Practicing good ethics is like exercising each day and/ or like eating a good, calory restricted, healthy, nutritional diet...Tough work...but if you keep practising it more and more, day by day, you become much better, much more proficient at living an ethical, well-balanced lifestyle over time -- just like what it takes to get into a good, steady habit of healthy eating and exercising.
In contrast, practising narcissism is like eating a piece of cake, even worse, gorging on the whole cake, or like eating any and every type of junk food we can get our hands on and put into our mouth...It tastes great, it's easy, it satisfies at least a part of our hedonistic-narcissistic (pleasure-seeking) impulses...but there are not too many good vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, fiber and enzymes in what we are eating...most of what we are eating has no nutritional value at all and the older we get, the worse this can become as a health problem, especially as our metabolism slows down, usually exasperated by less and less exercise...
This is not to say that all hedonism and/or narcissism is bad -- because it's not -- our survival depends very much on our narcissistic genetics, biochemistry, and psychology. When our body tells us to eat, we need to eat. And similarly, with the other life-preserving impulses in our mind and body that help to keep us alive, both as individuals and as an ongoing species.
Indeed, like many things in life, narcissism becomes a paradox in our lives -- too much narcissism is not a good thing in our lives but so too is not enough narcissism in our lives.
Healthy aspects of narcissism include: self-assertion, self-confidence, self-awareness, self-propelled action...
Indeed, as humans we are probably largely programmed to be narcissistic unless or until we are taught differently -- or better -- to bring this, and keep this, in proper balance and perspective. Even teaching 'altruism' and 'ethics' and 'morals' does not completely, or even closely, eliminate or minimize our underlying narcissistic impulses. But for a 'civilized person and society' these counter-balancing beliefs and values of such things as altruism, social sensitivity, empathy, caring, love, ethics, morals... are essential in order to make our own lives and the lives of the people around us work properly.
Greed, selfishness, manipulation, corruption, fraud, collusion, abuse of power -- these are some of the different things that happen in our personal, social, business, and political lives when self and social narcissism start to slip and slide downhill and out of control....It becomes harder and harder to restore proper ethical, moral, and legal balance, the greater we let self and social narcissism slide down hill and out of control.
Nature injects us with narcissism. It doesn't really 'inject us' with much 'altruism' or 'ethics' or 'morals' -- these are all mainly culturally, religiously, educationally taught beliefs, values, and skills that take great time, energy, effort, and practice to develop. Like running uphill, in contrast to narcissistic self-absorption that requires little effort, energy, self-discipline...like running down hill with gravity as opposed to against gravity.
Living in a culture, an economy, an environment of 'unbridled narcissism' where narcissism -- like a fast, growing weed -- has 'propelled' itself beyond 'healthy civilian, egalitarian, fair and democratic boundaries', and into the area of 'crime, immorality, and corruption' where everyone develops a mindset of 'He's doing it so why can't I?' Or 'The company I work for or my government is being blatantly narcissistic -- using and abusing money unfairly, even corruptly, so therefore I am going to take certain narcissistic counter-measures as a way of compensating for the way that I am being unfairly treated -- these are the types of things that provide greater and greater 'fertilizer' for a larger and larger 'culture of unbridled narcissism'.
Most notably power corrupts -- unless or until there is some faction of society that says 'Enough is enough. This unbridled narcissism has to stop and brought back to more normal, healthy boundaries. If I don't say or do anything about what is happening here, who is? Everyone is passing the buck, remaining ethically passive, and letting their own ethics slip-slide away in the process...'
In Ontario here, we have a Liberal Government that is bringing in a new 'Harmonization Tax'. What a juxtaposition of words -- 'harmonization' and 'tax'. This is from a Liberal Government that has been audited as basically 'mispending millions if not billions of taxpayers money' in the just recently passed 'EHealth Scandal'. There is no Government Accountability here. If the government 'mis-spends' money -- with a lot of Liberal politicians and lobbyists getting 'quietly rich' in the process -- the government just shrugs its shoulders, perhaps offers one politician as a 'sacrifical lamb' (even though I am sure she has already made enough money off of Ehealth to retire for the rest of her life) -- and waits for the scandal to pass. Then they introduce the 'Harmonization Tax'.
As citizens of Ontario, we are far too passive not to mention probably mainly ignorant of the full extent of what this new tax is fully going to mean. We just shrug our shoulders and basically let the politicians get away with 'narcissistic mayhem'. Similarily to what happened on Wall Street. Unbridled and unethical narcissism permeates our culture like the dandelions in my front and back yard a few years ago. It took a lot of digging, over and over and over again, to get rid of most of these weeds. It still didn't get rid of them all.
I can't say that I am any type of 'ethical saint'. How many of us can? But there comes a point where narcissism eventually will destroy all semblence of what it means to be a 'civilized nation'.
Cultural narcissm propogates individual narcissism, and individual narcissism in turn propogates cultural narcissism. The two are 'dialectically entwined'. Without cultural and individual ethics counter-balancing the combined force of cultural and individual narcissism taking us all on a fast or slow roller coaster ride to self-destruction, bad things start to happen like we are seeing in the current recession. As a whole, we are all suffering from the malaise of personal and cultural narcissism destroying the ethical and economic balance in our society. We need more 'win-win' solutions -- not 'me-me', 'I win, you lose' solutions...In the end, we all lose...
One only has to go back and read some of Thomas Jefferson's quotes about how 'power corrupts'...and all of the other Enlightenment Philosophers -- John Locke, Diderot, Voltaire, Tom Paine, Montesquieu...to read how much work and effort has to be continually exercised in order to keep unethical power and narcissism out of government agencies and processes not to mention businesses... to fully understand that we cannot let this type of thing slide without drastic consequences eventually hitting us all...like the collapse of the major financial institutions on Wall Street and their essentially being 'rewarded' afterwards for their ethical and/or legal transgressions at the individual and collective expense of the rest of us, many of us who are fighting for our very economical survival...
Let me close with a few of the quotes that I mean...
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A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson
Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.
Thomas Jefferson
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
Thomas Jefferson
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson
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-- dgb, Nov. 14th-16th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcisism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
