'The purpose of defense mechanisms is to stop you from changing. So that after the trauma or the break-up or the loss you are still you. More sad/ashamed/impotent/enraged/depressed is fine as long as you're the same guy. This is what makes treating narcissism particularly difficult: the pathology's Number 1 characteristic is identity preservation. "I want to change." Nope. You want to be happier, sure, more successful, feel love, drink less, but you want to remain you. But that won't work. The identity you've chosen blows, ask anyone. Change is only possible when you say, "I want to stop making everyone cry." The first step isn't admitting you have a problem but identifying precisely how you are a problem for other people. But I'll save you the trouble, you'll fail at this, too, because of the Number 2 characteristic of narcissism: inability to see things from the other's perspective. All psychological defenses have a common structure: that two legitimate but contradictory beliefs are held simultaneously, one consciously, one unconsciously, alternating variously. That way all possibilities are covered. Change is neutralized. -- Is the name 'Heart Attack Grill' meant ironically? The waitstaff are dressed like sexy nurses and doctors, which is meant ironically, i.e. what they provide (fatty food) runs counter to the sartorial expectations. But the name is... not ironic, it's literally correct – right? Wrong. The name Heart Attack Grill is ironic, because the expectation is that you won't get a heart attack there, and the reason you know you won't get a heart attack at the Heart Attack Grill is – and this is where you need to judge the strength of your soul – exactly that it is called Heart Attack Grill. That's why it is safe to eat there.' -- I'm OK if you're not OK

'The admiration of TV sociopaths is related to this desire of self-identification, and not to a lack of power or a failure of the social contract. The social contract is working just fine for the AMC/Netflix demographic. It does not explain a desire for more power; envy explains it. Not knowing who I am, not knowing what I am supposed to do next and what I am not supposed to bother doing next – makes us long for characters who know precisely what to do next even if it is the wrong things. They may be flawed, but they are definite. They exist. -- It's impossible to deconstruct TV shows without considering their complement: advertising. Ads, especially TV commercials, offer the exact opposite of cynical detachment: pure aspiration. So while you resist allowing your career or relationship to define you – "I'm more than a software engineer!" you beg objects – cars, clothes, women – to define you, and of course not actual cars, clothes, or women, but whatever other people have said those things represent. Worse, cynicism and aspirational branding aren't two opposite ends of a pole, they form a cycle: the chasm between your cynical view of real life and the perfect definition of the aspirational images in ads makes you even more cynical towards real life; which drives you further into the safety of branding. Which is why you drink. The only salvation to this existential crisis is less freedom, not more. The only question is whether you will impose these restrictions on yourself, or you will wait like cattle for someone else to impose them on you. But they will be imposed. It is inevitable.'

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

'Religion has no remedy for wounded narcissism. Modern anxieties have nothing to do with the sort of existential threats that prompt people in poorer countries to seek refuge in religion. On the contrary, modern anxieties are largely focused on how other people evaluate us. The younger generation are both more narcissistic and less religious. Religion has no remedy for the anxious narcissist. So what do our troubled young narcissists do to cope with the anxieties they feel about whether others like, or respect them? Apart from anti-anxiety drugs the only answers for frustrated vanity are good friends who support the ego, endless self-promotion, or old-fashioned career striving. That is why in the competition for young hearts and minds Facebook is killing God.'

'The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships. Vignoles said the correlational nature of the latest study meant it was difficult to be certain whether individual differences in narcissism led to certain patterns of Facebook behaviour, whether patterns of Facebook behaviour led to individual differences in narcissism, or a bit of both. "If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking."'

'“Authenticity” is another metric in the attention economy, measuring how believable one is to oneself in the process of broadcasting oneself. I’d expect that soon “authenticity” will be a literal metric, measuring the data trail one produces at one point of time with some earlier point to detect the degree of drift. ...a networked self could have some solidity that renders the performative nature of identity operate beyond questions of genuineness or authenticity. ...adopters can take solace in sending out their “Profile” to perform our cemented identity within various social networks. Once you accept that Facebook’s data collection roots you, you are “free” to be absent from social rituals but be present nonetheless. Welcome to the new intimacy. -- In Alone Together, Turkle fuses a section about sociable robots with a section about social media usage to basically argue this: social media accustom us to instrumentalized friendship, and once we are used to that, we are open to crypto-relationships with robots (the “new intimacies”), since they offer nothing more than instrumental value. Since we don’t want the “drama” of reciprocal real-time sociality anyway, there is basically no difference from our point of view between relating to another person and a robot. They are both merely mirrors for ourselves anyway. To a narcissist, every other person is always already a robot.'

'The mistake many with that problem make is thinking that the problem is "themselves" and they need more introspection, or more insight, or more "brain hacks." You need less of those things. What you need are goals with concrete steps that you force yourself to boringly take. I'm not against introspection, I am against masturbation. I'm against edging. The critic wants to be able to contemplate, to go to therapy and discuss and introspect and what he will do there is talk about himself, think about himself, identify patterns in his life, things that have held him back – and nothing will change. So then he will tell me that he has "a really good therapist, she really pushes me!" The therapy becomes an elaborate narcissistic defense, the promise and appearance of progress while protecting an at best artificial and at worst non-existent identity. "I want to learn why I am this way." Then what? Will learning why you made those choices be what changes your choices? You're still eating junk food, aren't you? You're eating it while you're learning how bad it is. "But... why am I this way?" That question is a narcissistic defense. It doesn't want an answer, it wants you to keep asking the question. "I'm a good person, I just am making bad choices." Wrong. You're not a good person until you make good choices. Until then you are chaos. And you know it.'

