Thanks for the Thanks

I want you to know that I really appreciate the thanks I receive in the comments and in email. It is still the most valuable reward in doing this. There's nothing I'd rather hear than that a victim has at last found comfort instead of the troublesome comfort of the 6 billion Job's Comforters that swarm all over this planet, serving as a proxy for the narcissist - useful idiots involved in a virtual conspiracy with him or her to blame the victim.

And when even the mental health profession gets in on the act, something is dreadfully wrong.

I'm beginning to think that George Bernard Shaw was right when he said that most people don't think but once or twice a year, which is why he was able to build a considerable reputation by just bothering to think once or twice a week.

Therefore, use your own head. What the vast crass mass of weathervane minds think is rot, and you know you know it. They are nothing but social insects, getting their memes from the buzz the same way bees do when a forager comes back to the hive and does her little bee dance to indicate where the nectar is.

Not one bit of rational thought is involved in the process, and what you end up with is a collective = a swarm = a mob.

So, ignore them. It's OK to know that you needn't be a saint to be worthy of decent treatment. And by "indecent treatment" I am not talking about a complaint about how the steak is done: I am talking about abuse. Like as in 'you are a worthless hunk of shit because this steak isn't done to perfection.' There is no justification, however partial, for ABUSE. Ever. I don't care how badly that steak is done. Let the shitheads get that straight already.

This is why, though the abuse has provoked you at times to say or do something wrong, something you are ashamed of, that is BESIDE THE POINT, because it doesn't excuse the narcissist one bit. It doesn't put one bit of the blame for the abuse on you. So, ditch it. It ain't yours.

The abuse is HIS conduct, not yours. Let him grow up and quit blaming you for it. Just take care of your own conduct. You can't control his. Well, let me qualify that: if you are capable of beating him up and getting away with it, you can make him stop abusing you. Because he is just a bully.

But you can't get him to stop by connecting with the inner person in him. There ain't one. He identifies with his image reflected in mirrors. You can't evoke any feelings for you from him, because he refuses to have any. If he ever allowed himself to have human feelings, the predator would starve. So, don't try to get blood out of a turnip.

And your FEELINGS are certainly not sins. It's irrational to think so. People just make your feelings out to be sins because they want you to repress them so they don't have to look at your sad face and feel guilty about their turning a blind eye to what is being done to you.

That is betrayal.

They show their hypocrisy by the double-standards they apply. For example, they blame you for your feelings, morally condemning you for having them, as though feelings are some sort of character flaw. But they don't blame the narcissist for his feelings, do they? No, never. If you haven't already noticed this, just pay attention and you'll see that it's true. According to them you are to blame for the N's feelings too, which they never condemn.

Ask these eggheads what they think fairness is, and after a lengthy jaw drop, they'll say something to the effect that it is being as unfair as possible in order to dump half the blame on the wholly innocent party and then say that "It takes two to tango."

So, if you want to go crazy, just respect the eggbeater logic of all the witless wonders in this carnival of insanity. They use their heads for nothing but garbage dumps, so don't go thinking there's anything worth listening to in there.

Despite the narcissist's blatant inhumanity, they fall for his line that he is human because he has hurtable feelings. If that wasn't so pathetic it would be hilarious.

Note that any warm-blooded animal has feelings FOR ITSELF.

Sheesh. Feeling sorry for yourself isn't humanity. Humanity is treating others humanly. It requires human feelings FOR OTHERS.

It is just plain stupid to think that crybabying (because your victim divorced you, leaving you without a punching bag) is "being human."

For every malignant narcissist out there, there are at least dozens of victims lying trashed in his or her truculent wake through life. Forgive me all to hell, I don't feel sorry for the narcissist: I feel sorry for his or her victims. Especially those doomed to a 20-year sentence in the dungeon of a narcissistic parent's low regard.

What the victims need is comfort. But obviously that's too much to ask of most people and even many therapists. Because they give you nothing but the unforgivable "comfort" their kind gave Job.

Comfort: to fortify, embrace, strengthen, build up or raise up. But their brand of "comfort" does just the opposite. It's just their way of taking advantage of what the N did to kick the victim when he or she is down.

Don't accept this garbage. Use your own head. Run a logic check on everything you hear, and that includes everything from me. Let no one do your thinking for you. That's the difference between rational people and eggheads: rational people have minds of their own and think for themselves. Eggheads just thoughtlessly absorb any old nonsense blowing in the wind. They make useful idiots for every narcissist in town.

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Demolishing the Simplistic Stereotype of Malignant Narcissism

Here's a case study of a narcissist that demolishes the simplistic stereotype of the corporate executive or the snobby debutante.

Let's call him Jack. You never see Jack in anything but a T-shirt and blue jeans.

When he and his wife and kids moved in next door a couple years ago, he seemed liked a regular guy, a hard-working man. He had beautiful long, blonde hair reminiscent of the hippy culture. It was full and clean and looked like it had been washed and groomed every day. His yard looked just as good.

But then almost overnight, he changed. In fact, you almost thought he was a different person. He cut his hair. He never washed it now. He looked seedy now. And so did his gone-to-seed back yard.

That should be red alert number 1: it shows that the man he appeared to be before was a total phony.

You knew Jack's comings and goings now, because he would roar in and out of his driveway in his big, suped-up pickup truck with the mag wheels. Obviously, he was often leaving home in a rage and letting the whole neighborhood know it.

Attention getting behavior.

Roaring in and out, in and out, in and out, five or six times an evening. You know what that that means, especially after you notice him falling out of his truck a few times.

He's about 35-40 years old, but he drives like a kid with 17-year-old hormones. You know - "Look, Ma! I'm a stud!"

Attention getting behavior.

In fact, he drives so wildly that it never ceases to amaze you: he drives like a maniac. And since you know he's falling-down drunk behind the wheel half the time, you wonder who his friends on the local police force are.

But then you discover that he only drives that way to the end of the block.

Since it's just for the attention of his wife and neighbors, there is no need to continue roaring past that point.

When he runs over your tree or fence or destroys your lawn by spinning out in it and you call him on the phone, you are stunned by the sound of his voice. He sounds so polite, you picture a business executive, not that dirtball next door. Promises, promises.

Then he just goes and destroys your property some more.

Who says narcissists have no sense of humor?

Though he has a rap sheet a mile long, he even fools the cops. They believe his story about these affairs and warn the victims, who have never been in trouble with the law before, to watch out or they will be facing charges.

So, no wonder he can con a psychiatrist. He's been practicing since he was six.

