The Origins of Narcissism
Most people know of the story of Narcissus, the self-loving Greek god who was told to have fallen in love with his own reflection in the water so much that it caused his downfall. Ultimately, we learn from this myth that prideful, self-loving, ego-centric behavior only undermines human societies by its practice.
Narcissism in Politics
There is something inherently narcissistic in political candidates. There is the allure of being a prominent decision maker seeking praise and being lauded for your ideas but more insidiously, for your “self”. It is an ego-breeding process to have numerous subservient followers often going into extremist “sheep mode” and vicariously, cheering, applauding and otherwise “feeding the head”of this year’s latest candidate.
The past few years have offered nothing new on this front really. We have seen the coming of many cyclical recurrences of many “Caesars” as well their eventual reckoning across the span of many centuries.
Their formula to achieve such populist support is essentially the same. Their campaign playbook is a well thought out one that typically works by combining a political “cocktail” using a mix of propaganda and polarization whereby one or more social-economic classes are pitted against one another. And this sometimes deadly political “mixed drink” does essentially nothing but bounce nations back to “square one” with regards to moving forward. In fact, no one moves forward with such candidates who achieve nothing but to create a fabricated, narcissistic and self-perpetuating false prophet or “false god” who eventually succumbs to their own demise.
Narcissism in Pop Culture
Pop culture is just that. It follows the culture of the day, or proverbial “cult of personality” transformed to fit the mold of this year’s celebrity. The culprits /antagonists are numerous in the dystopian sounds of what purports to be pop music today. But rather than get into a full-on diatribe of the extreme decay of pop music, I will just point out one sample that truly summarizes what type of ideology is being sold to the public.
The following lyrics are from a rather famous pop song originally written in 1977 but later in 1985 recorded into an enormous commercial success. The song “The Greatest Love of All” contains the following lyrics:
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody’s searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs
A lonely place to be
And so I learned to depend on me
The lyrics go on with the following:
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all
Now, to be fair, this is not a really new song and granted, there is nothing particularly wrong with Whitney Houston’s singing of this ballad, or with trying to think positively about oneself. However, it’s not clear whether the short-sighted lyricists (Michael Masser & the late Linda Creed) with writing this to promote pride and that the greatest love of all is to love oneself realized that pride equates with the worship of the self. While I don’t think these lyricists had narcissism in mind when composing this song, any advocacy of pride or self-worship by default, weakens even secular society.
Why Pride is Wrong
One lesson that has been lost in the secular world is both the social and psychological problems with being prideful. The sociological issue with saying for example “I am proud to be (fill in the blank here)” is that once we cross that bridge into pride-filled, chest-pumping about having some sort of attribute that others don’t have, we then practice exclusivity. The argument here is then whether pride requires the exclusion of others. Now, many advocates of “pride” may argue that they are merely celebrating, not excluding others. However, they really fail to understand that pride and celebrations thereof don’t really do anything other than to separate society and even nations into groups. Thus, the practice of pride does nothing to enhance peace and a collaborative society.
What Is Love & Why Can’t We Love Ourselves?
From a psychological perspective it is actually not possible to love oneself by secular or non-secular standards. Most people speak of love in terms of its symptoms. The obsession of both romantic love as well as the protectiveness of familial love are examples of what we can feel when we are “in love”.
Religious believers, especially Christians often quote scripture about the “love of God” and the “love for God”.
However, if we take religion out of the equation, we are just talking about a psychological projection of our human “self” in a subconscious quest and reaffirmation of our identity. That’s really it. We are perpetually looking for our own identity and we not only seek but we require others to be part of our “love equation”. This is why it is simply not possible to love ourselves.
Aren’t we all a little Narcissistic?
Differentiation and Individuation
In early childhood and continuing onwards to middle adolescence, humans undergo a psychological process called “individuation” whereby our personalities develop, and identities become transformed on a spectrum whereby we “become” who we are in relation to and in distinction from others. More plainly put, our internal “narcissistic scale” becomes further fixed as we grow into adulthood. The narcissistic scale in this case acknowledges that we care about ourselves more than we care about others. This is considered normal per The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), however, when the scale tips too highly inward towards oneself, the abnormalities of narcissism thus take hold.
The Bible’s View of Narcissism, Pride and Vanity
Narcissism as Vanity
Despite the psychoanalytic aspects of narcissism described above, most laypeople use the words “vanity” or “narcissistic” to describe one who is self-centered and self-loving, in some case almost to the point of a psychological pathology.
However, the origin of vanity and self-love has less to do with the love of oneself and more to do with walking a path apart from God.
The online website BibleGateway.org reports that there are 51 instances where the word “pride” is mentioned as morally wrong within both Old and New Testaments. Most people have heard
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).
However, some other noteworthy examples are shown below:
1 John 2:16
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
2nd Timothy 3:1-3
Godlessness in the Last Days
3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,
The Book of Ecclesiastes offers the most context on vanity as taking a path away from God. What is most interesting about this book is its author. King Solomon who had “everything under the sun” or that is to say, he had every earthly thing a man could want, chose to write this book of wisdom from the point of view of the character of Ecclesiastes who takes stock of the world of man. Ecclesiastes said that all things under the sun and all the efforts and toils of man are meaningless if man turns his back on God and instead seeks worldly things that will eventually be lost to time and the elements.
Excerpt taken of the Book of Ecclesiastes from Biblegateway.org
1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
…
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
Vanity of Vanities, Is God Vain?
The Book of Ecclesiastes as well as the concepts of pride and vanity often raise questions of whether God, in his demand of our worship, is thus, demonstrating his own temporal state of vanity.
There are two problems with depicting God as committing the sin of pridefulness by expecting that our faith and worship be directed towards him.
From an apologetics position, it really goes back to the concept of our being created in God’s image. God cannot love himself so he cannot be proud. However, He can love the world and all His creations. Thus, if we’re expected to worship our creator, we are really just worshiping Him because we still seek our image, our origin and we’re simply really lost without Him.
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