'The narcissist ultimately starves for love because he or she can never get enough in the present to compensate for the past. -- Pathological narcissism is related to narcissistic rage: a furious, reflexive, unrelenting need to repay any perceived slight or insult. Neurotic narcissism starts out as normal narcissism, a healthy, natural childhood need for attention and appreciation which, when continually frustrated, becomes fixated and pathological. Neurotic narcissism stems from inadequate, insufficient or traumatic parenting and resulting narcissistic injury, especially prior to five years of age, during what Freud called the pre-Oedipal period. Children at this tender age find any serious lack of attunement and attention – or certainly, any outright abuse, neglect or emotional, if not physical, abandonment – an insult, a psychological injury, a traumatic psychic wound which distorts perceptions of both themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. When children experience parents or caretakers as unloving, rejecting or hostile, they respond to this narcissistic wounding by creating a shell-like false self – which replaces, protects and conceals the unaccepted, unloved and damaged true self – presenting instead a persona (Jung) based on what they perceive the parents and world want them to be. A great deal of what pathological narcissism in adults disguises is unresolved infantile anger, resentment and rage about not being recognized, accepted, and loved for who we are. This anger – along with feelings of being unlovable and unworthy of love – is buried beneath the false self. It is repressed, but not forgotten, nor forgiven. Narcissistic rage from the past tends to be re-stimulated by intimate relationships in the present. In romantic relationships, feelings are inevitably re-injured, and the childhood anger suddenly resurfaces – with a vengeance.'

'She wants to be (thought of as) a progressive, to (appear to) challenge society's rules, but being a coward she instead forces her kid to bear all of the negative consequences of this challenge. Is she wearing a man's suit to work? Has she stopped shaving her legs "to hide her femininity"? Is she willing to risk that someone will punch her in the face at the bus stop? Is she willing to sacrifice her own carefully managed identity "to make people think a bit"? -- It's not the gender neutrality that's going to mess this kid up, though it might; but being raised by parents who are using their kid as something other than an end in himself.'

How many fingers, Winston?

'The people who read books like Chuas hoping to learn something start from a wrong motivation: they aren't looking to raise better kids, they are looking to be better parents. If you don't see how those are different, your kids do. "From 3 to 12, kids are mainly animals," he says. "Their humanity and social nature still aren't complete. So you have to use Pavlovian methods to educate them." This is where all the enlightened humanists in the audience are supposed to freak-out. Kids aren't animals, individuality is important, blah blah, but what's important is the word Pavlovian: his violence is not random, it is not surprising. I could be wrong, but it appears from these articles that Xiao doesn't beat his kids into Peking U out of anger, but out of a system. Not saying corporal punishment is the way to go, but I am 100% positive it isn't the beating itself that molded the kids, but the very clear rules and consequences, which requires an awesome level of energy, vigilance, and self-control on the parent's part, which is why most people who beat their kids only get high school dropouts. Parenting requires consistency.'

'Witnesses said Malkin, who has earned $21 million in salary and bonuses since the recession began in late 2007, spent several minutes weighing various options for his wager—including a man standing on the sidewalk with a dollar bill taped over his mouth, a woman sitting in a lotus position on a straw mat, and a man playing an African hand percussion instrument in the drum circle at the west end of the park—before finally settling on a woman passing out leaflets.' -- (Narcissism of small differences)

Vlad Teichberg, Co-Founder, globalrevolution.tv: "These principles of equality are going to redefine everything. Because we're basically creating the new United Nations except it's not the united nations, it's the united people." -- Useful idiots are useful

'Though narcissism demands the right to self-identify, narcissists are often unable to do so because they don't know what it is they want to be. Who am I? What are the rules of my identity? So people look for shortcuts, like modeling oneself after another existing character. But the considerably more regressive maneuver is to define yourself in opposition to things. What do the protestors want? Can they articulate it meaningfully, not in platitudes or "people over profits" or "more fair income redistribution" soundbites? They can't tell you because they don't know. They can, however, yell at you what they don't like, and the louder they yell it the more they hear it themselves. If I hate the protestors, I'm on Wall Street's side, and vise versa, no further branding, let alone thought, is necessary. And now you have a quick way to decide if you hate me.'

...when the oppressive entity is so poorly defined (e.g. Wall Street, “the banks”, corruption) these protests always and without fail turn into protests against the police. ...iphones at the ready, praying someone maces them so they can get a video out of it. Here’s a clue that this is a pathologic narcissism, the nihilistic kind that 17 yo boys have when they threaten to kill themselves if their girlfriend leaves them: I actually agree with the protestors about Bank of America in principle, but because they are putting their identity ahead of the cause and are making it about themselves, I find myself hating them more than Bank of America. Their arrogance and entitlement drives me away from them, into the arms of their enemies. I’m hardly alone in this. Either they are not aware of this effect, in which case they are merely idiots, or the are aware of this effect and do not care.'

'Narcissists idealize potential new sources of narcissistic supply and later devalue and discard them. Cycles of over-valuation (idealization) followed by devaluation ... They reflect the need to be protected against the whims, needs, and choices of others, shielded from the hurt that they can inflict on the narcissist. The ultimate and only emotional need of the narcissist is to be the subject of attention and, thus, to support his volatile self-esteem and to regulate his sense of self worth. The narcissist is dependent on others for the performance of critical Ego functions. While healthier people overcome disappointment or disillusionment with relative ease – to the narcissist they are the difference between Being and Nothingness. The quality and reliability of Narcissistic Supply are, therefore, of paramount importance.'

'Mark Rife’s narcissist manifesto reveals he put no effort into his search for meaning partly because he was not intellectually capable of recognizing meaning when he found it, but mostly because he didn’t want to find a reason not to kill himself. What he wanted to do was mythologize himself. He wanted to create this story about how he gave life a chance, so he could end it with a self-inflicted death in order to communicate to us just how deeply sad he was. It’s important for Mark to know that his friends understand how sad he is. So he’ll murder himself to make them feel it. There is a legend that people die three deaths: the first death is when your body ceases to function. The second death is when you are buried and exists nowhere but in the minds and memories of others. And the third death is when the last person who remembers you dies. I wonder if Mark considered that in killing himself, he was in a way killing his wife again by obliterating so many memories of her.'

'Most stories have a Macguffin (or two) but you want to make sure your life doesn’t use them: something you pursue, or which motivates you, drives you, that, after all, turns out to be pretty meaningless.'

