” may be quite distinct; in politicians, the same in personality may be recognized too late or — as happens with dictators, secular or religious — abetted by the “gonna get something” mentality of their followers plus the naturally strident and normal narcissism of youth.

Result: ih conflict, the same mentality playing on both sides of the table (“different talk; same walk”).

Against both, the middle in humanity — sometimes I call that the “humanity of humanity” — needs to assert or reassert its interests, and that would seem to involve a unique struggle but one familiar to many of many religions: the revolution on the outside may need to be matched by another within the heart.

Inspiration for the above note: Rodrik, Dani.  “The Problem is Authoritarianism, Not Islam.”  World Affairs, August 12, 2013.

Q: Why narcissism?

A: Narcissistic mortification.

Causes and encouragements are more probably multivariate regarding contributing factors in producing, say, an actor-producer-director of a personality and a contemporary monster like the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei, which is not to suggest that all of their counterparts opposite their position in Syria are honky dory either.

In any case, Dani Rocrick’s essay well covers the “all-for-all” character of the open democracies, the Musketeer quality of my paraphrase extending easily from “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”   However, as if with a sharp plane, he criticizes the authoritarianism on the surface of governance associated with the Muslim-majority states.

It may be noted of BackChannels that while I give portion of the “Islamic Small Wars” attention, such as the junta in Burma, Paul Biya in Cameroon, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe are never far from mind either, nor for that matter at this time is Russia’s President Putin, who appears to have been hastened along his predictable track by his commitment to Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War.  “Washington” as if it had a mind rather than contained a collection of such, may have thought that Putin representing Russia’s interests in the middle east would have no investment in Ayatollah Khamenei’s client state and platform for Hezbollah, but it turns out that what Putin, Assad, and Khamenei value most are their respective positions as absolute authorities, achieved or in ambition, in each of their states.  That quality also provides a political basis for greater cooperation between China and Russia.

Where fits Muhammad in this?

Approaching the eve of Passover today, some may be reminded that, “So We took retribution from them, and We drowned them in the sea because they denied Our signs and were heedless of them” (Quran 7:136).

Who is “We”?

The Jewish mythos acknowledges God alone as having parted the Red Sea with Moses as merely a leader: “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided . . . . ” (Exodus 14:21).

Repeat: ” . . . all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind . . . .”

Moses, recruited by God in the first place, speaking to Pharaoh as intermediary for God (for it would not do for God to speak to Pharaoh, Pharaoh having confused himself with God), and, by God’s will, leading the Jewish People and a “mixed multitude” down to the sea, may have in “Abracadabra” fashion reached out a foot or two over the lapping tide, but the language doesn’t change as regards who’s Boss, from beginning to the end, alpha-omega, and Who, exactly, “turned it into dry land”.

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Link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10695217/Syria-anniversary-the-psychopaths-are-unstoppable.html

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10695217/Syria-anniversary-the-psychopaths-are-unstoppable.html

 It is not that they accuse us of lying, they now say, or failing in our duty; it is that describing their experiences only seems to make things worse.

Gradually, I have come to realise there may be some truth in that. In 1940, during the London Blitz, the poet Louis MacNeice noticed the same curiosity, that awareness of others’ fate seemed to make people less rather than more empathetic: “…with doom tumbling from the sky/ Each of us has an alibi/ For doing nothing – Let him die.” The plethora of news distances us from the disaster unfolding: “Let him die, his death will be/ A drop of water in the sea/ A journalist’s commodity.”

FTAC – Narcissism and the Scapegoat

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Psychology

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If one perceives one’s self in a weak or threatened position when one is by default the strong party (“leaders” are not often referred to as “fathers” for nothing, especially in autocratic environments) then the deflection of attention and concern from one’s own position to that of a less-liked or neutral party becomes part of sustaining power plus service, and the service is . . . narcissistic supply!