What finally gives those cops a clue? Sheer luck. One day another drunk runs off the road and demolishes Jack's parked pickup truck. A crowd gathers. The police arrive. Jack is so enraptured by all this attention that he bothers the police constantly to place himself center stage for the ceremonies.

His expressions of grief over his pickup truck remind one of the keening over the dead that you see women do in some cultures. Oh, woe is him! Your hatred for Jack suddenly melts at the pathetic sight of him sucking attention this way and sucking up to one police officer after another in search of a little attention. But you notice his cunning in his effort to make it a self-fulfulling prophesy by telling them how nice he thinks they are being to him.

They are just having jaw drops, and the neighbors are standing around with expressionless faces, not saying a word.

The first wife and kids disappeared one day, so he got another. The second honeymoon was shorter than the first. You could hear him roaring abuse at her at 4 AM in the kitchen every Saturday. There'd be about 30 seconds of silence, then another roared command. Then about 30 seconds of silence, and another roared command. Your imagination went wild. When it began to look like she might leave too, he started threatening suicide.

He discovered that that got him oodles of attention.

Wow! He could get an ambulance ride to the County Home! What boy wouldn't LOVE that? There they would dry him out and give him lots and lots of attention for a few days. All for free.

His second Mamma left now too. So now he just got blind drunk and called the ambulance himself when his need for attention became desperate. Eventually, however, the City refused to send the ambulance for him anymore.

So, he took to knocking on the doors of neighbors he hadn't yet made enemies of, telling them his phone was disconnected and that he needed an ambulance.

That worked a few times too. But then the City began question ambulance callers from that neighborhood to make sure that an ambulance call wasn't just another one of his stunts for attention at the County Home on the taxpayer's expense.

The clinicians there didn't recognize Narcissistic Personality Disorder in Jack, because he doesn't fit their stereotype, so they thought he was just an antisocial drunk. They never did anything but dry him out, talk to him, and ship him back home a few days later. Once they were bored with him, they didn't want him anymore.

So, what was this poor, desperate Jack Narcissist to do for attention? Ready for a good one?

At about 7 AM one morning, Jack walked into a tavern he'd frequented daily for years, and - not even bothering to wear a mask - pulled a knife on the proprietor and demanded money from the cash register.

I mean, let's not even TRY to get away with a crime! He goes to a bar at a time when the cash register contains nothing but about $25 in change to start the next day's business with and holds up someone who knows him by name?

What about the safe? Why wasn't he interested in the money in THAT?

Too obvious, ain't it? Again, it was all just to get attention. And it got him the attention he needed. For awhile.

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Shoddy Science

It becomes more and more clear to me that, as a science, psychology is even worse than I thought it was. I am not being harsh: there is no excuse for such shoddy practices in studying a disease.

Worse, the so-called "authorities" seem unable to learn from their mistakes. For example, even though their method of treatment has thoroughly been proven to greatly INCREASE the recidivism rate, they continue on!

"Unable to learn from their mistakes." Ironic, since that itself is a telltale sign of mental illness.

One wonders how these people justify the means by which they study a personality disorder like NPD or psychopathy. They virtually do nothing but talk to the narcissists and psychopaths who who get forced to see them.

That's it. Jeez, folks, don't work too hard.

These patients are pathological liars by definition, and yet, their clinicians and researchers believe them! And it doesn't matter how often they are criticized for doing this, they continue studying these illnesses this half-assed way.

That ain't credibility.

An indication of how bad the science is is the theory of genetic inheritance. It claims to be based on "Mendelian genetics." But, as I posted earlier, not one jot of Mendelian genetics is in it. This "theory" (wrong - it's a hypothesis, an untested one) was proposed way back around 1990, and the scientist promoting it still isn't conducting any studies to show that malignant narcissism is inherited.

If it were inherited, that would be easy to prove. Find narcissists and test their families and offspring, duh.

Instead, this guy just "diagnoses" caricatures of long dead royals. Some dead for 500 years.

You diagnose people, not caricatures. And you don't pick royals as your test group. Especially for something like this.

Especially when they are that long gone. Especially when the chronicler you are getting your "evidence" from probably never even met the guy.

That's ridiculous. If the proponents of this haven't conducted any studies in all this time, I bet it's because they know the results would prove them wrong.

Do psychologists ever check up on what the N on their couch tells them? Do they ever interview family members, victims, and others who have had close day-to-day contact with narcissist and psychopaths for an extended period of time? Why not?

What more valuable information could they get? Don't they think first-hand experience and observation is worth anything? They think their divining is superior to FACTS these people can reveal to them? The hubris is breathtaking. They don't need facts, do they?

That's why they don't know that narcissists aren't touchy. That's why they don't know that N's just get madder when you try to appease them. That's why they seem oblivious to the fact that it's all about attention. They've never seen a narcissist go off, yet they think they know why he or she goes off. Sheesh.

They've never seen the mask switching so fast and and furious that you wonder if she has multiple personalities. They've never seen how an N leaps like a tiger at tender vulnerability.

But they think they know what's going on. They think the N or psychopath on their couch is going to tell them.

They estimate the prevalence of personality disorder by statistics on the few patients who get treatment. Duh, that's no way to estimate the number of people who think they are perfect and never will admit there is anything wrong with them to get psychological help for.

The first real population survey (in 2004 - why not decades sooner?) found that around 15% of people could be diagnosed with a personality disorder - NOT counting borderline, schizotypal, and narcissistic disorders. Didn't that embarrass these folks who had always been guestimating less than half that much for ALL personality disorders?

Not at all. Mediocrity rules. They aren't embarrassed even when studies catch 60-90% of them misdiagnosing and misapplying the DSM criteria.

Their estimate of NPD is lower than that for for psychopathy. How can that be when all psychopaths are narcissists? Well, lets just confuse anti-social behavior with psychopathy to conceal the seriousness of psychopathy.

These people can't be serious. Here are some more documented examples of how shoddy the work of many "authorities" on the subject are.

Prevalence of NPD
A False Picture
NPD - A Male Disease?

and

Diagnostic Confusion.

That ain't credibility. They make scientists in other fields all look squeeky clean and conscientous by comparisson.

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Narcissistic Projection

Hypocrites are for looks only. They think a thing ain't wrong if they get away with it. In other words, they confuse appearances with reality. Consequently, they have no conscience — just an unconscience. That is, they repress their conscience. Hence, what they do in the dark is shockingly different than what they do in the light of day.

These are the people who put make-up on their image too thick in spots — right where the blemishes in their character are. Since it's all about their image, as Hamlet's mother said, they view sin as some kind of taint instead of as moral illness, or spiritual dis-ease. This is what gives them the notion that it can be "washed away" or smeared off. No wonder that, to get rid of it, they project instead of repent.

