What's not to self-love?

[imomus]

Am I a narcissist? The question itself is self-indulgent and self-absorbed, but I can't help asking it. Maybe my six years demanding your daily attention here at Click Opera have been nothing but "digital narcissism", a daily seduction, an attempt to put myself at the centre of the world, to spin myself into every story, to make myself the universal prism, the central aleph, the keystone in a grand facade. Has the motif behind every story (and almost thirty years of records, for that matter) really been "me, me, me"?



I think it's clear that I am a narcissist -- God knows, I love and believe in myself strongly enough -- but I'd say I'm also rather guilty about it. I'd say I diffuse my self-love out into so many other things that it becomes acceptable. It's not sticky and repulsive any more, as immoderate self-love tends to be.

Or does it? According to an article on PsyBlog, Why we love narcissists (at first), "despite being self-absorbed, arrogant, entitled and exploitative, narcissists are also fascinating... we are strangely drawn to their self-centred personalities, their dominance and their hostility, their sensitivity and their despair, at least for a while."

The article reports an experiment by social psychologist Mitja Back which found that narcissists make a good first impression because they look, sound and move better. They use charming facial expressions, have a more confident speaking tone, wear more fashionable clothes, have trendier haircuts and are funnier.

Wow, what's not to self-love? Narcissists sound like attractive hipsters! They must get laid a lot!



If they do -- and surely they do -- their relationships don't last long, Back found. Weirdly enough, it's the narcissist-hipster's entitlement and exploitative abilities which lure people in initially: "participants liked narcissists' sense of entitlement most -- of the four aspects of narcissism they studied (leadership/authority, self-admiration/self-absorption, arrogance/superiority and entitlement/exploitativeness) it was the last of these that most predicted liking". However, "narcissists are usually soon found out and shunned since few people will put up with a self-absorbed, authoritarian, arrogant, exploitative friend".

At this point my picture of the narcissist -- with his trendy haircut and funny comments -- became the image of a musician on tour, getting laid every night but exhausting sympathy just in time to move on to the next concert in the next town. But the digital dandy could fit the bill just as well: instead of sticking around long enough for real people to get the message that there's no place in the dandy's heart for anyone but himself, he can simply display himself digitally in the web's shop window.

"Behaving selfishly seems to bring them a rush of admiration which they get addicted to, while devaluing others when the inevitable rejection comes, covering it up by searching out new people to worship them. The reason narcissists fail to spot this cycle may well be that friends and partners never hang around long enough to tell them in such a way that they actually believe it and want to do something about it," the article concludes.

That almost makes it sound like narcissism is being made into a "cycle of abuse", a "clinical condition requiring treatment", and even a "disease". And it might well be a facet of the narcissism of psychologists that they see themselves as the universal prism, the central aleph, the see-all and cure-all. Do scientists have a grudge against artists? Do they want us to be as boring as them? It's certainly understandable that these science types would prefer to vest their own value in something other than cool clothes, immediate charm, and a nice line in chat-up patter.



So, therapy for narcissists. Would it remove their charm and attractiveness, or only their own exploitation and manipulation of it to seduce the easily-impressed? Would the trendy haircut, the nice voice, the funny remarks, vanish after a course of antibiotics? Would the narcissist become one of those English self-deprecators who proudly proclaims his complete inadequacy, stupidity and laziness at every opportunity (surely a kind of "inverted narcissism" even more egregious than the overt kind, since it often comes with a refusal to improve)?

Attacks on narcissists disturb me just as attacks on hipsters do. After reading the PsyBlog piece -- to get the astringent flavour of crushed aspirin out of my mouth -- I watched a lot of Prince videos: Kiss, Sexy MF, Alphabet Street, Cream. You can only watch them on dodgy offshore servers, because either Prince or the media moguls who own his material slap suits on anyone showing them (and I don't mean padded-shouldered, wasp-waisted numbers with peep-holes for chest hair).