If you took the notion of “scapegoating” as an apparent behavior — what’s bad in us we give to this goat that we then expel from our presence and leave to God and nature outside of the camp — the mechanism in political and social (and family) reasoning may be as suggested. If it seems so, then we may have something to work with as as much has been designed in the invention of language and maintained in suspension within circles affected, and that from family relationships and outward to clans, tribes, federations, and states.

Basically, if there’s a serious “Big Daddy” who must be served or a “SWMBO” (“She Who Must Be Obeyed”) in a a political space, family to state, the absence of an “off button” in each might signal the presence of a personality that will exploit dependents in the cause of its own aggrandizement.

The first problem faced in solving any problem is the problem of defining the problem — 🙂 — and doing so in a way that “locks” with reality, i.e., that, thank God, appears to work with good reasons for its working.

As much as we may need magic in life, and I believe we do, some conditions beg for having or obtaining a firm grasp on the emotional mechanics in their creation and longevity.  Not all wars need conform to so psychological an approach to conflict motivation, but those that do might lend themselves to this line in analysis in which, in essence, the narcissist creates the dependent (via infantilizing, patronizing, and punitive manipulation) who then reinforces the heroic (or suffering martyr) self-concept suspended in language within the same.

If God seems at times to have a wicked sense of humor, perhaps it comes out most in the working of so miserable and vicious a piece of social engineering.

The Cinderella fairy tale (the story about two big sisters and their good-for-nothing youngest sister / two evil sisters and their bullied sister who get the better of them) has the form as do states owned and run into the ground by dictators who with the help of thugs devour the majority part of their constituencies.

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FTAC – Introducing, Recalling the Ouroboros

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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One appreciates your resolve, would that the instructions, historically enforced, regarding dhimmi status for Jews and Christians were absent from the text. That one element alone lends dignity to the Muslim’s position at the expense of Christians and Jews, not to mention what’s in store for everyone else. It’s a flattering concept; it probably feels large (as in “living large”) but that seems to me a facet of an unbridled and untenable narcissism of a sort to which the world, Muslims first, must respond.

Islam shimmers with this aspect that may embrace and welcome in one part while also reserving to itself the mission to destroy others without restraint. That part today it wishes to cast off, which it must to save itself culturally and socially, but its head meets its tail in this again and again and again across time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

Civilizational narcissism and the Ouroboros would seem thematic kin.

With either, we may drown in our own reflection or, same thing, devour ourselves, such is the nature of all closed ideological and tribal systems.

A good architect would not only design in some path of retreat out of his magnum opus but also a gateway to other gardens and a window to other worlds.

Additional and Cited Reference

Ouroboros – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Force of Reason: Oriana Fallaci: 9780847827534: Amazon.com: Books — This volume starts with an overview of Islamic aggression in Europe.

Running in circles – latimes.com – by Ed Park – 12/2/2007:

In “The Origins and History of Consciousness,” he writes, “It slays, weds, and impregnates itself. It is man and woman, begetting and conceiving, devouring and giving birth, active and passive, above and below, at once.”

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Syria and the Jews — Fast Online Look — When the Neighbors are Fighting

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Israel, Politics, Psychology, Syria

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Saving the Bashar al-Assad regime by getting it to junk weapons of mass destruction it doesn’t need while vastly improving Russia’s international image is a good deal for them

Syria U-Turn Sends Troubling Message of American Weakness – Forward.com, by Hillel Halkin, September 22, 2013

(Reuters) – In the photograph the two robed men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one tall and erect, the other more heavyset. Both smile for the camera. The picture from Tehran is a rare record of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite paramilitary group.

Special Report: Hezbollah gambles all in Syria | Reuters, by Samia Nakhoul, September 26, 2013

A family in Israel’s Arab minority is mourning the death of their son, killed fighting in the Syrian civil war.

Zaki Agbariah said he is proud of his 28-year-old son Mueid. The family told Channel 1 television Wednesday that Mueid didn’t tell anybody that he was going to Syria to fight.