So, narcissists are by no means alone in accusing others so as to project their own flaws off onto a scapegoat. It's just that they invest so much energy in doing it. They are fixated on their image to the point that it is uppermost in their mind 100% of the time. It's impossible to overemphasize that.

In contrast, normal people project only when on the defensive. And then they're likely to shake themselves off on whoever happens to be near at the moment. So, their aim is poor, and sometimes they project a flaw off onto someone who actually has it. But a narcissist's aim is impeccable. For example, whom does he call a liar? The most honest person around. Who does he say is dangerous? The savior of the group. Every single time. His talent for farce is so great that you could mistake him for astute.

Also, normal people have normal, human and loving relationships. So they don't smear themselves off on just anyone. They wouldn't dream of harming those near and dear. And they stick to slander (which has at least some degree of truth in it), rarely engaging in calumny (lies). When they do calumniate someone, he or she is an enemy. Even then they don't go hog-wild and calumniate someone so badly and so widely as to destroy them and ruin their lives.

Not so with the narcissist. He is a mental child with no sense of measure or moderation. So, he is more dangerous with his mouth than an angry five-year-old is with an AK-47. He will say anything — ANYTHING — about you as lightly as one would brush a crumb from his sleeve. He loves only himself. He has no normal human relationships. He relates to people as objects. So he will smear himself off on his own children as thoughtlessly as we smear ourselves off on a towel.

In fact, he is most likely to smear off on someone he owes gratitude, because needing help damages his image. So he repays help as though it were an insult. He must devalue it by devaluing the giver of it, as if such a contemptible person is incapable of really helping someone as grand as he.

Since he is a mental little child, the only reign on a narcissist's behavior is what he feels he can get away with. So, the more he gets away with, the more repressed guilt he has to purge himself of.

It's a vicious cycle that he plays the hampster in all his life.

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Speaking of La Crosse...

More strange creatures haunt the land they like to call "God's Country...yup, manbats and werebats and more churches and taverns per capita than any other town in the United States ;-)

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A Bad Sign: The Wantonness of the Narcissist

It sounds like a war out there. This is the time of year you worry about your cows, your dogs, even your kids. Hell, you can even get your barn shot up by those drunks.

Deer gun season.

When 400,000 men and more than a million deer go temporally insane.

How insane? So insane that the deer, which you rarely see during broad daylight hours, are running so headlong all day long that every two or three miles you see one dead along the interstate highway. (Deer are frequently hit at night on secondary roads through woods and cranberry bogs, but otherwise road kill is rare.)

I used to live in La Crosse, where the hunting and fishing "culture" is worshipped. I knew some guys there who just had to kill something every single day. Who just had to get their bag limit of fish or birds. Whatever was currently in season, they hunted every day, bragging about getting the maximum (seasonal) bag limit by getting the bag limit every day.

Do you have any idea how many truckloads of dead birds, fish, ducks, geese, deer, and other animals that is per year?

I'm sorry, but that is wanton destruction. And any kind of wantonnes, especially wanton destruction, is a very bad warning sign.

Because decent people, normal people, have a sense of measure.

We saw an example of wantonness in the wanton destruction of 9/11. It is the most unmistakable outward sign of a black heart.

Indeed, I ask, what's driving an urge to kill something every day? Anything wholesome? One of these admired sportsmen was so shameless he even repeatedly told me he never ate the trout he caught daily. He said he hated trout and would just as soon eat trout as a dirty dish rag. (Most hunters and fishers would never admit that they just throw away what they kill.)

His other behavior proved him beyond all doubt to be a malignant narcissist. So was the one who had to get his bag limit every single day. I knew another one that I am highly suspicious of who was so wanton that bragged about shooting 7 deer one year, which means that 6 of them were poached.

Surprised? We shouldn't be. Is this urge to kill any different than the urge to kill by character assassination? It's killing to kill. In the language of the Fifth Commandment, it's "laying low."

The Biblical Hebrew word for "laying low" covered any kind of laying another being low just to lay it low. The word could refer to killing any living thing, not just humans. The word could refer to slander and character assassination, not just murder or homicide. It could refer to merely punching someone to knock him down, not just taking his life. "Laying low," get it?

That's what narcissists go through life doing = aggrandaizing themselves by laying other beings low. That's malignant narcissism in a nutshell.

The word for "laying low" never referred to killing for legitimate reasons, such as hunting or slaughtering for food, the execution of a judicial sentence, an act of war or self defense. What the Fifth Commandment outlaws is bringing others low, killing to kill. As in killing for sport.

I have no problem with hunting and fishing per se. In fact I myself love to fish and we rarely eat my catch. I either catch-and-release or have people lined up who want my catch of the day and will eat it.

Though I don't hunt, I have no problem with the idea of hunting, either. But eating the bird or venison isn't what makes it moral, as many cute quibblers would have us believe. What you kill FOR is what makes it moral or immoral. I have a problem with killing to kill. Killing for sport.

For "sport"? :(

And you don't make that sin go away by just eating it afterwards.

Before someone dumps the old "The end doesn't justify the means" cliche on me, I will answer it by saying, yes, 'the end CAN justify the means.' That cliche makes sense only if you interpret it as meaning that "the end doesn't always justify any means."

Morality isn't so simplistic as holier-than-thous would have us think. In this case (as in most cases) WHY you do the thing is what makes your deed right or wrong. There are very few things that it's hard to imagine doing for any justifiable reason.

Don't get me wrong. I know very well that we need a gun hunting season here in Wisconsin. In fact, I wish the quota was raised to reduce the size of the herd. It is managed now to insure a large number of deer to shoot next year. (Leave plenty of does.) I would manage it to insure a biologically sound habitat. One with fewer deer, so that disease wouldn't spread so rampantly and so that deer wouldn't starve over winter.

So I would allow more hunting, not less. I would also lengthen the hunting season and reduce the pressure. This would not only eliminate hunting accidents, it would also work more like natural predation on the deer herd.

By that I mean that it would make hunting more difficult, like it is for natural predators. You'd have to be good at hunting to succeed. That would get rid of most of the drunks out there shooting up things today. This way, any old clown gets his deer. He just sits in a tree until some crazed deer fleeing the constant gunfire upwind practically runs him over in its headlong flight. You don't harvest the aged, weak, and genetically less fit individuals that way, because it's just a crapshoot. So, you don't improve the gene pool with this kind of hunting.

I would let the Indians who live on reservations here hunt year-round, provided they don't sell the venison. Let them hunt for food. (Allowing them to sell the meat would prompt them to overkill.)