'As far as their fans are concerned, celebrities fulfil two emotional functions: they provide a mythical narrative (a story that the fan can follow and identify with) and they function as blank screens onto which the fans project their dreams, hopes, fears, plans, values, and desires (wish fulfilment). The slightest deviation from these prescribed roles provokes enormous rage and makes us want to punish (humiliate) the "deviant" celebrities. But why? When the human foibles, vulnerabilities, and frailties of a celebrity are revealed, the fan feels humiliated, "cheated", hopeless, and "empty". To reassert his self-worth, the fan must establish his or her moral superiority over the erring and "sinful" celebrity. The fan must "teach the celebrity a lesson" and show the celebrity "who's boss". It is a primitive defense mechanism – narcissistic grandiosity. It puts the fan on equal footing with the exposed and "naked" celebrity.'

'Paul’s strategy failed because he failed to recognize that Santorum just gave the audience a blue pill: a narcissistic narrative scaled up for a whole nation. They were just reassured that the entire issue was really about who they were and how they stand for American Exceptionalism (wait, does that contradict the other thing “we” stand for?), and not about any sort of vulgar details like foreign policy decisions or what the military did when. The natural antidote would be a red pill, but Dr. Paul can’t write that prescription because he’s a still a politician. Even though the odds of him becoming President are slim, he still has play by the rules of the game he’s playing, just like everyone else on stage. Here is what Ron Paul could have said that could have dispelled the effects of the blue pill: ***Do you really believe that you are important enough for people you’ve never met from a far away land to end their own lives in an attempt to kill you?***'

'To put it too simply, things have moved from a style of relating where one thinks: "I have a feeling, I want to make a call" to "I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text." In other words, the act of sharing a nascent feeling becomes part of the constitution of the feeling. The problem is that when we use other people in this way, as needed elements on the path toward our having our feelings, we can move toward a misuse of others. We are not relating to them as others but as what psychologists call "part objects." We are using them as spare parts to support our fragile selves. This takes the notion of an "other directed" self to a higher power. Our technology supports a culture of narcissism digital-style. It is a kind of self that does not tolerate being alone. And yet, psychology teaches us that if you do not teach your children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. We are forgetting this lesson in our culture of hyper-connection.'

'But the kids… they are limitless reservoirs of possibility. Sure, they don’t know kung fu now, but they could learn. At this point the only hope left to realize your fantasies is for your kid to become that fantasy, and then drag you along with them. But why is it always a daughter? ...your daughter, at two, at four, at six, seems very sophisticated. Sometimes she almost seems like an adult. And she’s so pretty. ...if there is anyone who could take advantage of an alternative universe where possibilities can be willed into reality, it would be the girl... While this is all happening – while 40 year old men are being offered a last ditch-last ditch attempt at fantasy, the new cycle of kids are starting from the very beginning: marginal guy saves the girl: Harry Potter, Twilight, and about thirty or so comic book movies. They run parallel to the middle-agers digital wish fulfillment, which reads: marginal guy is saved by his kid, redeemed by his kid, his partial object.'

'They didn't rush because the kid can't handle pain, but because they can't tolerate the kid's pain.' -- 'I know this is going to run me afoul of every comfy-chair therapist in America, but there is no reason to write anything down, ever. You're not a detective, you're not looking for inconsistencies or lost time, the patient is there for answers and the structure of your relationship is itself the answers. We can discuss good and bad technique later; the point here is to establish that these two people are creating "environments" that are safe for themselves. It may also be safe for the patient, it may be labeled as "for the patient" but I hope it is evident that the real impetus is the comfort of the therapist. With me so far? Ok: that's also how they parent.'

'It's all about striking a balance, really. I only wish there were more people out there as open-minded as I am.'

'...in the False Self, 'Other people's expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one's being'. The danger is that 'through this False Self, the infant builds up a false set of relationships, and by means of introjections even attains a show of being real'. The result can be a 'child whose potential aliveness and creativity has gone unnoticed ... concealing an empty, barren internal world behind a mask of independence'. By contrast, the True Self is rooted in ... the "experience of aliveness"... 'Out of this the baby creates a sense that "Life is worth the trouble of living". In the baby's nonverbal gesture which 'expresses a spontaneous instinct', the true self potential can be communicated to, and affirmed by, the motherer. 'The False Self in its pathological guise prevents and inhibits the "spontaneous gesture" of the True Self. Compliance and imitation are the costly results ...'

"We can't get enough of each other IF we can have each other at a distance in amounts that we can control." -- "Things go from: I have a feeling, I want to make a call; to: I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text. In other words, the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it."

'Perkins as we learn in this interview is pro-UN, pro-world government... We have seen this before, especially with former CIA agents. Many of them go on to write books or set up companies that are extraordinarily successful; perhaps it has to do with the work habits and discipline that is imparted by these para-military organizations. Also, there is no doubt given the track-record of post-CIA success of individuals such as Mr. Perkins, that the CIA and other intel-agencies hire some of the "best and the brightest." Even though they apparently leave on bad terms with powerful employers, they are able to perform competently or even superbly away from an intelligence environment. Such is the case with Mr. Perkins. Of course there is a simple explanation as well. There is no doubt that Confessions of an Economic Hit Man revealed a methodology that needed to be explained. And that certainly may account for its success, and his.' -- Pied Piper is piping

("But Mommy said I was worth customized content. Mommy customized me exactly to *her* specifications.") -- Bad parenting meets world -- http://youtu.be/P81bb0Tzwbo

'What about the puncher's mom? Surely she is not at fault? Well... her mistake, a crucial one, is she allowed herself to get blindsided by the Angry Mom's Cognitive Kill Switch – hijacking a discussion and making it a criticism of the person's identity instead of the actual issue. Rather than repeated I'm sorrys and he's not that kind of boy what she should have said is, "why are you yelling at me? I didn't punch your kid." That changes the whole movie, now we have a different main character. Now Angry Mom is put on notice: back off and let's talk rationally, or confirm to me you are a nut and face the consequences. But her reflex – a product of the generational forces to which she was exposed – was to square off and get defensive: my kid wouldn't do that, my kid wouldn't lie. She accepted Angry Mom's premise – the premise of Gen N – that the kid is only her, and so she took the Angry Mom's attack as an attack on her directly, which it was, because that's the premise.'

