Everything Is F*cked(18)

Narcissists will oscillate between feelings of superiority and inferiority.18 Either everyone loves them or everyone hates them. Everything is amazing, or everything is fucked. An event was either the best moment of their lives or traumatizing. With the narcissist, there’s no in-between, because to recognize the nuanced, indecipherable reality before him would require that he relinquish his privileged view that he is somehow special. Mostly, narcissists are unbearable to be around. They make everything about them and demand that people around them do the same.

You’ll see this high/low-self-worth switcheroo everywhere if you keep an eye out for it: mass murderers, dictators, whiny kids, your obnoxious aunt who ruins Christmas every year. Hitler preached that the world treated Germany so poorly after World War I only because it was afraid of German superiority.19 And in California more recently, one disturbed gunman justified trying to shoot up a sorority house with the fact that while women hooked up with “inferior” men he was forced to remain a virgin.20

You can even find it within yourself, if you’re being honest. The more insecure you are about something, the more you’ll fly back and forth between delusional feelings of superiority (“I’m the best!”) and delusional feelings of inferiority (“I’m garbage!”)

Self-worth is an illusion.21 It’s a psychological construct that our Feeling Brain spins in order to predict what will help it and what will hurt it. Ultimately, we must feel something about ourselves in order to feel something about the world, and without those feelings, it’s impossible for us to find hope.

We all possess some degree of narcissism. It’s inevitable, as everything we ever know or experience has happened to us or been learned by us. The nature of our consciousness dictates that everything happen through us. It’s only natural, then, that our immediate assumption is that we are at the center of everything—because we are at the center of everything we experience.22

We all overestimate our skills and intentions and underestimate the skills and intentions of others. Most people believe that they are of above-average intelligence and have an above-average ability at most things, especially when they are not and do not.23 We all tend to believe that we’re more honest and ethical than we actually are.24 We will each, given the chance, delude ourselves into believing that what’s good for us is also good for everyone else.25 When we screw up, we tend to assume it was some happy accident.26 But when someone else screws up, we immediately rush to judge that person’s character.27

Persistent low-level narcissism is natural, but it’s also likely at the root of many of our sociopolitical problems. This is not a right-wing or a left-wing problem. This is not an older generation or younger generation problem. This is not an Eastern or Western problem.

This is a human problem.

Every institution will decay and corrupt itself. Each person, given more power and fewer restraints, will predictably bend that power to suit himself. Every individual will blind herself to her own flaws while seeking out the glaring flaws of others.

Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your stay.

Our Feeling Brains warp reality in such a way so that we believe that our problems and pain are somehow special and unique in the world, despite all evidence to the contrary. Human beings require this level of built-in narcissism because narcissism is our last line of defense against the Uncomfortable Truth. Because, let’s be real: People suck, and life is exceedingly difficult and unpredictable. Most of us are winging it as we go, if not completely lost. And if we didn’t have some false belief in our own superiority (or inferiority), a deluded belief that we’re extraordinary at something, we’d line up to swan-dive off the nearest bridge. Without a little bit of that narcissistic delusion, without that perpetual lie we tell ourselves about our specialness, we’d likely give up hope.

But our inherent narcissism comes at a cost. Whether you believe you’re the best in the world or the worst in the world, one thing is also true: you are separate from the world.

And it’s this separateness that ultimately perpetuates unnecessary suffering.28





NEWTON’S THIRD LAW OF EMOTION


Your Identity Will Stay Your Identity Until a New Experience Acts Against It


Here’s a common sob story. Boy cheats on girl. Girl is heartbroken. Girl despairs. Boy leaves girl, and girl’s pain lingers for years afterward. Girl feels like shit about herself. And in order for her Feeling Brain to maintain hope, her Thinking Brain must pick one of two explanations. She can believe either that (a) all boys are shit or (b) she is shit.29

Well, shit. Neither of those is a good option.

But she decides to go with option (a), “all boys are shit,” because, after all, she still has to live with herself. This choice isn’t made consciously, mind you. It just kind of happens.30

Jump ahead a few years. Girl meets another boy. This boy isn’t shit. In fact, this boy is the opposite of shit. He’s pretty rad. And sweet. And cares. Like, really, truly cares.

But girl is in a conundrum. How can this boy be real? How can he be true? After all, she knows that all boys are shit. It’s true. It must be true; she has the emotional scars to prove it.

Sadly, the realization that this boy is not shit is too painful for girl’s Feeling Brain to handle, so she convinces herself that he is, indeed, shit. She nitpicks his tiniest flaws. She notices every errant word, every misplaced gesture, every awkward touch. She zeroes in on his most insignificant mistakes until they stand bright in her mind like a flashing strobe light screaming, “Run away! Save yourself!”