Israeli Arab Killed in Syrian Civil War – ABC News, AP, September 18, 2013

Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday.

“Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”

Assad: We have weapons that could blindside Israel | The Times of Israel, September 26, 2013.

Suddenly there is a volley of fire. “Get down guys,” the soldiers say. Some dive for cover in a concrete trench.

A sergeant explains that bombs and bullets from the Syrian war regularly land inside Israeli territory. The shooting may have been warning shots, or maybe just some stray bullets from a gunfight on the outskirts of Quneitra.

Israel eyes Syria warily from border buffer zone in Golan Heights – World News, by Geraint Vincent, September 25, 2013.

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When it’s the people in the apartment next door, one monitors the loud voices, the character of the yelling, something breaking like a plate or glass.  Then something big and heavy pounds against the wall.

Him?  Her?  The kid?  Furniture?

Time to call the police.

Even that level of involvement may not be so easy.

If the domestic combatants figure out it was you called the cops, watch your back.

If there are children involved, you have not only called the police but social services and probably initiated a separations investigation, and some suffering mama or papa may not be too happy about that — and might figure you convenient for blaming first.

And all you was doin’ was watchin’ tv.

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In the big bad ol’ world, states don’t intervene in wars so much as get sucked into them, rather like ships trying to sail on their way past the darkest of expanding vortex.

So the Jews, who were just watchin’ the tv too, stand beside the conflict in Syria not exactly unhappy to see Hezbollah invested in the battle while Russia and the United States stand outside the bloody sandbox trying to keep to keep the flying shit from spilling out farther into their own affairs.

That’s not really neighborly, but what’s a good and highly functioning state or two very powerful ones to do?

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Israel has stepped up its sensitivity to potential activity on its borders; beyond that, and some sales of gas masks, it’s busy with being.  With life.  It has its security arrangements in place; it’s people — Jewish and other Israelis — have taken steps to be helpful to those in need of help — e.g.,

Israeli raising funds to help Syrians ‘dying near us’ – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yitzhak Benhorin, May 10, 2013

Israel sets up ‘field hospital’ to treat injured Syrians – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yoav Zitun, AFP

Israeli organization delivers hundreds of tons of food, medicine to Syrian refugees | JPost | Israel News, September 9, 2013: “Nobody asks permission to kill. We do not ask permission to save lives,” says NGO’s founder.”

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Delusional narcissistic reflection of motives — as with propaganda, the aggressor claims defense from what he himself has in mind for his target — would seem to have organized the Assad mentality to believe itself the target of Israeli aggression, a belief and posture abetting and motivating the state’s and state culture’s own aggression against Israel.

Give that a moment to settle.

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Within the framework of “civilizational narcissism”, Haider Mobarak’s term, this nifty nugget that you will find only here — “Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motives” — accounts much for the form of rhetoric embraced (language) and combat pursued (behavior) throughout the Islamic Small Wars.

The social grammar — the hidden rule learned early — is probably the message that if not defended, something will be taken from the child (e.g., “If you don’t eat your supper now, I shall give it to your brother” — a common enough phrase according to Raphael Patai).

What happens with the ancient and modern House of Israel with its civilizational psychology operating quite differently is that it’s outside of and unconcerned with this mess that is of intense interest to someone else enveloped in what might be called a narcissistic trap, that is the world spun around the narcissist’s delusions in such a way that it organizes the surrounding social architecture.  In essence, the dictator at some point cannot escape his own dictatorship: he’s created too much myth, made too many corrupt deals, bargained himself right into a prison of the soul.  The flow down is to fighters who cannot refuse the fight however absurd and surreal its imagined basis.

Who needs Pharaoh, that most magnificent construct of the malignant narcissist around whom the world revolves?

The Jews, and with a mixed multitude suffering the same insight, walked.

Who needs Assad?