"Everyone who is alive wants to see freedom in their own lifetime. YOU will never be free. This is a multi-generational project. And people don't want to face that." -- 'How statism helps people manage their anxieties.' -- "And this is the sad distorted mirror of statism. People do care about the poor. And the state takes that and inflicts a false and violent mythology of 'solutions' upon the poor. So here's the horrible irony that goes on in people's minds... the very act of imagining that state solutions are helping the poor – which you believe in order to manage your own anxiety about the poor – is itself an exploitation of the poor. Your concern for the poor is manipulated. And your fear that the poor will be exploited is turned into you exploiting the poor. So the question: what to do about the poor – creates anxiety in people. 'The existence of poverty makes me anxious. So what am I going to work to get rid of – poverty? No! My anxiety!'"

'I'll explain what's wrong with her thinking by asking you one simple question, and when I ask it you will know the answer immediately. Then, if you are a parent, in the very next instant your mind will rebel against this answer, it will defend itself against it -- "well, no, it's not so simple--" but I want to you to ignore this counterattack and focus on how readily, reflexively, instinctively you knew the answer to my question. Are you ready to test your soul? Here's the question: what is the point of all this? -- Take a step outside the article. This is a woman explaining why Chinese mothers are superior. The thing is, I don't know any Chinese mothers who would ever talk about their families this way, publicly, describe their parenting, brag about it. Never. And then you see it: Amy Chua isn't a Chinese mother, she's an American mother. She had a Chinese mother, but now she's a first generation American... And what do Americans do? They brand themselves. SuperSinoMom.'

'...mothers earlier in history mainly saw their children as their own screaming, needy, dominating mothers-forming a "hypersymbiotic relationship" wherein the child is expected to make up for all the love missing in the mother's own life, cure her post-partum depression and restore her vitality. The need to shut up the mother's angry voice in babies lead to their being tied up, neglected and beaten. It is only when one realizes their own severe neglect and abuse and the extent to which their babies are poison containers for their feelings that one can begin to understand why mothers in the past routinely killed, neglected and abused their children. What is miraculous – and what is the source of most social progress – is that mothers throughout history have slowly and successfully struggled with their fear and hatred with so little help from others and have managed to evolve the loving, empathic childrearing one can find in many families around the world today.'

'Most of the time, parents simply reinflict upon their children what had been done to them in their own childhood. The production of developmental variations can occur only in the silent, mostly unrecorded decisions by parents to go beyond the traumas they themselves endured. It happens each time a mother decides not to use her child as an erotic object, not to hit it when it cries. It happens each time a mother encourages her child's explorations and independence, each time she overcomes her own despair and neediness and gives her child a bit more of the love and empathy she herself didn't get. These private moments are rarely recorded for historians, and social scientists have completely overlooked their role in the production of cultural variation, yet they are nonetheless the ultimate sources of the evolution of the psyche and culture. Childhood must therefore always first evolve before major social, cultural and economic innovation can occur.'

'All mourning is ambivalence. You're never too far from age 2, when your rage is magically powerful. ...the unconscious never forgets even the briefest of hates. Sometimes the guilt has a convenient narrative: caring for a cancer-ridden, demented parent who exhausted your physical and emotional resources, and then finally(!) dies. -- In most (all?) zombie movies, there is always a scene in which a main character confronts a loved one turned zombie. The rest of the previous zombie attacks are merely prelude to that one, specific, pivotal interaction. Quick, bolt the door, ambivalence is coming. Movies give the loved-one zombie a momentary flash of the old self – is it remembering, is it a trap, or are you seeing what you want to see? ...how the living negotiate that bit of mourning determines if they'll be able to put the dead to rest, or are going to have be tied to them forever.'

'...teens are attacking themselves in a public forum while making it look like they’re being attacked by someone else. I can’t tell you how many teens I’ve met who’ve been bullied by people at school who then turn to tell me about how their parents are absent – physically, mentally, or emotionally. And how often I hear teens complain about their parents trying to “fix” things by getting involved in all the wrong ways. Ways that make the dynamics around bullying so much worse. And it breaks my heart when I see teens respond to their parents’ helicoptering by engaging in self-harm practices through eating disorders or self-injury (“cutting”) as an attempt to gain some form of control over their lives. And it scares me to think that a digital equivalent is brewing, a form of digital self-harm where words can be as sharp as knives and are directed at oneself.'

'...anorexics are dominated by fantasies of persecution by the Dragon Mother, who "gives her child the impossible task of filling her ‘limitless void'" so the child fears being "eaten alive." To prevent this, when these children grow up and try to individuate, they refuse to eat so they won't have any flesh on them for the Dragon Mother to devour. Economic depressions evidence similar group-fantasies of devouring mommies; they are "economic anorexias" where nations inflict economic wounds upon themselves to limit consumption, become "all bones" and not tempt the devouring Dragon Mother. -- One of the best defenses against fears of maternal engulfment is merging with a Phallic Leader to restore potency. The most effective Phallic Leaders [are] "narcissistic personalities ... characterized by intense self-involvement ... lack of empathy ... oscillate between feelings of grandiosity and omnipotence ... inferiority and low self-esteem ... susceptible to feelings of shame and humiliation."'

'...children whose immature parents use them for their own emotional needs, and who reject them when the child's needs do not reflect their own, develop a "false self," or even multiple selves, which may conform to society but cannot improve upon it. ...social evolution depends upon the evolution of the viable self, which in turn is achieved solely through the slow and uneven evolution of childrearing. Traumas are defined as injuries to the private self, rather than just painful experiences, since non-painful injuries to the self such as parental genital manipulation or being told by a parent that they wished one would die are more traumatic to the self than, say, more painful accidents. Without a well-developed, enduring private self, people feel threatened by all progress, all freedom, all new challenges, and then experience annihilation anxiety, fears that the fragile self is disintegrating, since situations that call for self-assertion trigger memories of maternal abandonment.'