When farmers suffer substantial crop damage, they should get the same pass. Yes, there are do-gooders who claim that the evil farmers would just kill all the deer. Wrong. All the farmers I know love deer. They count a certain amount of crop loss to to the deer as the cost of doing business. But when the deer herd gets so big that they can no longer comfortably absorb the loss, they shouldn't have to sit there and watch the deer eat all their corn.

That's no good for the deer, either. Because what happens in winter? They starve. In fact many farmers leave some corn in the fields over winter to make sure the deer don't starve. Really evil, eh?

But my idea will never fly. It would limit hunting licenses to about the number of state residents who buy them. Then what would all those big spenders from Chicago do when they couldn't come here once a year to get drunk and shoot things up (leaving a lot of money here during their stay)?

But I can dream, can't I?

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Cyberpaths

Someone asked me about these folks, whether they may be narcissists. My first reaction is to shrug my shoulders, because I don't know enough to feel confident about a judgement either way. And I respect the evidence that the press has low credibility. They take great liberties using fiction writing technique to "create" a "story" out of a news report.

But one thing is for sure: the bare facts thunder a total lack of empathy in these people. How they could so brutally do that to a 13-year-old girl is hard to imagine! The meanness in it gives you a chill.

Maybe they watch too much prime time TV. We see enough of it on there - it's called "entertainment."

Also, it is really strange for a parent to get involved in the relationship her teenage daughter has with some other girl.

Get a life, lady.

But lack of humanity alone isn't enough to go on. Normal people get this way too. As I explain in the book, normal people are quite capable of turning off their human sensibilities and behaving brutally. We saw a whole nation do that on Kristalnacht when the Holocaust started.

What makes predators different is that they are permanently in that mode, with the light of humanity switched off all the time for everyone. Even their own children.

In fact, narcissists do few things that normal people don't sometimes do. Projection is another example. Many people project 20 times a day. But there are strange and glaring differences between the way a normal person projects and the way the a narcissist projects.

So, you can't see lack of empathy or projection and know whether you have a narcissist. I think the most telling signs are those perverted behaviors that make you want to pinch yourself: such as when someone is angered by what should please, becomes angrier over what should appease, laughs at something that sickens normal people, and so on - those BACKWARDS reactions to things. Shockers that make you think you must have missed something and doubt your very eyes and ears. These are the most telling signs of a predator. Seeing a reaction like this but once is enough to warn you that something is wrong with that person and that you should therefore stay away.

Another thing this reminds me of is how people like this come creeping out from behind the woodwork on the Net. They hide behind a screen name and behave viciously, because no one will ever know who dunnit. Like a narcissist, they IDENTIFY with the false image they project in their screen name persona.

It is virtually impossible to have a civil dialog on public board, simply because these creeps view the forum as the ideal field in which to attack others without fear of getting what they deserve for it. Like any narcissist, they use irrationality as a debating tactic, insulting your intelligence with their blathering nothing-but-noise back at you. This state of affairs is an alarming indication of how many predators are out there.

A lot! They take over every public board, reducing the level of dialog to the absurd and making the others suck up to them to avoid getting "flamed." It's like a microcosm of society, in which the scum often rises to the top.

Cyperpaths who look angelic in any other setting, sit there and pound the keyboard like Beelzebub while they are online

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How to Feel Happier

The other day I saw an ad on the Web offering advice on "how to feel happier."

"How to feel happier."

I should have snapped a screen shot, but I didn't. Still, ads and stuff like that are common enough that everyone has probably seen it or one like it.

I won't make you pay for the answer though. To make yourself feel happier, take Prozac or two dry martinis.

Shall we get serious now?

But I WAS serious. That's how you alter feelings - with drugs or self-imposed delusions. That isn't honest. And since when is it mentally healthy to be dishonest with yourself?

This idea that we control our feelings and that they should be disconnected from stimuli that cause them is doing great damage in Western society. It is absurd and ridiculous.

It is self-evident that external stimuli cause our feelings. We can only lie to ourselves about our feelings: we can't change them.

This is as true of psychological feelings as it is of physical feelings. Those feelings are processed to produce emotions. Emotions motivate behavior, but they do not control it - not unless the rational mind cedes that function.

Emotions are not bad. Often, without strong emotion, we would not have the motivation to act, even though our rational mind sees that we should act. Hamlet, for example, was greatly tempted over time to just allow the murder of his father to pass. It was his strong emotions that kept him on task, though he never gave in to their fury, which tempted him to just murder Caludius and be done with it.

So, emotions are necessary. Without them we are paralyzed. Reason and emotion must work together (even fight with each other now and then) in the mind of a properly functioning human being.

What's more, the entire gambit of human emotions includes both negative and positive ones. If you take away the negative ones, what have you got? Is there any such thing as "happy" if you don't know what it is to be sad? Can you even FEEL happy unless you also know the feeling of being sad?

I'll tell you what the result of this idiocy is = total numbness.

This rot doesn't even pass a basic nonsense check.

It's fear-based, the product of a mentality that wants to insulate itself from the world so that nothing can make it feel bad, so that nothing bad can happen. It's an attempt to control your "little world" just like a narcissist tries to control hers - through authoring a work of fiction.

Plus, it's just another way to blame the victim for their feelings. They talk as though people just feel things out of the blue. They never breate a hint of blame for a feeling like unhappiness on hardship, abuse, abandonment, unfair play, war, illness, troubles in the home, or anything else. They always blame it on some imaginary inadequacy in the person feeling unhappy.

Maybe THEIR feelings are always phony put-ons like a narcissist's mask, but not everyone's are.

The people promulgating this junk are treating your unhappy feelings as the problem - not the real problem = whatever is causing those unhappy feelings. That's stupid. That approach precludes any solution to the real problem.

They treat your unhappy feelings as a weakness, a character flaw in you. Does that make sense?

According to them, you should correct this flaw. What does that mean? It means that the FLAW isn't in anyone causing your unhappiness. The FLAW is anyone made unhappy by their actions.

Right, the sin is in being unhappy, not in making others unhappy.

These scrambled-eggheads must have to keep half their brains shut down at all times to avoid a crash that takes the whole system down.

Look what they're saying. According to them, you are "responsible" for your feelings, so, in the middle of a war zone, you are to blame for being unhappy and you should therefore be a good boy or girl (so as not to rain on our day) by being "happy" instead.

And when professionals cash in on these memes, that really sucks.

They don't all do that though. When looking for a good one, look for one with a rational and sensible approach to feelings. One who never encourages you to repress them. One who will tell you that are times when you should get angry. One who helps you DEAL with them and GET THROUGH the pain.