The Jews, and the Israelis who are not only Jews, stand to the side eager only to help the bereaved, injured, and lost and otherwise maintain their defenses.

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“Two mad wasps in a bell jar” — those who go into Syria to fight other than the one dictatorship go to combat over issues irrelevant to existence, the humanity of humanity, and probably to God as well, to whom, in the ancient manner, they may serve as illustration for the ages.

Additional Reference

Syria war, refugees to cost Lebanon $7.5 billion – World Bank | Reuters, by Dominic Evans, September 19, 2013.

The Arab Mind: Raphael Patai: 9780967201559: Amazon.com: Books

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A Short Note on The Dictator, The Mirror, and the Fragile Surface

16 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Zimbabwe

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When Robert Mugabe dies — I predict peacefully, in his sleep — he will go believing himself the most beneficent and magnanimous of leaders, the champion of his state, black and beautiful, bountiful and good.

If the children of Zimbabwe are starving or dying of the cholera he introduced to some parts, if the currency would seem to be forever foundering, if the cries of brutality, corruption, and injustice remain constant in the air and on the airwaves of either opposition or truthful radio, all of that would be no fault of his: he, Robert Mugabe, did what he could.

And he got away with it!

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Do dictators know what they do?

I don’t think they do.

At least they may not be aware of their effects with a depth in any way anchored in a human and sentimental heart.

In the Great Halls of Mirrors, the brightest reflections are of heroic men, each dictator alpha among others, struggling on their own behalf, their families (not really but it’s made to look that way, for image matters), and their people for place of pride against a world that would otherwise undo and enslave them.

Theirs is a fight for every inch and measurable Nth of property, business, and resource, while every reflection — the stuff of “narcissistic supply” — by way of paid and patronized advisers and associates, fawning (or faking it) family, and permitted controlled media agree with that outlook.

In the contempt and disparagement of others, in the inability to connect with a common humanity, in the abuse and intimidation of others, in the callous disregard of deep injustice and tragedy suffered by others directly or indirectly at their hands, there seems a surface ever ready to shatter, ever uncertain of its own basis in being that has long gone missing.

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I may slip from analysis to poetry to fiction here as the depth of what one witnesses in such figures eludes “observable-measurable” note making.  However, for this post, the following statement and the URLs accompanying it all report or reflect on what is known:

A power-sharing deal signed on September 15 aimed to bring together the current president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, signaled a moment of hope for the future of Zimbabwe. Instead, it marked the start of the country’s most recent descent into chaos: water and sanitation services shut down; inflation skyrocketed; food shortages spread across the country; hospitals and clinics closed their doors; outbreaks of cholera, anthrax, and possibly malaria threaten lives; and in a country where where AIDS kills over 400 Zimbabweans a day, care for HIV/AIDS and opportunistic infections have lost priority. While innocent civilians fight for their lives the governing parties clash over the rule of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Health System Crisis, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, n.d.

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▶ Robert Mugabe Denies Cholera Epidemic in Zimbabwe – YouTube 12/12/2008

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Zimbabwe Economy

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Intensifying Government Bankruptcy (Page 1 of 2) 2/8/2013

Face up to reality and start talking to Robert Mugabe – FT.com 9/10/2013

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe Sails Close to Economic Rocks (Page 1 of 2) 8/28/2013:

According to Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Act of 2007, foreign-owned companies are forced to cede 51 percent of their shares to local people. But economists warn that the indigenisation policy is driving investors away.

“Foreign investors are obliged to bring in 100 percent of the capital, bear 100 percent of the risk, provide 100 percent of the technology, and in turn settle for 49 percent of the equity and pay taxes,” independent economist Kingston Nyakurukwa told IPS.

China, whose labor has been keeping me in sharp western-designed clothing for a while, may prove up to burden of keeping the ever dapper Robert Mugabe looking equally as good.