"Motherland" -- Growth Anxiety: Inter-generational warfare, perpetrated by elder generation upon the younger generation. Elders send youngers off to fight foreigner "enemies" whom the elders have displaced their anger at youngers onto. Elders need to attack and punish the youngers for their enjoyment of freedoms that cause the elders anxiety about new possibilities to separate from mother they feel they can't anger for risk of the losing all hope of their love. Unprocessed abandoment trauma. Reactionary against progress. Fear of freedom. Fear of challenging mommy's narcissistic needs. Religious/Statist savior fantasies. "God" wears a dress. -- Parents believe child is going to fill emptiness within them. Doesn't happen: Parent false-self narcissism vs Child true-self narcissism. Child experienced as "selfish", "defiant". Parental rage, abuse, abandonment. "Mommy doesn't love me; I'm bad. I upset Mommy. Mommy, please love me!" Love not possible. Hope springs eternal. The cycle repeats.

'The Dragon Mother Goddesses accurately embodied the infanticidal "infinitely needy mother who cannot let her children go because she needs them for her own psychic survival, giving her child the impossible task of filling her limitless void [and] engulfing them to prevent them from claiming a separate life for themselves." Every detail of the worship of Mother Goddesses has its origins in actual traumatic child-rearing experiences of antiquity. Most "Terrifying Mothers" had divine sons who were forced to commit incest with them, "every mother goddess having their son-lovers, Inanna and Tammuz, Isis and Osiris, Cybele and Attis, Aphrodite and Adonis." The religious rituals restaged accurately the maternal seduction: "Not only does the Mother Goddess love her son simply for his phallus, she castrates him, taking possession of it to make herself fruitful." Thus it is quite mistaken to call ancient sexual seduction rituals "Sacred Marriages." They are in fact "Sacred Maternal Incests."'

'Narcissistic personalities ward off their sense of an empty, inadequate self by fusing with the harsh attacking parent alter and forming a grandiose self that identifies with the omnipotent parent. Or they become a latent narcissist and cling to and admire a grandiose other, a narcissistic hero who can stand up to the destructive mother alter. ...the narcissistic personalities of antiquity tried to maintain some sense of self by arming themselves with grandiose exhibitionism ... as for instance early Greeks ... preoccupied with fantasies of the power and brilliance of a world filled with arrogant, distant narcissistic heroes and gods and grandiose political leaders upon whom they depended to validate their weak sense of self. Their pedophilia was also a result of their only being able to have sex with a narcissistic double of themselves stemming from when they were beautiful youths, avoiding women as "vultures" who were out to catch and devour them.'

From the book: Characteristics of a successful narcissistic development, "healthy narcissism": '#Aggressive impulses could be neutralized because they did not upset the confidence and self-esteem of the parents. #Strivings toward autonomy were not experienced as an attack. #The child was allowed to experience and express "ordinary" impulses (jealousy, rage, defiance) because his parents did not require him to be "special," for instance, to represent their own ethical attitudes. #There was no need to please anybody... #He could use his parents because they were independent of him. #These preconditions enabled him to separate successfully self- and object- representations. #Because the child was able to display ambivalent feelings, he could learn to regard both his self and the object as "both good and bad," and did not need to split off the "good" from the "bad" object. #...the child was able to integrate his narcissistic needs and did not have to resort to repression or splitting.'

'The belief that narcissism is synonymous with grandiosity is, itself, a narcissistic defense. You are being lied to, by yourself. The narcissist feels unhappy because he thinks his life isn't as it should be, or things are going wrong; but all of those feelings find origin in frustration, a specific frustration: the inability to love the other person. Each person tries to find ways of affirming themselves; but when it is done through identity and not behavior, it always leads to misery. #I know I can love, because I love my son and daughter, totally and unconditionally. And so now I know your kids are young. No matter what you do to them: abuse them, yell at them, neglect them, abandon them, withdraw from them, they will love you unconditionally. But after puberty, when they start to love other people in different ways than you, or more than you, even the best parent's status drops. How will your ego defend against that?'

'No, Mom, listen. He's really bugging me. Don't you understand that I need to develop this antagonistic sibling dynamic in order to define my role as an individual within the family, specifically with regard to how my dominance over him in some way strengthens or validates my nascent sense of self? C'mon, please? I promise I won't in any way undermine the psychological damage you and Dad have already inflicted upon Jeremy by using him as a conduit for your respective fears, frustrations, and anxieties. And I swear I'll be careful not to menace him in such a manner that he reflexively fights back, becomes prone to violence and quick aggression, and eventually begins to exhibit traits of an anger disorder or sociopathy. I just want to engender in him a lifelong sense of insecurity and diminished confidence, honest! So will you tell Jeremy to let me create an atmosphere of sustained menace, please? You will? Thanks, Mom!'

'...advertising isn't our window on society, it is society's window on individuals... It isn't about being white or being a guy, but about the class of people who have inherited the earth and then withdrawn from it, leaving it to entropy. Those people are the privileged middle aged – the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists In The History Of The World, and society hates you. Society is disgusted by all of you, even as you are disgusted by it. But look up at the ads, the ones who have to suffer for it are the next generation. The ones you suffocate with your physical presence. ...the larger point is that everyone around you feels your apathy, it senses that you are zombies going through life, you would much rather be elsewhere. Like on your phone. That withdrawal from reality has not gone unnoticed – not by your kids or your spouse... ...the problem is you. It is always you. And unless you change that thing first, everything else will be futile.'

'When I look at how teens hurt each other, I can’t help but also see how they’re developing training wheels for future relationships and reflecting normative behaviors that they see around them. I hear teens’ dramas reflected in their stories about how their parents fight – with each other, with their friends and family and colleagues, and with them. What teens are doing is more coarse, more direct, and more explicit. But they’re witnessing adult dramas all around them and what they tend to see isn’t pretty. Parents talking smack about work colleagues or bosses. Parents fighting with each other or ostracizing their family members over disagreements. And it’s not just parents... Celebrity fights and dramas aren’t just in their face; they’re glorified! Teens are seeing drama everywhere – they’re seeing it as a legitimate part of adult society that can often lead to notoriety. And here’s where we run into another major component of bullying… attention.'

