My bringing up tribal and communal culture plays out in the subjective explanation of how anxiety leads to narcissism. If the science has been adequately explained, we ready for it?

Yes.

The reason the narcissist can seem so charismatic despite their self aggrandizing and entitlement view of others and the world around them… They see the world as existing to ultimately glorify their vision, which is them, to uplift them, and if it doesn’t uplift them, then they have to make it do what it’s supposed to, what it supposedly is morally obligated to. Nothing else is meaningful to the narcissist. The reason though they seem so charismatic is how readily and elaborately they emote, how expressive they are of thoughts, behaviours, reactions and imaginings that we all have to some degree or another though haven’t found the courage to act on.

Like the charismatic musician, they may be really difficult to deal with socially, but they still convey a genuineness of emotion, an almost naive simplicity in the dream they express, that they for a time let us share in if only vicariously.

This same charismatic person in a tribal culture would wind up as a shaman encouraged to anchor their fantasies and passionate concerns in the natural world around them. They would develop a deep relationship to the world as audience, would seek self aggrandizement with the world as audience, and would achieve the great successes they crave through the lens of the community, communal success or failure. They would have the land and nature and the spiritual lives of their tribe for a “self.” This substitute self might seem like it would lead to a seriously selfless person does it not?

Yes. Modern society is making everyone narcissistic? Yes, but tribal society in this example doesn’t actually lead to selflessness, no martyrdom necessary. The only way you can be selfless is, if you will, in a society that has models for being selfish. How could you articulate the thoughts or imaginings that would make you want to set yourself up above other people without the basis for imagining it in the first place?

Extend your notion of self and be selfish? Extend your notion of self and actually live. Live from the self, as the self, and in a world where being the self is natural. In our modern society being yourself is not natural. There is even no understanding of what that self is let alone an understanding of how to begin being it. This is why no body can actually follow that advice, as wise and fair minded as it sounds. We have no idea what it is.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~