Until you do that, you never will heal. Ironic, eh? By denying your real feelings, you never do heal so that you CAN be happy again. You just turn yourself into a numb zombie who acts "happy-happy-happy" all the time while feeling miserable deep down inside.

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Self-Preservation Under Narcissistic Abuse

I don't see how it can be so difficult for many people to see what is so wrong about denying a person (or any sentient creature) the right to use any means necessary to protect and defend themselves from abuse. All it takes is a little thought. And empathy. Just put yourself in the victim's place and then ask yourself how it would feel to have to bend over for it. More important, ask yourself what that would MEAN.

It's the MEANING in things that many people prefer to unsee.

There are many issues over which reasonable people may disagree, but this is not one of them. There is a right and wrong answer here. Those who prefer the wrong one just disregard all reasoning to the contrary with the old "Yes but...." That is invalid. Those people lose the argument hands down, because they don't have valid answers for their opponents' points.

I don't throw my pearls before swine, but here is an effort to explain for those who honestly haven't seen enough of life yet to understand but are willing to understand.

I warn you that this is an unpleasant subject.

Examples speak louder than words.

Why do you suppose that, until not so long ago, a convicted criminal in Europe had to approach his executioner, fall upon his knees before his executioner, and pay the executioner to torture him to death?

What sick mind dreamed up that idea?

If you research the topic, you will find a hundred details of execution rituals that drum on the same theme: in all, the victim (as he was called) was constrained by every means possible to OFFER HIMSELF UP (or to seem to be offering himself) to abuse. Why? Why did one have to kneel down before the executioner and lay his head on the chopping block in even the least cruel form of execution?

In Europe you didn't have the inalienable human right to pursue happiness. It could be taken away from you by the Church or State so you would have to pursue pain instead. That is why you had to give evidence against yourself. That is why you had to offer yourself to torture and execution. Refusal to would be a sin and a crime.

How's that for perverted?

You were declared "out law" (i.e., outside the protection of the law) and condemned to penal servitude. That is a fancy name for enslavement to serve as an object for someone else to punish with abuse. You had to surrender yourself to abuse for that other's "pleasure."

Think what that means. It means that you no longer belong to yourself. Think how it violates the instinct for self-preservation. It's an enforced self-masochism.

This is what our forefathers outlawed with the outlawing of "cruel and unusual punishment." France soon followed suit with the guillotine as a humane form of execution in which the the condemned did not have to offer himself to harm.

This is what rape is all about. It's not about sex: it's about power. Absolute power over another. The rapist demonstrates how powerful he is being on another by forcing the victim to offer herself to abuse. Well, he is deluding himself of course, because these are only copulatory reflexes and not the act of the victim's will. But this is why the victims of rape find it so degrading. It is the ultimate degradation.

Like medieval torturers, serial killers must lay awake nights dreaming up new ways to accomplish the same thing. Always the bottom line is the same though: demonstrate absolute power on the victim by somehow making the victim give themselves up to the abuse. It's the ultimate narcissistic high.

The black art of torture is all about this skill in making the victim offer himself (or seem to offer himself) to the instruments of torture. This is the aspect of torture that torments the victim so for the rest of his or her life.

When you cannot resist, you at least have the comfort of knowing that there was nothing you could do. But when you have the power to put up some resistance and don't - when you in effect say, "Here, take me and do what you will with me" - you feel like an abject worm.

The SHAME is unbearable. No exaggeration: it drives people to suicide.

For, what does it mean when a person accepts pain for another's pleasure? That goes against the instinct for self-preservation. So what happens to the victim's self? The victim no longer belongs to him- or her-self. The victim is possessed by the abuser. Like an arm or leg of his for him to use or abuse as he pleases.

It is the ultimate degradation. The victim ceases to exist as a person. No human being with the ability to resist and a spine will submit to it. You have to (morally) break a person's back to make them docilely submit to abuse.

So, for the sake of the victim's mental health, you must NEVER deny him or her the right to put up a fight.

Denying a person under any kind of assault this right is what theologians call the sin of "extreme perversity," otherwise known as the Sin of Sodom, which a certain kind of rape - RAPE, not sex - is symbolic.

It violates the laws of nature and the innate instinct for self-preservation. If the victim knuckles under to psuedo-moralistic pressure to not lift hand or voice in self defense, he or she will hate themselves and become a suicide risk. That is forcing people to commit the worst breech of faith there is - with one's very self. It's self-betrayal, what Joan of Arc called the "most wretched treason."

The victim NEEDS to know that he or she did what they could to resist their abuser! Don't EVER try to stop the victim from doing that!

Never, never, never preach prime-time morality at the victim making it a sin for him or her to yell right back at the abuser. Though yelling back may not be wise in all cases, it IS the victim's right. It at least lets him or her preserve self-respect through showing a backbone.

The same with any use of force. It is not a sin. It may not be wise in some cases, but it IS the victim's right. Only very recently has the word violence been used to describe the use of force in self defense. It isn't rightly (or legally) "violence" because it doesn't violate anything.

The same with resistance through divorcing the poor, little, sad and lonely narcissist, through abandoning the abuser, or through running away from home or skipping school. The victim has the right to self-preservation and the pursuit of happiness. Always.

If you really want to help, suggest better, more effective ways to resist. But don't ever just sit there and say, "Don't do this" and "Don't do that". Buzz off if that's all you have to say.

In fact, by making it evil for the victim to fight back or escape in any conceivable way, the holier-than-thous clamp the valves shut on a pressure cooker. Sooner or later something's gotta give. The victim WILL eventually snap. Then you have a suicide or homicide as a result. And the holier-than-thou bystanders who had persecuted the victim into docile submission with their immoral moralizing share a large part of the blame.

You can tell that the holier-than-thous are insincere. Pay attention to how much wind they spend on criticizing the abuser compared to how much wind they spend on criticizing the victim. You'll find the ratio is about 99:1.

They preface their remarks with something like, "Well there's is no excuse for what he did but..." and off they go on a faultfinding expedition.

When they're done, add up all the fault found. Who was found in? All fault found in the victim for fighting back. Not one word about what the abuser did.

They should be examining their own consciences, not the victim's, because what they are doing is very wrong and very, very damaging to an already abused victim. And they are serving the abuser, helping him to abuse and get away with it.

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Nonsense Check

I often refer to the mind as The Garden. Is your gatekeeper on duty?

CNN reports that her archbishop corroborated reports that Mother Teresa felt abandonned by God and had an exorcism. Mother Teresa's closest confidante, Sister Nirmala, who now heads the Missionaries of Charity tells us ...

