Lounge Narcissists, Liberals, And False Reality – An Example

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Narcissists, Liberals, And False Reality – An Example

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Anonymous Conservative

There is a great article in the Wall St Journal that highlights a
bizarre trait of Narcissists and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as
well as how it manifests in Liberalism. The story describes a flap
between the President of Bowdoin and a Wall Street investor turned
philanthropist named Thomas Klingenstein. They played a game of golf,
and in the course of it, a dispute arose over Bowdoin’s teaching of
diversity. Much of the reality behind the article will go over
people’s heads, but if you understand Narcissists and Narcissistic
Personality Disorder, you will see commonalities in your own
experiences.

Narcissist
Are Narcissists obsessed with themselves, or obsessed with avoiding
any anxiety regarding themselves? Anxiety is the motivator, not
desire.

Basically, Klingenstein told the President of Bowdoin that Bowdoin
should spend more time teaching what commonalities in our history
bring Americans together, rather than focusing so much of its efforts
on racial, gender, and class differences which separate us. It is such
a beautiful concept, it is hard to imagine why Bowdoin’s President
wouldn’t warmly embrace it, let alone why he ended up castigating
Klingenstein as some racist heathen when he recreated the discussion
months later for a speech. In the Bowdoin President’s version, he was
endlessly assailed by a rabid racist, until he finally walked off in
despair.

Since grassroots Conservative ideologues don’t tend to think like
Liberals or Narcissists, our first response is to view the President
of Bowdoin as a lying jackass, who just makes things up. He knows what
happened, because he was there, so he must be lying. But in my
experience, this might not be so. Narcissists very often have a very
tenuous grip on reality, and here, I think the President of Bowdoin
may have very little idea of exactly what happened during that golf
outing, even as he is completely sure that he was assailed by a
radical racist.

As I explained in the fractured amygdala, both Liberals and
Narcissists appear to have hyper-sensitive amygdalae. The amygdala is
a brain structure which scans incoming stimuli, looks for stimuli
which appear “bad,” for lack of a better term, and then the amygdala
gives us an unpleasant “brain pain,” until the bad stimuli is
addressed in a way which renders it less-noxious. Maybe the “bad”
stimuli is a tiger about to eat us, in which case our amygdala gives
us an unpleasant aversive stimuli, until we escape, and the tiger is
no longer a threat. Maybe we have a deadline for a project, in which
case the amygdala haunts us until we finish it, and then it turns off.

In my experiences with Narcissists, their amygdala is so sensitive to
anxiety, that just telling them any information which bothers them
sets it off like a nuclear bomb, forcing them into an immediate state
of denial of the offending stimuli, to try and short-circuit the
“brain pain.” Tell a Narcissist something he doesn’t want to hear, and
it is like spraying pepper spray from a fire extinguisher into his
face. He won’t listen to the entire idea, consider it, and then reject
it, like we would. Instead, the Narcissist will begin to get the
faintest whiff of what you are saying, identify it as bad, and then he
will close his eyes, hide his head, and wave his arms while screaming,
until you are finished.

I have literally spent several minutes explaining some totally neutral
technical topic to a Narcissist (a topic the Narcissist needed to
understand in order to accomplish a task), only to finish, and then
have the Narcissist proceed to explode in rage and attack me for
criticizing him. As the conversation progressed, I discovered that the
Narcissist thought that because I was telling him about something, I
was implying he didn’t understand it, and therefore, he was stupid.
Just that hint of a possibility of criticism at the beginning caused
him to ignore everything I told him, after the first sentence. He
literally didn’t hear a word, because he thought I was implying that
he was ignorant of the topic. He was, however, certain that the rest
of the conversation had consisted of me continuing to humiliate him
for not knowing what I was describing. Even though he wasn’t listening
to the technical information I was dispensing, and could not recall
anything I said, his brain filled in the informational void for him
with me castigating him for being stupid.

Of course, in a typically comedic twist, he actually didn’t understand
the topic, and really needed to know what I was saying. However, as a
Narcissist, he reflexively thought his ignorance was shameful. As a
result, all he could see at the very beginning was my assumption he
didn’t know it, so he exploded, assuming I was shaming him (something
he assumed because that was probably something he would have enjoyed
doing in similar circumstances).

I got around all of this with him by explaining that I wasn’t
criticizing him, but was rather just telling him a “special” piece of
knowledge I happened to learn by accident (and which he couldn’t
possibly have known). Using this ploy, his Narcissistic amygdala
booby-trap bomb was disarmed, and I could then re-explain what he
needed to know, with most of what I said being absorbed, since I had
made it clear that I wasn’t criticizing him, and indeed, he was beyond
threat of criticism since he couldn’t know what I was about to tell
him.

What was amazing was how once the Narcissist thought I was being
critical of him, due to that first sentence, he would not process a
single piece of information after that. He literally could not hear or
process a single word. Once their amygdala is triggered, they cannot
listen, so you could tell such a Narcissist that aliens from space
were invading, and point to an alien behind him, and later all they
would recall was how mean you were to them.

