A Nation of Narcissists
By: Christie Nordhielm Phd
Tags: Narcissism

A Nation of Narcissists

Last night I attended a zoom birthday party for a friend of mine. It was thoughtfully arranged; instructions and a detailed schedule were sent in advance. We were to dress up, share memories, drink recipes, and distant gifts. The guest list was a creative crew, and all went to work.

The party began. In true zoom fashion things quickly went awry, and the thing devolved for a bit into one crew of zoom experts vainly attempting to guide tipsy and opinionated zoom novices. (“I’m not the host! I was never the host! Oh wait, I’m the host!”) Just as we were managing to get on course a particular attendee, one I did not recognize at first, took the chaos as an opportunity to tells us, in great detail, about her. She pulled out her ukelele and song a song, which was fine, and then another, which was a bit much, then a third, which she sang so loudly and with such self-absorption that she drowned out the pleas from the rest of us for her to stop so we could return our attentions to the birthday boy. The entire party thus became a uncomfortable struggle to wrestle attention from this woman and redirect it appropriately.

I woke this morning to read, as usual, about what Donald has done this time. The constant droned reports of his insanities has made us callous, increasingly indifferent to the overwhelming news of death, suffering, disaffection, and the disintegration of our democracy. He has crushed our moral compass under his heel, singing his song for the third, fourth, four-hundredth time, ignoring our pleas for him to stop.

For 15 years I was in a relationship with a narcissist. I failed to recognize, then tried to ignore the signs, and effort that fed a growing stress that came to a head when I discovered a lump in my breast. My partner, with alarming speed, found a new partner, found and mobilized unscrupulous lawyers and accountants, and literally cleaned me out while I battled through 18 months of chemo and 4 surgeries. She sang her song to anyone who was incentivized to listen, and continues singing to this day, even though I’ve long since escaped and recovered.

I teach my business school graduate students via zoom. Some of them get it: they have begun to see themselves in the larger context of what is happening and what has already happened that we failed to notice. They have started to acknowledge the horrific suffering of those less fortunate than they are, and some have taken action.

The victims of these times are many things, they are brown and black, elderly and young, prisoners in jails or nursing homes, parents drinking at night to kill the stress of the day. They are many things but also the same thing: they don’t have enough money. I see my students laboring to avoid this fate, not working to learn but working for grades and a degree so they can get a job and achieve the increasingly elusive goal of financial security. The more concerned they become with this goal the more they remind me of the woman at the zoom party. Or our future ex president. Or my ex.

We have become a nation of narcissists, fueled by a grasping greed that is itself fueled by a deep, empty fear that if we lose the limelight we lose power. If we fail to earn money and what we believe it buys us we will lose ourselves. The soul of a narcissist is a vast, dark, hungry, empty space that frightens and motivates to acts of greater and greater insensitivity. This insensitivity leads inescapably to harm and then to destruction. The acts of a narcissist in the end destroy everything, including the narcissist.

Trump will not fade. His image will instead sharpen until it is undeniably recognizable even to his most arduous admirers. The image of any narcissist sharpens slowly but inevitably, and person by person we begin to recognize them and move away. Our job as citizens, as friends and family, and as humans is to watch for these people and move away sooner, turning our attention instead to each other, and to our true, human, compassionate selves.