Hello Concerning Narcissism Readers,
Please enjoy here my second Concerning Narcissism podcast, a reading of my most recent piece, produced by Neshma Friend (Sane Francisco Substack).
My latest piece tracks and accounts for why we are feeling at odds with one another these days to do with inputs from modernism, postmodernism, Realpolitik, the technological age, and of course, narcissism.
This piece is notable in its thesis that free speech is a relic of the Enlightenment, lost to us in the age of narcissism.
Pull-Quotes:
“Both the left and the right are increasingly jettisoning free speech in favor of pursuing more illiberal and narcissistic aims. The student bases at elite colleges are entitled and therefore narcissistic; with their narcissism comes illiberalism and authoritarianism inconducive to the “adulting” requisite for free speech. Faith in political goodwill and good faith argument is atrophying in an increasingly narcissistic culture. These self-focused societal changes come at the expense of free speech.”
"Running parallel to a Realpolitik pragmatic philosophical makeover which is divorced from problematic notions of hoping for unifying morality or ideology as makeshift charters, is the advent of not just AI, but quantum computing, which may help us navigate tight quarters to truth. If technology advanced the end of the Enlightenment by revealing further social complexities, it's incumbent on it to chart our new path."
"Notwithstanding cybersecurity concerns, quantum computing may be illuminating a path forward for how our modern (Enlightenment-based) and postmodern mash-ups/paradigms aren't serving us any longer. Religion has failed us; the Age of Reason has failed us. Neither morality nor ideology are stable enough for a civilization to be perennial. The information age and the democratization of the Internet have transmogrified the social and cultural milieu. We are breaking at the seams of increasingly antiquated notions of reality."
"Our new societal reality involves an artificial component that is also real, whether it's narcissistic abuse (shared fantasy), artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and beyond. We are conditioning ourselves to be more comfortable with hybrid reality and fantastic spaces. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle. These computers will do computations that are inconceivable to us now and in hindsight will make the Enlightenment look 1950s quaint. The age of narcissism, as a liminal stage, is helping us acclimate to pseudo-realities or artificial realities."
As a complement to the podcast, please read the written piece below and share it in your networks.
-GC
A reading of The Demise of Free Speech and the Implications for Society: A Post-Enlightenment Perspective