The Interplay of Postmodernism and Narcissism: Threats to Individualism and the Rise of Authoritarianism
Exploring the Impact and Consequences of Postmodernist Ideals and Narcissistic Traits
Both postmodernism and narcissism inhibit and thwart individualism. Maintaining an internal locus of control would be a threat to both paradigms. The West is in the throes of transitioning from the Enlightenment ideal of the individual to the postmodern heralding of collectives (groups of people). A transition of this magnitude lends itself to, at best, present a simulacrum of choice as represented by narcissistic collectives which would approximate the idea of individuality contextualized within a unitary ethos of conformity that extrapolated out, ultimately, lends itself to totalitarianism. Like a spiderweb, each narcissistic collective functions as a node in a distributed system of mass control.
For an example of potential impending authoritarianism and a precise mechanism of control from a narcissistic collective, narcissist Trump claims that he (and his administration) will avenge his political adversaries should he win next year’s election and that he will invoke unitary executive theory, which would grant Trump sweeping authoritarian control over the executive branch of government.
A deep and pervasive obsession with power is the purview of the narcissist as well as the postmodernist, as narcissism has hit its stride in the age of postmodernity, both well suited for one another. The two phenomena are intertwined and bolster each other's self-serving agendas.
It's incontrovertible that we would not be living in the age of narcissism if it weren't for applied postmodern theories which got traction in 1968 from revolutionaries, Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, Derrick Bell, and their ilks of murderous psychopaths. Buoyed by intellectual ringleader Herbert Marcuse’s vision, these largely Communist radicals exacted their revolution initially on the bloody streets, and then, once subdued by incarceration, death, and infighting, they transitioned “the revolution” to the hallowed halls of academia.
The revolution is not the path to liberation; it is an iron cage.
Christopher F. Rufo, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything
It is the vision and will of these thugs that have set our current course into action in an increasingly narcissistic postmodern age. Uprooting the rationality of the Enlightenment, postmodernism with its pseudo-realities commingled with narcissism’s shared fantasy/psychosis has made for a particularly disturbing outcome.
Metastasizing from academia to our institutions at large (“the long march through the institutions”), our collective mindsets have been infiltrated, hijacked, and co-opted for nefarious control for control's sake, gussied up as progressive— “diverse,” “inclusive,” and “equitable.” The depths of our individual and collective betrayals are not fully realized just yet that we should exchange our individuality for the Faustian bargain of a semblance of order that in reality is sheer unmitigated authoritarianism predicated on the faulty new schemas as outlined and promulgated by postmodernists. Just as a house divided cannot stand, a civilization cannot be built on an authoritarian and chaotic postmodern house of cards.
The postmodernist is necessarily narcissistic and solipsistic— self-referential to concerns of power. Similarly, the narcissist is a control freak constantly interested in power to preserve the shared fantasy and concomitant influence it wields through manipulations such as impression management. Applied postmodernism through critical theory is goal-oriented and thus, intrinsically psychopathic.
Totalitarianism is ascendant because postmodern deconstruction and narcissistic nihilism are not the natural order of things and provide no stability. Something has to give; we are skating on thin ice. A narcissist as puer aeternus or the eternal child, desires power and control i.e., rights incommensurate with obligations. Re-making over society in one’s interest or one’s narcissistic collective's interest i.e., catering to the margins is narcissistic both in theory and deed, particularly if rights are sought in isolation without any commensurate obligations to the greater society. Obligations are the purview of adults. In this lopsided world run by overgrown children, entitled chaos tamped down by an overcorrection of totalitarianism eventuates.
There has been a newfound left-wing call for segregation to provide "safe spaces" in education, which eerily harkens back to the Jim Crow era which then necessitated desegregation. Seeing as though just 59 years ago with the signing of the Civil Rights Act, segregation didn't work out so well in the South and now the far-left is calling for segregation, one could conclude that the revolution is the point, or as James Lindsay terms it, “The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” Upending is not a solution in and of itself. Revolution leads to an empty void or a schizoid empty core as it's called in narcissism. This is a black hole that invites more nihilism.
Postmodernism holds two principles: knowledge is a social construct and society consists of systems of power and privilege. Privilege is the new word for class. Built into postmodernism is paranoid ideation, a trait of narcissism, which charges that everything is infused with power dynamics.
Applied postmodernism, that is, the practical application of theory, presents as activism. One form of applied postmodernism or activism expresses itself through disability studies. Ironically, disabilities are not social constructs and have a basis in reality which is tacitly acknowledged in the very name of postmodernism's offspring, disability studies.
Postmodernism married feminism with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality in 2006 and thus introduced more ways for women to be victimized and as a result, narcissistic. Intersectionality sold itself on escaping binaries of oppression but instead proliferated a myriad of choices of ways in which to be oppressed. Through these choices, it managed to increase societal atomization as a result. Now everybody can suffer in the Oppression Olympics of Intersectionality whether it's through fat shaming (fat studies), capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, gender, race, disabilities, sexuality, sexual identity, identity politics, and so on. Even the privileged have been made to feel shame and as such no identity group is safe from marginalization and therefore, made to feel less than and victimized. What whiny people we've become.
Now that dignity is passé and victimhood leads the day, we are experiencing more frustration, aggression, and violence. What results is a population who feels entitled to redress, remediation, and reparations, even though it is often difficult to ferret out who the true victims are. We only have to look to the Middle East to understand this concept in stark relief.
If individualism is dead, subsumed by narcissistic collectives, one won't be able to rely on an internal locus of control to dodge authoritarian control. In a postmodern and narcissistic age, the individual has been sacrificed in service of ideological fervor and woke totalitarianism.
The New Left’s call to commit “class suicide” and renounce “white-skin privilege” unleashed a torrent of narcissism, guilt, and self-destruction.
Christopher F. Rufo, America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything
In the book 1984, protagonist Winston Smith held steady with resolve but ultimately the Party broke him after struggling him in authoritarian struggle sessions. The Party had invaded his personal space which had been rendered impersonal with the intrusion of the Party’s screen compelling him to exercise exactly when and how the Party demanded even though it was excruciating for his knees and back.
It's been thought until recently, that it was Derek Chauvin's knee on George Floyd’s neck that took his life. The autopsy revealed that Floyd was under the influence of fentanyl though the narrative had been well underway that it was Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck that took his life rather than the deadly Chinese import, fentanyl.
Analogously, the impending autopsy of the the West may implicate postmodernism, though the root cause is narcissism first noted in earnest by Freud in 1914 well before the debut of postmodernism in 1940.
If we were to draw a metaphor and consider the three phases of postmodernism to be a tree, the first phase of postmodernism would be the trunk concerned with theory from 1960 to 1980. From there grew the branches from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s of applied postmodernism, such as critical race theory (CRT) and other critical studies (gender, postcolonial, fat, disability, etc.). Since the mid-2000s, theory has gone from an assumption to being the truth, i.e., the third phase being the leaves.
It is since 2010 that postmodernism has escaped the lab and infected us all. In 2013 began cancel culture, the number of incidences being orders of magnitude higher than the censoriousness of the age of McCarthyism.
Wokeism encompasses the rotten fruits of postmodernism and its roots in narcissism.
Below is a chart on Transitioning from Liberalism to Postmodern Theory as it relates to the role of narcissism in postmodernism, inspired by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay's Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody. Liberalism in this context refers to regulated capitalism, science, and democratic republics, as an outgrowth of the West’s Enlightenment project (Modernism).
Ginger another good one. It takes me several readings to get the whole picture .
I'll read it again in the morning before I comment.
In describing DJT, oppositional defiant disorder is probably more accurate vs. narcissist