'What did jump out at me was that this girl stood up to the bully not to protect herself, but for the sake of others – and rather than supporting this behavior, the school crushed it in the interest of expediency and "safety." If there is any value you do want to encourage in kids, it's looking out for each other. The girl had it; the boy who tried to snag Devastator also had it. Those were reflexes, they didn't plan this out over morning waffles, but whatever was going on at home and in their heads lead them to have, and to follow, those impulses. But the school fostered the reverse value: "don't get involved, take care of yourself, let the Watchers handle it. That's their job." Note that the school didn't inadvertently teach her not to look out for others, it specifically instructed her not to look out for others. "We'll handle it." What kind of a maddening school indoctrinates kids that power is only allowed to be possessed by a) bad people; b) the authorities?'

On self-esteem and social levelling: "One of the problems with self-esteem is mistaking the accidental for the personally virtuous. You don't want to place your self-esteem on the accidental characteristics that you may have."

'...simply pressing a “Check In Here” button in exchange for instant point-value validation of your life choices and purchases is so much easier and more rewarding than the similar personal branding services provided by competitors such as Flickr (uploading photos takes forever), Twitter (too wordy), Facebook (say it with me: my mom is not an influencer) or Yelp (get off Yelp, you dork). Plus, Foursquare allows you to passively brag how fabulous you are, thus making the act of doing so far more socially acceptable, which means you don’t have to worry about potential neg-impact on your brand.'

'As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. ...weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism. [Social media activism] doesn’t require that you confront socially entrenched norms and practices. In fact, it’s the kind of commitment that will bring only social acknowledgment and praise. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. There are many things that networks don’t do well.'

'Attention is one thing, lewd comments maybe another, but as Marc Maron pointed out, what are you going to do? Sexiness isn't a smart bomb, you can't select your targets, you put it out there and there's going to be some collateral damage. "I don't want to be thought of only as a sex object." You don't see the irony of your thinking. You don't want people to have a certain thought, yet you also demand that they don't have a certain thought. You're trying to controlling their minds just as much as you claim they're doing to you. You don't get to make that decision, ever. As much as anyone wishes they could make everyone else accept the identity they've chosen, the ugly existential truth is everyone has their own mind and they seem to have decided that you are a sex object. -- "I know who I am." No you don't, that's my point, if you knew who you were you wouldn't be playing multiple characters, in this case eye candy and serious reporter.'

'What would Lukacs have done if the border patrol agents were all robots? Narcissistic thinking never works on robots. A person may completely ignore how another person is thinking, but everyone always understands a robot's perspective. With robots, it is explicitly understood that they are operating on a flowchart, that they have a definite way of thinking of their own that has nothing to do with who you think you are. You can't force your thinking on a robot. So Lukacs wouldn't dare disobey anything upon which he cannot impose his will. That's why he's fighting border agents, and not the government.'

'This caught our collective eye because it is so quintessentially a New York Times article. The New York Times has always specialized in "insider" big-town articles, which provide new ways of looking at the way people live in Metropolis. An elaboration on the dominant social theme might be, "We live in a hermetical bubble and have not yet caught up with the rest of the world, and we don't want to." After a full century of refining their art, the editorial trend-setters are actually behind the curve. The vocabulary and preoccupations of the New York media crowd are increasingly dated. New York no longer speaks for the West in our opinion. Hollywood no longer speaks for movies. TV's demographic is aging and American magazines and newspapers generally, are losing their audience. The entire mechanism, based on avoiding the reality of power-elite social, political, monetary and military structures, is breaking down. Soon the mainstream US media leadership may be "formerly."'

'If you’re One of Those SPECIAL People with BRAINS not just education who is not LIVING UP to your POTENTIAL through No Fault of Your Own, you can CHANGE YOUR LUCK. Send in this ad and receive a FREE GIFT for taking this FREE test' -- Test: http://youtu.be/WKwg5nZ5mu0

"The original sin is now imperfection."

'Meet Caterina Fake, the creative spark behind Hunch. Her big idea? Develop a web service that knows what you want before you even want it. Get people talking about themselves — their opinions, tastes, beliefs, idiosyncrasies. Then, once they have shared enough information, mine that data for correlations that provide precisely tailored recommendations for each user. It is a quietly radical premise, implying that our tastes are defined not only by what we buy or what we’ve liked in the past but by who we are as people. There’s only so much it can learn from 1 million users. So Hunch is scouring the Web for information, combing the databases of social sites like Facebook and Twitter for anything that’s publicly available — opinions and allegiances, likes and dislikes, followers and friend requests.' -- Why so curious?

'We have an instinctive aversion to other people's false realities because they aren't our realities.' -- Aren't our false-self false realities.

'SuperMe is a web game which helps you to be better at life. It's about resilience: how to feel good when life chucks you lemons. How to be better at thinking positively. How to cope with, and learn to love, failure. By playing SuperMe you'll learn how to be more resilient in real life, and by playing every piece of content you'll score points. Points! Everyone wants those. There are 500 experience points to be collected in Wisdom, Ability, Influence and Connection. The more experience you collect the better you are, and the higher you'll level up.' -- What these 'games' really need is an exit achievement called, 'DONE NOW. THANKS FOR THE HELP, EVERYONE. I'M OFF!' where you delete the game along with your points, badges and public profile and take your skills/achievements into real life where there's no easy feedback or pats on the head. Maybe there already is such an achievement. Perhaps it couldn't ever be 'built-in'.

'Can you be vaguely dissatisfied, unfulfilled and possibly even resentful of your marriage, yet fake it enough that your spouse thinks you love them more than anything? So why do you think you can fool your 8 year old? Because he's 8? He smells it on you, it reeks, like sepsis. And like all infections, it will spread to him eventually. -- I have a surprising piece of advice for parents, which I hope will be taken in the spirit it is offered: your kid doesn't want to be around you that much. No one does. This isn't because you're a bad person but because you're an ordinary person. You are not such a unique, creative, intelligent or even interesting person that the kid benefits from constant exposure to you. When you have something to offer, maximize and concentrate that time, and then get the hell out of the way.'

