"Narcissists gravitate towards professions where they can control people and elicit adulation. They are more likely to work in politics, finance or medicine than in shoemaking. They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care.”
Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self Love
“A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects. They will be offended by the truth.”
Karla Grimes
"In the past thirty years it seems that Anglo-American culture has grown increasingly narcissistic. I do not know if there are more narcissistic individuals in society now, and perhaps there are not. But I do think that narcissism is much more widely tolerated, rewarded, and even admired now than it would have been in the period of 1930 to 1950 for example. And that is what makes all the difference. More people feel free to indulge their selfish and egotistical tendencies, and to cultivate them shamelessly, in order to be fashionable and competitive.
I think this also tends to explain the decline of literature and poetry in American culture, and the rise of reality shows and the preoccupation with spectacle and extravagance. Literature calls us out of ourselves in order to fill us with knowledge and the creative impulse, while spectacle merely panders, and flows in to fill the empty and undeveloped voids in our being.
One of the common traits of the narcissist is projecting their faults on to others. Since this person does not serve and love me, and I am without fault, perfect, they must have something wrong with them, or be out to get me.
The narcissistic tendency is not something particular to the wealthy, but is a cultural trait, expressed in many ways including an increase in self-absorption and incivility. Power expresses itself in the assertion of the will over others, and the cultivation of unrestrained personal power, the triumph of their will, is the lifeblood of the narcissist. And this is also why they tend to be rather antithetical to democracy.
It is the excess of the age, probably due to the circumstances of fortunate birth and an early childhood in which the young learned that greed is good, screwing everyone is acceptable business practice, that there is no law but their desires, and that most people are inferiors intended to be used by them. Too often parental approval, acceptance, the most basic love, is made contingent on the buy-in.
Jesse, Empire of the Exceptional, 1 October 2012
“There's a reason narcissists don't learn from mistakes and that's because they never get past the first step which is admitting that they made one. It's always an assistant's fault, an adviser's fault, a lawyer's fault. Ask them to account for a mistake any other way and they'll say, 'what mistake?”
Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door
Stocks continued to chop in a lackluster trade, burdened with concerns about an approaching recession and persistent inflation.
The Dollar strengthened.
Gold and silver continued to search for a bottom, but managed to finished off their lows.
Next week there will be a stock index option expiration.
Have a pleasant evening.