This is part of the spiritual life of people, and God sometimes wants to unite the soul very closely to himself. He will allow them to feel abandoned by Him.

So, there you have it. When you want to bring someone closer to you, make them feel abandonned by you.

What? The gatekeeper to your mind ran a nonsense check on that and rejected it as a joke?

Yes, this line isn't just in error: it's exactly preposterous. It says that to bring people closer to you, distance them from you. How can anyone with brain waves go "Yup, yup, yup" and suck that up? It's hilarious.

Indeed, whoever invented such an antilogical belief had to be pimping Sister Mary Dead-Air-Space-Between-the-Ears to see if there is any absurdity too absurd for her to swallow.

Apparantly not. She has sold her mind to that source. Unfortunately, in giving her mind to ANYTHING from certain select sources, she is no different from a couple billion other people in the world.

I ask which is worse? Selling your body? or selling your mind?

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When Narcs Attack

Professionals often say that narcissists "overreact" to the merest unintended slights and that they fly into a rage for the slightest reason. But this view seems anthropomorphic to me. I suspect it comes from forgetting that the narcissist on your couch is a pathological liar.

The truth is that narcissists attack for no reason. In fact, they are prompted to attack by anti-reasons.

Of course the narc on your couch says he did it in self defense! He whines that the victim said or did something to slight him or anger his tender, tender feelings. Were you born yesterday? Narcissist = pathological liar. So, why do you expect him to confess to you that he is a predator = one who attacks any vulnerable target of opportunity?

I would hate to admit how long it took me to discover this, but in my experience, what triggers a Narcissist Attack is nothing but a vulnerable target of opportunity.

Test narcissists. Parade bait before them when the coast looks clear so that the narc thinks later it will just be his word against the victim's. Then watch what happens.

You can push his Attack button by having the victim be very vulnerable, like say by showing great affection for the narcissist and giving a heartfelt plea for some in return. (Rather like a man I knew who asked a narcissist to marry him and got eviscerated for it.)

How does the narcissist react to what should evoke his love and affection? With a savage attack, that's how. Rather like any wild predator when you ring the dinner bell for it by giving it a swipe at a defenseless creature's soft underbelly.

Except that natural predators must be hungry at the time.

On second thought, I guess narcissists have to be hungry, too. But they always are. For, they have the kind of hunger that increases the more you feed it.

So much for the theory that narcissists are just too touchy. They ain't touchy at all.

Test that too. Indeed, try to provoke a narcissist. You can't. Go ahead, try.

The only way to get yourself a raging narcissist is to tempt it with defenseless bait when it thinks no one is watching.

Now that you have your narcissist raging, do one more thing. Have the victim rise up rage right back it its face.

Guess what happens? Presto chango! Rage off!

Instead of a raging narcissist, you now have a poor little meek and gentle angel who wouldn't hurt a fly and is heartbroken at the victim being so nasty.

Welcome to The Twilight Zone. I call this miraculous phenomenon "The Transfiguration."

I am not exaggerating. You witness the instantaneous substitution of one persona for its very antithesis in the blink of an eye. You don't know whether to pinch yourself or start throwing holy water at it. Because an Academy Award winner couldn't do that that fast.

It stuns you and gives you the creeps. Indeed, one facial expression doesn't melt into the other: the whole mask changes at once.

I call a narcissist's faces "masks" because when you see this happen you know that's what they are. You know that what's on the face is a lie. It's the Big Chill.

A stunning revelation. The narcissist's very face is a lie about what is really going on in the darkness behind that mask.

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Bullying in Schools

Let's say that a high school kid is getting bullied and picked on. A school should be a safe place. If it isn't, you have a good case for suing that school as denying him his civil rights.

He should be able to protect himself by reporting the abuse. But what usually happens? The counsellor "has a talk" with the bully.

The next day the bully humiliates and abuses the victim even worse, in front of his classmates, to punish him for reporting the abuse.

So much for that attempt to protect himself. The victim's parents won't do anything about it. The bully's parents blow it off saying that everyone gets picked on in school and blah, blah, blah.

What's the kid going to do? Everyone tells him that he should be above reacting to the abuse in any way. In other words, he's supposed to make it go away by acting like it ain't happening.

This just dumps another load of shit on him, because now he feels that that there is something wrong with him for feeling the pain and anger instead of being a happy person who wouldn't be bothered.

You know what really gets to him? Having to go to that place to be abused every day, that's what. It would be one thing if he were waylaid by the bully. But having to go to the bully and present yourself for abuse every day makes the victim feel like a whore. Why? Because that's bending over for it.

Isn't she supposed to fight back? If she doesn't we say she liked it, don't we? And we don't say she was raped.

Same thing here. Forcing someone to bend over for abuse is rape. The victim will hate himself if he doesn't have a backbone and resist. (Then he is a suicide risk.)

Being forced to present himself for abuse outrages the victim's sense of shame. So, he skips class to assert his right to pursue happiness, not pain.

He gets punished for it.

But those who punished him are the ones who have sinned. Everyone has the right to protect/defend themselves. No one can be obliged to go to a place where they will abused. Yet we have many complete idiots in education who have never had that light dawn on them.

All other avenues of escape have been blocked. So this kid has the right to skip school. It is a human right that trumps all law.

And if you force him to come to school, then he has the right to punch the bully in the mouth. And if you punish him for it, you are the one doing something wrong.

But are these the only options that kid should have? To either skip school or punch the bully in the mouth? With all the truckloads of money we squander on education, we can't spend a few bucks to provide that kid with better options?

When he complains to that counselor, effective action should take place. And I mean kick the bully out. Let him see if he can talk some private school into accepting him. That will teach him a lesson he will not soon forget.

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Every Little Thing Is Not a Sin

I think victims fear to defend themselves because society has an unwholesome obsession with passing judgement on every single thing a person says or does. It's like there is some moral obligation to call every word or deed "right" or "wrong." This nonsense has gone so far now as to extend to FEELINGS.

You can't say or do anything without someone feeling it incumbent on them to tell you whether it was holy or a sin, though secular people use different jargon than that.

When I was teaching, I relieved myself of this burden. Sometimes I'd sit back at my desk in Biology lab and just watch the kids interact with each other. Every minute or so, someone would grab an instrument and tell his or her partner, "No! That's not how you do it, Dufus! This is how you do it!" Then over here, there's a kid snarling at his partner for "kidding" him in a way he didn't like. Over there, a girl is sitting back in disgust, tossing the instrument on the table saying, "There, you do it if you can do it better!" because her partner was criticizing every move she made. I could list no end of little human interactions like this going on.