Zimbabwe Gets Computers to Track Epidemics, Diseases 12/20/2012 — Still, the United States lends a helping hand.  However, notes this article, such aid, which admittedly focuses on HIV/AIDS control and contributes to the American Center for Disease Control (CDC) data base, arrives within this context:

As a result of bankruptcy, President Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe is failing to meet the Abuja Declarations which recommends that African governments allocate 15 percent of their budgets towards health.

Saudi Gazette – Mugabe’s bankruptcy (near direct-to-print URL), n.d.

BBC News – Bitterness and unease in bankrupt Zimbabwe 3/6/2010

Zimbabwe Egalitarian and Equal Opportunity Measures

Robert Mugabe’s land reform comes under fresh scrutiny | World news | theguardian.com 5/10/2013

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa: Peter Godwin: 9780316018715: Amazon.com: Books (2007)

Mugabe and the White African | POV | PBS

Zimbabwe Food Security

Zimbabwe faces looming food crisis, says UN | World news | theguardian.com 9/4/2013:

Zimbabwe is facing a “looming food crisis” with one in four people in rural areas at risk of hunger early next year, the highest number in half a decade, the UN has warned.

The gloomy prediction was seen as a blow to analysts who have argued that Robert Mugabe’s widely condemned land reform programme is starting to pay dividends.

IRIN Africa | Army worm outbreak threatens Zimbabwe’s food security | Zimbabwe | Early Warning | Food Security 1/14/2013

Zimbabwe Health

IPS – Rebuilding Zimbabwe’s Health System | Inter Press Service 6/19/2013:

Every day, eight women and 100 children die from pregnancy- and delivery-related complications in Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Most of them die of easily preventable causes and illnesses.

Kubatana – Archive – A call to the new government of Zimbabwe to prioritize the right to health and clean water – ZADHR- Sep 12, 2013

Zimbabwe Media

Media group says Zimbabwe police ban on hand-cranked, solar radios illegal ahead of polling | Fox News 2/22/2013

In Zimbabwe’s Media, It’s All About Robert Mugabe : NPR 5/13/2012

Zimbabwe journalists worried: Mugabe cabinet includes ‘media hangman’ – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 9/13/2013

Zimbabwe – Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ’s main Zimbabwe page)

Q&A: Zenzele Ndebele promotes radio in Zimbabwe – Blog – Committee to Protect Journalists 7/29/2013

Zimbabwe Refugees

Zimbabwean refugees: Between haven and hell – Features – Al Jazeera English 8/1/2013

UNHCR – Zimbabwe – “2013 UNCHR regional operations profile – Southern Africa”:

At the end of 2011, there were some 449,000 people of concern to UNHCR in Southern Africa, including 145,000 refugees, 245,000 asylum-seekers, 55,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 4,000 returnees.

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When the day after comes, as it comes to all survivors, how will Zimbabwe remember Robert Mugabe?

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UNHCR Video: “Zimbabweans in South Africa”

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FNS – IPT – “Stigmatizing Their Critics”

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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A segment in the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s new award-winning documentary “Jihad in America: The Grand Deception” focuses on Islamists and how they try to control public perception. Part of it is by manipulating a lazy and gullible media. But another part is to shut down any criticism of Islamist ideology – the notion that society is best governed by Islamic law.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism.  “Stigmatizing Their Critics – An IPT Video Report: Panel Discussion Focuses on Islamist Intimidation.”  August 28, 2013.

Without narcissism and vanity, we would not have, say, Cadillacs and golf courses for starters; with too much, control issues — control of others, ambiguities involving locus of control in cultural, personal, and political dimensions — may become prominent, obsessive, and destructive.

The coin “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” serves to define a trait in dictators who so often lead their states to ruin, but in and through it, one may also catch on to the rejection of criticism accompanied by grandiose delusions in the mirroring taking place within more average souls on similarly inspired missions.

Is it there by nature or has it been nurtured?