'Loneliness is the most obvious risk of aloneness. The very idea of solitude may evoke deep childhood fears of abandonment and neglect, and cause some people to rush toward connectedness. Computer life is an attempt to solve the problem of alonetime and social needs. In a culture that no longer provides wilderness or stretches of solitary time, the computer is the one machine that seemingly offers it all: stimulation, knowledge, news, alonetime, relationships, and even sex. One might say it has universal appeal. However, if we are not aware of why computer technology is attracting us, we cannot use it to our best advantage. The question is, are we routinely using the computer and television to find alonetime without really realizing our unfulfilled alone need? Or are we becoming incapable of living in the moment except in technological time-outs like the computer? -- Life's creative solutions require alonetime. Solitude is required for the unconscious to process and unravel problems.'

'"In its adulthood, the U.S. displays all the classic tendencies of a nation that was repeatedly mistreated in its infancy—difficulty forming lasting foreign relationships, viewing everyone as a potential enemy, and employing a pattern of assault and intimidation to assert its power," said Dr. Howard Drexel, the report's lead author. "Because of trust issues stemming from the abuse, America has become withdrawn, has not made an ally in years, and often resents the few nations that are willing to lend support—most countries outgrow this kind of behavior after 230 years." "America compensated for early mistreatment by taking out this pent-up aggression on other nations—getting involved in aggressive conflicts seemingly just for the thrill of it, starting arguments and wars that can't be won, suspecting that everyone is out to get them," Drexel said. "This nation needs help, but by its very nature, refuses to accept it."

'In what cultural anthropologists are calling a "colossal achievement" in the study of white-collar professionals, the popular radio show has successfully isolated all 7,442 known characteristics of college graduates who earn between $62,500 and $125,000 per year and feel strongly that something should be done about global warming. "We've done it," said senior producer Julie Snyder, who was personally interviewed for a 2003 This American Life episode, "Going Eclectic," in which she described what it's like to be a bilingual member of the ACLU trained in kite-making by a Japanese stepfather. "There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme."'

Gisted -- A narcissist is obsessively focused on what other people think. A narcissist desires the affects of virtue and of competence but not the actual work that is the cause of these things. A narcissist will often react with rage if these affects fail to materialize. This is because, as children, when they didn't provide the affects of love, they were punished. As child, you are designed to explore the world and to discover the joy of competence of your own mind and body—but if your parent interrupts this process by demanding that you focus on them to meet their emotional needs, then you have to give up the world to focus on providing emotional affects and on protecting yourself from threats of punishment and withdrawals of affection if you fail. When you have been forced to manage your parent's emotions, you become a people-manager, you'll become very manipulative, and you'll lack that sense of self-esteem that comes from being competent within the world and within your self.

'The portable login is the key; it becomes the repository and access point for online identity. It’s our virtual bar code, communicating our evolving demographic relevance to whomever we reveal it. The ads may enhance our experience of the sort of identity we want to be projecting—they can serve as confirmation for us of who we think we are and thus be quite welcome. They help us consume ourselves. Just as people explicitly buy certain magazines for the ads, properly targeted marketing could function similarly. That is, we wouldn’t want to block online ads, since the ads will have become our most flattering mirror. And further, we won’t necessarily worry about protecting privacy in social media when a wider circulation of this ersatz demographic-construct self is what we actually are after. We won’t want privacy restrictions when what we are hoping for is to be surprised with a better version of ourselves in the ads we see.'

'In the course of life it is important to avoid letting people get levers on you. The cons learn their victim’s likes and dislikes and personal history, so that they will be able to forge a more “authentic” bond with the victim. Inmates often work in large cabals, colluding in their informational exchange. One other tactic they use is to compliment the guard. Compliments are actually a devastating manipulative tool, because they enhance the ego of the complimented. Because the ego is false, and impermanent, the complimented becomes less grounded in reality... By asking the guard for help, they improve the bond (after all, to help someone is to be of higher status than them – and this nurtures the illusion of the guard that *they* are the ones in charge...) In prison as in real life, if someone doesn’t actively speak up and say something, silence is taken as assent. When human beings touch each other, if the touch is not aggressive, oxytocin is often released, causing a bond to form.'

'The system awards points and virtual badges to players depending on how often they go out and which places they visit. Users who frequent a particular place enough times are crowned “mayor” of that particular location. “People are very territorial about their mayorships,” Mr. Crowley said. “It’s almost like bragging rights.”'

'The narcissist says: if it can't happen to me, it can't really happen. 2500 Americans can't just die in one day. But 9/11 was different. It didn't respect the rules. It violated the most important aspect of postmodern narcissism: story. Not only was the attack a surprise – no warning, no buildup, no exposition, no rising action – but even the characters were a surprise. We were revealed to be powerless. No heroes. No one knew kung fu. -- You might say that the Great Recession we're in now should end postmodern narcissism. Nope. Amazingly, all I hear and read are calls for punishing those who got us into this mess (Wall Street), "fixing the system," "solving the housing crisis." People are waiting for things to "get back to normal." People: this is normal. The past twenty years-- easy credit, college for everyone that leads to a job at Starbucks, unemployment under 6% – that was abnormal. -- So: two huge historical realities have had no impact on our cultural narcissism.'

'Girlfriends say: I pretend to believe you when you say you know kung fu, because I love you. The boyfriend says, not hearing anything she said: I'll stay with you until either I know kung fu; or you realize I don't really know kung fu, and my shame makes me hate you. -- Trinity loves Neo, even before he becomes The One. She's waited her whole life for him. He doesn't (yet) know kung fu, but she knows he will. And she does know kung fu -- and chooses him, saves him. That's love. But Neo doesn't return the love until he becomes who he has always known he is. He has to know kung fu first. Only then could someone really love him. -- The Matrix was the articulated solution to a growing existential crisis. It gave us hope: "Unless there's solid reason not to, I'm just going to allow the possibility that there's more to reality than what I see, and so there may be a valid reason to hope that my real life will kick in any time. And then someone will love me."