When I was new to teaching, my indoctrination went off and I thought I had to race like a firefighter to the scene and correct this behavior. I must swoop down on every spat or quarrel, bawling the parties out for getting mad and judging who was to blame.

Then one day I had a brilliant thought. "Why?"

Why did I have to do that? So, I sat back and just watched. Guess what? Every little issue resolved itself almost instantly. A minute later, those partners were getting along fine again.

It was easy to see that one party stepped on the other's toes or was succumbing to mediocrity that would affect his or partner's grade and...YEOW - just like tiger cubs at play. Every so often, one of them gets ticked off and snarls. But then it's over.

The snarl actually works. It's nothing so long as the God of that world (me - TEACHER) doesn't descend on them and make a big deal out of it.

Once that happens, THEN their feelings don't blow away in under 30 seconds, because now they've been SHAMED by the teacher judging them as having sinned.

So, I learned to mind my own business. I'd just watch to make sure something I didn't understand wasn't about to escalate into something I would have to put a stop to. Guess what? I never had to. Those kids got along with each other and me beautifully.

Sometimes during one of these little spats one of them would look up and see me watching them - looking like "Oh-oh! She sees us and we're gonna get bawled out for arguing with each other!"

Why? Because that's what their other teachers would have done.

They'd keep looking back at me, more and more puzzled at why I wasn't coming at them and was just sitting there listening and occasionally laughing at something one of them said. I'd see the humor in it, you see. Then I'd make some joke to show them the humor in it, too.

In short, I just made light of it, made nothing good or evil of it, and just let them settle it.

Suddenly the brainwashing fell from my eyes and I could see that every time a person says a sharp word it is not a sin. It is nothing. It is part of normal human interaction.

Every time you yell, it is not a sin. Every time you get angry it is not a sin. Every time you slam a cupboard door it is not a sin. And if it's in self defense, even every time you hit it is not a sin. Neither is every time you fart.

I was a cradle Catholic and the nuns weren't HALF as bad as secular society is today in loading a guilt trip on you for every single thing you say or do.

Let's be honest. The reason people judge everything you say or do is because judging others is THE act of playing God and makes them feel morally superior to those they are saying sinned. In other words, it's nothing but self-righteousness.

And the punch line is that those same holier-than-thous doing this are committing the Sin Sodom (by denying you the right to do anything but bend over for abuse) while bawling you out for "raising your voice."

Don't be puppet-mastered by these moral idiots, whether they be the secular ones or the religious ones. Don't fear that you mustn't ever do anything that someone will call a sin. They can call ANYTHING a sin.

Knuckling under to their moral control tactics disables you and establishes a gross double-standard, in which the narcissist is free to rage, hit, abuse, be irrational, act crazy, lie his head off, smear, and steal to get whatever he wants, but you dare not even "raise your voice" or FEEL your anger.

Of course you don't want to degrade yourself by how you react and protect yourself. But don't be obsessed with fear of doing anything some holier-than-thou would say is wrong. If you do, you will soon find that you are nailed to a cross for target practice.

Every little thing you say or do simply doesn't rise to the level of being right or wrong. It needs no judgement. And being obsessed with such trivia is just a distraction from the big things, the things your moral judgment should be focused on.

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Narcissism: Perversity is Endless

Thanks to commenter who supplied the name of that french author I mentioned in my last post: Marie-France-Hirigoyen. There is an English edition of one of her books entitled, Stalking the Soul.

And here is a review.

I agree with both the reviewer and with the author. How can that be? I agree that we are poorly armed, but I really don't think we need a clockwork orange run by social engineers, either. I think we just need a return to freedom and self reliance. I think we need all the social engineering holier-than-thous and all the religious holier-than-thous to shut up when they have anything anti-logical to say. Which would keep them quiet most of the time.

The answer to the problem of evil in the world is to deter it. There. See? Did that take an Einstein? Every child knows this. If somebody punches you, make it cost him. If you don't, expect another punch tomorrow.

I have seen total idiocy among school teachers on this. They think that both kids in a fight are automatically wrong. What simpletons. They need their Commandments boiled down to a cheat sheet of literal dos and don'ts, because they have no moral sense and therefore can't tell right from wrong.

They create the perfect world for bullies. You know, like all the bystanders - who have nothing to say about the narcissist's abuse but condemn you the victim for anything you do to try to put a stop to it.

ANYTHING. They condemn you for hitting back. They condemn you for yelling back. They condemn you for countering the character-assassinating lies he is spreading about you - you must let him murder you this way without showing that he is lying by projection, for that would damage the poor little character assassin's good name! Yes, the holier-than-thous are that crazy. They condemn you for abandoning the poor, hurt little dear. If he or she is in your school, after they have condemned you for every other thing you might do to protect yourself, they seal the door to your torture chamber by condemning you for skipping class. In other words, they insist that you present yourself daily to your abuser for more abuse. AND that you submit to it without doing anything in your defense.

Ah, perversity is endless.

When I began teaching, I was shocked (but later understood) when an old colleague of mine said that he never ran to stop a fight. He timed his arrival to make sure the really angry kid got a few licks in. Why? Because he knew that the school administrators were idiots and that both kids would be punished equally with virtually no effort to find out and stop what had caused the fight. Therefore, those few licks were the only deterrent to the jerk who had started the fight by picking on the other kid till he just couldn't take any more (and feel like he had a spine).

In short, we need to speak up and shout down the idiots who keep preaching that self defense is a sin and that justice is "revenge" and that you must "forgive" the unforgivable = an offense in progress, a denied offense, a continuing offense = an unrepented offense.

Some people, many people, are amoral. They have no moral restraints. Unless you want to be their victim, you had better teach them an object lesson to go find easier prey.

And no, normal people don't get carried away with the freedom to defend themselves. The control-freak religious rulers and social engineers would have us think so, but that is baloney. Normal people HATE conflict. They hate fighting. The only time they are even tempted to fight is when under some sort of attack. We are just like other animals in this. They snarl and snap at an intrusion or offense and two seconds later have forgotten about it.

Why? Because the purpose was DEFENSIVE - to back the other party off. Once that mission is accomplished, it's done. Getting carried away just doesn't happen when DEFENSE your cause and goal. It's not even a temptation.

The abuser is the one who has other goals, offensive ones that he or she gets carried away with. It's the abnormal people, those who are predators, who get carried away. And what carries them away is a victim lying down for it.

Ironic, eh? Exactly what the holier-than-thous force the victim to do is what what causes the victim to eventually snap and go ballistic. I say let people defend themselves. Then they will put an end to abuse when it starts, long before it escalates to such a point.