The narcissism levels in the Prince vids were off the meter, way beyond the red. I loved them. I imagined that if I'd been born a girl (Sheena Easton, for instance) I'd willingly have served my time as a love-slave in the pimp-imp's harem. The idea of a "normal" Prince cured of his scandalous self-love... well, it's just plain fugly.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Conversely, however, you could be highlighting the flaw of narcissism. You don't want to "be a blogger at 50" but for writing centred on "knowledge/control of the world" it would make no difference what age that writer was. Your disappearance could be a reminder that "blogger" is best detatched, unlinked with self-lover / flirter / social-networker, or any element of wanting people to admire you.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I'm very suspicious of the idea of disembodied, disinterested knowledge. This is an arts / sciences divide, CP Snow's "two cultures". You can see the rift in this entry, where I berate psychologists for their criticisms of narcissists, and imply that this is a form of narcissism in itself (love me for my disinteredness, baby!). That's an arts type looking at a science type and seeing his own motivations concealed beneath a carapace of "objectivity".

The kind of blogging I do has to be based in personal obsession, in spats and rivalry, in a kind of light, oblique but perpetual autobiography. There has to be a subject for all this data to make any sort of situated sense, and that subject has to be seen to have a body, clothes, a way to wear those clothes, and so on. As soon as I get tugged out of that embodied, situated world I get bored and anxious and mistrustful. I want to know always who's speaking, how old they are, what culture they were raised in, what their vested interests are, and so on. I do think pictures supply some of this background. I find the rational-enlightened taboo on pictures as curious as the religious-superstitious one it replaces but never quite displaces.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Very interesting microcosm of the syndrome I'm describing: the status of Anons on this blog. For me, the Anon is suspicious because I can't see what s/he looks like or what life his/her comment is rooted in. For the Anons (or some of them), I'm the suspicious one, because my comments are far too obviously rooted in an ego, a persona. The Anon's habitual mode of attack is therefore ad hominem, but since it comes from -- apparently -- no-one it could also be described as ab nemo.

[(Anonymous)]

On the other hand, you must like the contributions the Anons make on your blog, because you allow them to post and more often than not respond as well. In fact, I'd say that although the Anons supply most of the ad hominem invective, they also supply most of the interesting argument and intellectual grappling with your ideas. I suspect your problem with the Anons, in so far as you have one, is less that you can't situate them, and more that as a narcissist, you simply can't imagine why anyone would want to post something anonymously, for God's sake!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, yes, what's wrong with them?

[(Anonymous)]

The anons contribute most of the interesting material essentially because who in fuck wants to be on livejournal? Not even Momus anymore.

[youwhowereborn.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this is a generational thing. I notice it more in baby boomers (and you would be a tail-end boomer or elder Gen Xer in my mind) who are involved in arts and culture (profs, artists, media personalities) than in my generation (somewhere between X and Y). They seem more concerned with being able to "characterize" the reader, the listener, the audience member. They get annoyed if you don't give them enough of yourself to work with. When I was younger, I used to appreciate and embrace this "character-driven" approach to interpersonal relations. Over time, I lost faith in its value and power. I think what disappointed me was the feeling that "character" is not enough, that I had to offer more utilitarian or tailored value to people, sometimes to the point of total self-effacement. So for some time I've been torn, stuck in between. The inverted narcissist, perhaps. I am on the verge of deciding that I can't keep going that way, and need to just accept that I possess a certain amount of self-involvement, instead of trying to become a different, less self-interested person that I would consider "better" than me.

Your narcissism, such as it is, is the basis of your power to support yourself financially. You never traded self-involvement for being just a skill set for hire. You could probably have continued in music as a producer or engineer or instrumentalist, or made a living doing less personality-driven journalism. In fact, I might even have preferred that Momus to the one who traded one platform/forum (records) for another (blogging, conceptual art). But so be it. You have a lot to be proud of and pleased with, having been rather true to yourself right up to the present moment.

[(Anonymous)]

part of the new left is seeing people as just that, instead of labels. (this is also a post-identity politics sentiment, as well, not surprisingly.)

[(Anonymous)]

funny, you're always railing against identity politics, but can't seem to get past it and see people as simply human -- well, digihuman, at least.