'The question for today is, why does it seem that women have higher sex drives than men? This is not a complaint I recall hearing in the 1970s or 80s. Start with: there's something eerily adolescent about men today. The movies say: until you do something extraordinary, or "save" the girl, then the love you feel isn't true love. Women may be the ones looking to feel "explosions" inside telling them they're in true love, but men externalize those explosions into real explosions before they know it's love. The male libido falls not because he's not interested in the woman he's with, but because he's not interested in the movie he's in. -- One of the only 80s action movies that didn't have a damsel in distress was First Blood, in which Rambo came back to the world only to find that not only did no one reward his identity, they hated him for it. But even that was a sort of confirmation. You don't need a girl when enough people hate you for who you are.'

'When President Obama recently admonished members of the Tea Party, urging that they show him gratitude, that they thank him, he demonstrated quite unambiguously his adherence to the doctrine of statism, one that includes monarchism, czarism, Caesarism, and all varieties of top down regimentation of human communities. I won't discuss whether what President Obama supports for public policy amounts to lowering taxes, as he claims it does. Let me just focus on his claim that his lowering taxes is something for which he ought to be thanked? For the president of the United States of America to even mention that the citizenry ought to be grateful to him for not squandering their resources is gross! How dare he? Is he like a monarch who owns everything in the country and whenever anyone is gaining anything at all from some policy of his, it must be something he has done for them! Does he believe he is our king so that when he returns to us what he extorted from us, we must thank him?'

'...technologically abetted narcissism: the reprocessing of culture into self-aggrandizing tidbits to be disseminated online ... Carles asks: "Do people care more about cute memes than tons of words?" The implied answer is that they "care more" about neither, because they care only about themselves and instrumentalizing memes to improve their own cachet. Carles suggests that "viral meme blogs" have become "more lucrative than trying to become an authentic writer" -- which of course evokes the question of what sort of authenticity as writer is possible after the alleged "death of the author" and the nullification of the "author function" have been widely proclaimed. The author function itself has become the virus, the content implied by any viral meme. The meme, regardless of its surface content, primarily signifies its transmitter and that transmitter's status as one who has been infected.'

'Chris Atkins' hilarious but shocking True Stories documentary about the celebrity-obsessed media romps through the real reasons behind our addiction to fame, and pulls the rug out from the media corporations and moguls that deal it out. Atkins sells fake celebrity stories to the tabloids, which they publish without any checks, and secretly films red-top journalists discussing the purchase of celebrities' cosmetic surgery medical records. The film reveals the harmful effect a celebrity-saturated media is having on children, and how media corporations are responsible for a global epidemic of narcissism. Atkins uses stunts, animation, expert testimony and undercover reportage to create a darkly humorous and terrifying exposé of one of the most important issues of our time.'

'The Matrix is a great movie but a poor expression of Baudrillard's philosophy. The Matrix is quite straightforward, there's no confusion, no paradox: you're either in the Matrix, or you're in the real world. You may not know you're in the Matrix, but that doesn't change the fact that you are or are not in it. A true Baudrillard Matrix would be a single world that became so fake that you no longer needed the original. The whole world becomes a fake; there is no recourse to the real world. "Inability to participate in society," lamented Secretary of Socialism Wilkinson, eyeballs deep in the Matrix. That's what he thinks drives people crazy. He's right; but the solution isn't a redistribution of income, it's reducing the desire to participate in the Matrix. -- I guess that's why they say: May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows. But you ain't thinking that far ahead. Know what I mean?'

'Unvarnished is a social Ponzi scheme - borrowing reputation from another, to amp up one's own (until one's own gets trashed). Those economics are so 20th century, it hurts. Unvarnished is the endgame of the "social web". I'm going to mark it as the day the "social web" became antisocial. Increasingly, today's "social web" doesn't empower people. It empowers hate, exclusion, and polarization, to put it bluntly. That's as lame and brain-dead as what went on on Wall St a few years back: hurting others to extract value from them. Except, of course, Wall St actually made billions. Social media's as bankrupt financially as it is ethically and economically: a trifecta of lameness.'

'Bestselling author Craig Wheedon stops by Today NOW! to urge ladies to face the truth and dump the shapeshifter.'

Watts on the inbred psychopathic 'elite': "They won't keep you around as a pet. Everyone is used in turn: the communists were used in turn, the right-wingers as well – but they don't realise it. They are all used to serve and bring about the same agenda which is simply the elites' survival. Where we can talk about psychopaths as being alien from us because they have no empathy for others; they're very cunning; they're like cameras that watch and study you and emulate you, and are very good con men, but they feel nothing for you – well, in a Darwinist philosophy, they are the natural successors to take over and rule the world. They believe that they are the most advanced predators on the planet and they're not ashamed of being predators, they think that's the natural order, and that's what they discuss at the top thinktanks." -- Jones on the stockholm syndrome: "They've trained the slaves to giggle and laugh and be delusional where if they laugh something off that makes it not exist."

'Carles invites his readers to make explicit the implicit surveillance they are already conducting, led onward by an administered proclivity for passive curiosity and vicarious fascination with famous persons ... and become actual informants, supplying him with information as if he were a Stasi bureau chief in charge of cultural subversives: Recommended TIP submissions: #mild misunderstandings that need more exposure to turn into over-exposed controversies... And so on. Carles's point of course, is to demonstrate how the media machine no longer needs diabolical masters to operate it ... Instead we create the material bases for our own ideological predetermination through our own eagerness to participate in the mystified consciousness and culture industries. By reporting on one another, we feel as though we have become more famous ourselves, more certain that every move of our own is being watched and evaluated...'

'This brave new inter-networked, socially-mediated, post-industrial, cybernetically-interwoven world is an integrated web of Pavlovian stimulus and response and I'm barking at the bell. Turns out, this isn't a Skinner Box. No, "box" is too confining for this metaphor. This is a fully networked, digitally rendered, voluntarily joined Skinner Borg. It doesn't embed itself in us, we embed ourselves in it. It's Clockwork Orange, self served. The singularity is here, and it's us... also it's dumb, snarky, and in love with itself. Age of spiritual machines? Whatever. Show me spiritual people.'