My briefest brush with someone else’s clinically diagnosed “bipolar disorder” makes a strong case for nature as regards that specific — distinctive, florid, and unmistakable — psychopathology.  However, for the purposes of social and political psychology, I would make a case for language-informed “social grammar” constructing or programming a kind of person who would believe himself remiss if he demurred from enforcing what he believes to be divine favor and instruction already undergirded by congruent and unconsciously managed basic attitudes and beliefs.

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Updating “Coins and Terms” – “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

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I’ve managed to set up like an Oxford don without a field, an institution, or tenure. For narcissism in my own quarter, that’s pretty good and equally awful, but there may be a positive social consequence in having become so loose a cannon: for a while, I’ve had combined academic backgrounds (“English Language and Literature”; “Outdoor Recreation Resources Management” — social psychology related to “discretionary time” and the back-country; “Creative Writing” – AKA “A Life With a Lot of Books”) suited to looking over conflicts with some unique intellectual experiences and tools working in the background as well as an environment that is my own narcissistic bubble, advanced home theater, capacious library, and all.

It gets a little silly (and scary) starving at this, and I / we have encountered in political scribbling the Out-There-With-Tin-Foil-Hats form of scribes on missions, and God forbid whatever I may impart should boot me into that company.  Nonetheless, with “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” I’ve taken quite a leap, one that latches bipolar and narcissistic personality disorders together, loosely, and hauls that assembly out of psychology, which is concerned with the life of the individual mind, and into politics, which would seem concerned with what some minds manage to do to others.

🙂

The purpose of a “coined term” in language is to help solve a problem, but the intention, in keeping with Heisenberg’s Principle, may also change or manipulate its target environment, so that, say, “People of the Book” or “believers” or “kafir” create characterizing labels to which others, perhaps disorganized previously, may bind their own self-concepts.  Such labels then become social bins and channels as well as discriminators, and if they are attractive or appear to work (those two characteristics are not the same!), the “coins” become a part of the music of the mind that is language.

A cautionary and negative term, “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” may not only influence how one sees some powerful figures but how the same may see themselves.

If it takes, there’s no going back to a time before its introduction.

From the section “Coins and Terms” (found on this blog’s navigation bar), I’m moving each to its own page, and after this one will not be so verbose in getting to the point.

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Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy

The term derives from Bipolar Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder by way of common features having to do with grandiose delusion, messianic motivation, and resistance to criticism and clinical insight; it is intended for political and social science application.

Within the phrase, “facsimile” serves to separate the concept from psychology and related interest in individual mind and the experience of it and emphasis instead semblance in a way that serves interest in leaders and their administrative and management methods.

I’ve chosen “bipolar” for the cognitive style signaled by language behavior — in black and white thinking, the too sharp delineation between “winners” and “losers”, “believers” and “evildoers”, and so on — and the atmosphere encouraged by it.  In psychology proper, of course, “bipolar disorder” finds anchorage in observations having to do with individual mood and sleep patterns and difficulties associated with them.  In politics, energetic and erratic “mania” may or may not be present at any given point, but grandiose delusions and intents most certainly are as are most other facets of the disorder: however, the complex weaves into political and social life as “sympathetic feeling” across the political actor’s field of influence.

Would the term do just as well as “Facsimile Narcissistic Political Sociopathy”?

Probably.

For sure, the graduate classes are welcome to kick it around some.

“Political” needs no explication.  It’s simply the application area for the term.

“Sociopathy” would seem a coin within a coin, but I prefer the invention to alternatives, for what we’re addressing amounts to sociopath behavior as encountered in contemporary politics by way of comparatively ruthless personalities.  Cats like Paul Biya and Robert Mugabe — the “low hanging fruit” of fair examples of common dictators — show little evidence of caring about the common suffering of the constituent humanity within their bailiwicks.  These are about their own excessive glorification, and each has found ways, between the command of armies and unbridled access to state treasuries and various income streams, of sustaining themselves in power.

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