The funny thing about all of it is, your idea doesn’t have to actually
be noxious to the Narcissist. The first sentence you say just has to
have the faintest appearance of an idea he doesn’t want to hear, at
the very beginning, when you relate it. If you want to do this, imbue
the line with some psuedo-criticism, like an assumption they don’t
know something, a mistake they made, some way someone else is better
than them, or something funny about them. They will not listen from
that point forward, and you will get an out-pouring of Narcissistic
rage afterward.

Liberals, have a slightly more well-developed way to protect their
amygdala. Liberals have developed several memes, which they will
reflexively fall back on to shoehorn you and your statement into a
patently negative light, thereby letting them intellectually justify
ignoring everything you say. Each meme is almost like a programming
subroutine, to allow them to ignore your argument and any cognitive
dissonance it might produce, while still feeling intellectually
superior, and correct in their reasoning. With Liberals, if the
Liberal’s amygdala thinks the idea might possibly, maybe, be noxious
in some way, they will immediately classify it as
racist/homophobic/stupid/Conservative/etc., and they will not hear a
single word you say after that.

From that point forward, their amygdala will fire off, and the
Liberal/Narcissist will not listen, to protect themselves from the
agony of amygdala anxiety, just as they would shut their eyes as you
begin to fire pepper spray at them.

Here, in this case, Klingenstein mentioned diversity, and sounded
vaguely critical at the outset, and Bowdoin’s President made the jump
to classifying him as a racist who wanted to kick all the minorities
out of the school. Once that happened, the President of Bowdoin did
not hear a single word Klingenstein said after that, no matter what is
was. In the President’s head, everything was some racist remark, and
he just patiently endured them until he finally walked off in despair,
“because you can’t reason with a racist.” He genuinely believes all of
that, because that is what he remembers, even if he doesn’t remember a
single phrase or idea Klingenstein said to him (which I am sure he
doesn’t).

(It should be noted, if attempting an amygdala hijack, and your
opponent successfully meme-ifies you in their mind, your hijack will
fail, because they will no longer be listening. In such a case, you
must de-meme-ify yourself in their head, by identifying how they
meme’d you, and then showing exactly how wrong they are using pure
logic, in an argument made to the crowd of observers watching. Once
you are no longer racist, etc. to the crowd, they look silly for
thinking that, and they are back paying attention, continue to
out-group and humiliate, in a calm and reasoned fashion.)

Of course, when asked, the professors of Bowdoin don’t see themselves
as partisan, at all. From the article:

“A political imbalance [among faculty] was no more significant than
having an imbalance between Red Sox and Yankee fans,” sniffed Henry
C.W. Laurence, a Bowdoin professor of government, in 2004. He added
that the suggestion that liberal professors cannot fairly reflect
conservative views in classroom discussions is “intellectually
bankrupt, professionally insulting and, fortunately, wildly
inaccurate.”

Perhaps so. But he’d have a stronger case if, for example, his
colleague Marc Hetherington hadn’t written the same year in Bowdoin’s
newspaper that liberal professors outnumber conservatives because
conservatives don’t “place the same emphasis on the accumulation of
knowledge that liberals do.”

To acknowledge they might be partisan would be to trip their
amygdalae, with the prospect of being inferior. This is why all debate
with Liberals comes down to childhood, “Yes you are!,” “No I’m not!”
debate. There is no reasoning, or ability to consider facts.

If Klingenstein wants to screw with Bowdoin, then he should challenge
every professor there to take the Narcissistic Personality Inventory
Test. It is a nice, non-partisan test which will reveal any
personality disorders among the staff. Since nobody at Bowdoin could
possibly have a personality disorder, nobody should object to taking
this simple test.

I think Conservatives have to understand the difference between r and
K-strategies in r/K Selection Theory, to fully grasp this.
Conservatism is an ideology, which at its most polar extreme, is
designed for a world where in order to feed our families, we have to
kill other people, and take their food. That means that before acting,
we need to very carefully take in every piece of information,
scrutinize it, and then plan our attack in a detailed fashion. If we
fail to accurately mold our behavior to reality, we will die. If we
fail to consider a piece of evidence because we don’t like it, we will
die.

Liberals are designed for an r-selective world with resources
everywhere, where when confronted with a potential threat, they
immediately run as fast as they can to a new place, without looking
back. If there is a threat, and you fail to run, you die. If you run,
but there wasn’t a threat, there is no penalty. As a result, you are
best served by being overwhelmingly panicked at the mere possibility
of threat. This is the difference between the psychologies of the wolf
and the rabbit, and it was produced very carefully in our species,
over eons of selection. In humans, it speaks to a wide gulf between
our methods of cognition, and our behavioral instincts.

We cannot talk to Liberals, and reason with them, wolf to wolf. If
ever we are going to communicate, we will need to learn how to slip
information past their amygdala, and that will require a better
understanding of this bizarre psychological state.

 

I have read numerous threads with you and Alrelax in the past, any idea where that member is at these days?? Thanks!