We need these sanctimonious hypocrites to stop making out people to be evil if they fight back. Or run away. As in divorce or skipping school. You cannot force people to submit to abuse. That is the Sin of Sodom, otherwise known as making someone bend over for it. It violates the Laws of Nature. And common sense.

Beyond that, all we need is for the mental health profession to do its job by making sure the public IS aware of how many predators are out there. Most people have no idea that predators are not rare and that everyone runs into them. If people knew this, they'd be a good deal more careful and would take warning signs seriously.

What a better, safer world it would then be.

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Let's Play Pretend

Let's pretend (I love those words) that we are children again. We're being Superboy or Supergirl, pretending that we can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Then some other kid comes up and asks, "What are you doing?"

You reply, "I'm leaping a tall building in a single bound. See?"

Then he says, "That isn't a tall building. That's nothing but a stick lying on the ground."

What's going to happen? You know, don't you? You are going to get angry with him. But why?

Is it because you care what he thinks?

No, what he thinks won't even cross your mind. By that I mean that what he thinks isn't even a consideration. Shakespeare would be as likely to wonder what Hamlet thinks of the line Shakespeare is writing for him.

No, what makes you angry with your little playmate is the fact that he is reminding you that you are just pretending. He is reminding you that your fantasy isn't true. He intrudes on it with reality, making it hard for you to maintain the fantasy that you are leaping a tall building with a single bound.

In other words, he spoils all your fun.

That's what makes you mad. That's what makes you stomp your little foot at him and try to make him stop it. He is threatening your delusion of grandeur.

Now turn the clock ahead. You have grown up, but no narcissist has. You don't need imaginary friends and imaginary superpowers anymore. But every narcissist does.

He or she plays the role of you in this story: they get mad at anyone not playing along with their fantasy, with anyone who reminds the IN ANY WAY that it isn't true. They go off at anyone threatening their delusions of grandeur by not following their script in a lifelong game of Pretend.

This explains the mind-boggling fact of them punishing every good deed you do for them! By coming to their aid, you have reminded them that they are not Superman or Superwoman, so look out. You are challenging the existence of their imaginary self -- a god towering above us all, a god who could never be brought so low as to need the help of anyone.

Hence, by helping a narcissist, you humiliate him or her. Doubt that? Then just wait and see the payback you get.

They hate you for reminding them that they have feet of clay. You have seen them weak and in need of your assistance, so you aren't going to be in awe of them anymore, are you? You will gain some self confidence from the event.

They hate you far more for that than they appreciate whatever you did for them, even if it saved their life and even if it was at great sacrifice to you!

In other words, the more they should love you for it, the more they hate your for it.

There is a French author (whose name I cannot recall) who describes malignant narcissists as, above all, perverse, perverted. I think she is exactly right.

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The Test of the Three Strainers

Via Amethyst at - du bout de la ma lorgnette americaine -

One day Somebody comes to find the philosopher and asks him:
- " Do you Know what I have just learned about your friend ?

- One moment, answered Socrate. Before you tell me, I would like you to take the test of the 3 strainers :

- The 3 strainers ?

- Yes, began Socrat. Before telling me all kinds of things about other people, it is wise to take time to filter what one wishes to say.

Read the rest. (The English version is beneath the French version.)

Show me a narcissist, and I will show you someone who is forever criticizing, ridiculing, making light of, finding fault with, and defaming others. The teeter totter game. It's how they pretend to make others lower than them.

And they just pretend they're too stupid to know that lowering others doesn't raise you one inch out of the gutter.

Unfortunately, I think the narc's answer to Socrates' final question reflects more on the bystanders than himself though: "Because the great majority of people aren't like you, Socrates. They eat up this shit like it's caviar."

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Failure of Empathy

I'm not one of those simplists who think "big business" is a synonym for "evil" and gets all fuzzy looking if you as why they jump to the conclusion that the "little guy" is automatically the good guy. But here is an example of total lack of empathy in a corporation.

Only 60% of servers up after 110 hours

I'm up again, hopefully for good. (But I know that I have gotten nowhere near all my email, so I assume that most of it went to Never Never Land.) I think I was one of the last websites resurrected at the hosting service I use. It is but one of hundreds of hosting services affected. Each with hundreds or thousands of customers.

Those hosting services are hosed. Many, if not most, will loose most of their customers and go out business because of this. They were reporting up to 30% cancellations by Monday!

As for the 175,000 webmasters.... I know I lost a lot of money. Many will have lost too much money and too many visitors (who think the site went offline for good) to recover and they will go out of business too. Right before Christmas.

But what's it to the jerks who did this? Nothing but some chunks of hardware and digital 1's and 0's. Not people's lives.

Does their attitude ring a bell? It should ;-)

Jeez, how mean it would be to expect those poor little geniuses to bear the pain of admitting they were wrong! They were too proud to admit that everything doesn't go right for them just because they are geniuses, to admit that their cocky attempt was creating a rolling disaster and therefore STOP while they could rollback to the data center in Baltimore - AS THEY HAD PROMISED THEY WOULD IF ANYTHING WENT WRONG.

So, for the sake of these big babies' fragile, weak egos, hundreds and thousands must go out of business.

A little narcissistic? How about flamingly narcissistic?

Obviously, we need some laws. The hardware may have been theirs, but the websites and hosts on them are the property of other people. You negligently or recklessly damage other people's property and you should pay. Just as if you drove a bulldozer through their front door.

THAT penalty they will learn to care about. Time to educate them with the only substitute for empathy there is - fear of the law.

And no, not all big business is like that. Most mature big businesses know that it's bad for business in the long run and that egomaniac executives just destroy morale in the workforce and make decisions to enrich their egos, not your business.

For example, I once worked for a retired personnel executive for the Parker Pen company during its heyday. He was a masterful manager of personnel and absolutely fair and kind and generous. He taught me how to manage personnel, sometimes even advocating for those who worked under me. Why was he so honorable? Because it works! It makes everyone happy and business boom.

A few near-sighted climbers should pause and think about that.

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Malignant Narcissism: Grandiosity Without Self Respect

UPDATE: Revised and moved for inclusion in the book.

Narcissism is, in many ways, a failure of self respect. Could anything be more ironic?

This is what I mean.

...

A narcissist will do anything to get what she or he wants - ANYTHING: scream, act crazy, carry on like it's the end of the world, act too stupid to know how stupid they're being, stomp their feet like a Drama Queen, hit, kick, sulk, bust things, blather a wall of flak that doesn't even make sense - anything to get you to give in and give the brat whatever he or she wants. They have no self respect. Nothing is beneath them.

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