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How do the slrpnk admins feel about potentially hosting a community that discusses the role of narcissism in social/economic/political/ecological issues? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by an_angerous_engineer@lemmy.ml to c/meta@slrpnk.net
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I've been studying and thinking about the intersection of psychology (particularly narcissism) and politics for a few years now. I have reason to believe that this particular psychological phenomenon may actually underpin many or all of the problems/crises that our species currently faces. It is a difficult topic to talk about, however, because the nature of narcissism defies most conventional ideas about human nature and the strategies that we should employ when trying to deal with people.

During recent interactions on the /c/anarchism community of this instance I was (pleasantly) surprised to find other people in the wild who are also interested in this topic and who are reaching some of the same conclusions that I am. That particular community doesn't seem to be well-suited for this sort of discussion, however. While anarchism is actually a pretty important part of the overall topic (it's basically the perfect antithesis of the ideology that emerges from narcissism, as well as an important part of the optimal counter-strategy), it is not the entire topic. Additionally, it seems that /c/anarchism is a bit under-moderated compared to what it would need to be to have such discussions? The most relevant post got a lot of bad-faith comments. Many of them questioned the premise of anarchism in the first place, which is both off-topic to the post, and kindof inappropriate for an anarchist community/instance in general.

Anyways, this new community would discuss the role that narcissism plays in the issues that we face in our world on a more societal scale rather than an interpersonal one as would be typical of discussions about narcissism, generally. The discussion will be pulling from multiple fields of study, including psychology, anthropology, neurology, and mathematics. (I am still working on what the name should be...)

I do have some moderation experience already, though it is in the context of a small, private Discord server. Moderating something as open as a Lemmy community will be new for me.

A big part of why I am going to the effort of making this (long) post is that I want to make sure that the admins of this instance are really OK with the topic of this community, and the possible consequences for hosting it. Specifically...

Narcissists really hate when people start recognizing them for what they really are and actively try to counter their manipulation and remove their power. The mere existence of this community will trigger them. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if problems start showing up in the comments of this very post. Depending on how popular this community gets, this could paint a target on slrpnk.net in general. I don't really know what the exact consequences of this would be, since, to the best of my knowledge, this sort of thing hasn't really been done before.

The topic is also a somewhat tricky one, as it comes uncomfortably close to some lines that reasonable people tend to draw between what they think of as acceptable/unacceptable behaviors. We'll arguably be advocating for discrimination against narcissists, and while the term 'narcissist' doesn't currently refer to an individual that would be recognized as having a personality disorder under current diagnostic criteria (the term is currently broader than the relevant criteria), there is ample evidence that it probably should (that is, the criteria should probably be broadened to match the term). That said, we're talking about a group that is defined by the patterns of abusive behavior that its members express, so the situation here is a little different than it is for, say, sexism, racism, or people suffering from depression or other kinds of mental health issues. Discriminating against people based on mental health issues is usually disallowed by blanket anti-bigotry rules, so I'd like to make sure that the admins understand how the existence of this community might strain the way that their instance rules are currently written if they agree to host it.

Despite these potential issues, this Lemmy instance seems to me to be well suited to host such a space, as I think the practical, prefigurative, anarchist philosophy of slrpnk.net is broadly compatible with the conclusions that I've been able to draw from my studies thus far.

Obviously, I'd have to make a new account on this instance in order to create/moderate such a community. That's fine. It may take me a moment to gather a couple of people to help moderate as well, and it may take a bit to construct a good introduction post. I've got plenty of stuff to write about for some initial content, though.

Lastly, assuming you guys are cool with this, are there any tips you can give me on moderating Lemmy communities? Anything I should know coming from a Discord moderation background?

P.S. On the off-chance that someone had seen the previous iteration of this post and is confused: I re-created this post because it didn't appear to be federating properly. I suspect this has something to do with the recent slrpnk outage. ~~I am hoping that re-posting will fix this.~~ EDIT: This does seem to have worked. I can see the post from the slrpnk instance directly now.

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[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago

I would be on board with that, but given our past conversations it wont surprise you.

I have some experience of moderation, I used to be one of the many moderator of /r/france the main french-speaking subreddit.

We’ll arguably be advocating for discrimination against narcissists

I think that sentence will trigger understandable reactions. The thing to realize is, most people are often already discriminating against narcissists when they fight against toxic behaviors, cultism, doxxing, trolling, etc. Safe spaces especially triggers them.

We often use labels like bigots or fascists for them, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not connected to a specific ideology but to a specific psychology (that tends to be attracted by some ideologies)

Anything I should know coming from a Discord moderation background?

People will call you too soft and too harsh and both will deeply feel you are on the side of their opponents (there is literally one subreddit about far-right people thinking /r/france is a communist cult and one with far-left people thinking it is a nazi den). It takes a toll on your mental health, take breaks.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

IDK... there are some very profilic (and partially even self-professed) narcissist on Lemmy that really like to stirr up drama to be in the center of attention. We had a few run ins with them before here. So yeah, I know what you are talking about, but what is that new community exactly supposed to achive?

Many of these people are apparently childhood trauma victims themselves and rather need professional help and not some online community vilifying them 🤷

(I am not trying to excuse their toxic behaviour, but to me it seems to be the best to just ignore them and remove their flame bait posts when they show up).

[–] an_angerous_engineer@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

So yeah, I know what you are talking about, but what is that new community exactly supposed to achive?

The central thesis or hypothesis, if you will, is that all of the issues that we are dealing with today (authoritarianism, late-stage capitalism, fascism, sexism, racism, systemic ecological destruction, the destruction of the concept of truth, etc...) are fundamentally rooted in narcissism. The point of the community is to explore this relationship, and take advantage of that perspective to discuss effective strategies for dealing with these problems (generally via dealing with the underlying cause - the narcissism itself). When you start casting the polycrisis through the lens of narcissism, a lot of the conventional ideas about how to address those issues fall apart (including many ideas that are common in anarchist circles).

I expect that the bulk of the content would be focused on analyzing the connection between the psychology of narcissism and various aspects of politics/economics in both historical and contemporary contexts. For example, one thing I expect that we would spend a lot of time discussing is exactly how authoritarian societies emerged from the egalitarian ones that were ubiquitous prior to the development of agriculture. We would also discuss things like how the dynamics of capitalism map really nicely to the transactional nature of narcissistic relationships, or how various elements of modern social etiquette practically seem to be designed to enable narcissistic abuse (e.g. Gossiping would pretty thoroughly defeat a lot of narcissistic "splitting behaviors", and yet it is often taboo).

Besides analysis, we would also discuss effective strategies for dealing with common problems in a way that is narcissistically-aware. Moderating communities, both real and virtual, would probably be one of the most common topics of discussion in this regard. Maintaining a space so that it is inclusive, especially one that is public, while also preventing abusive behavior is really challenging, and there are lots of subtle ways that things can go wrong that a lot of people overlook because they don't realize just how insidious bad actors can actually be. We can talk about more conventional direct-action strategy stuff too, and in a lot of ways I would expect those discussions to look a lot like similar discussions between anarchists that you've seen elsewhere. It's just that we'll be taking into account the fact that we have an actual psychological model for how the bad actors will really behave, and so we will be able to adapt our strategies accordingly.

I hope this helps you understand what I'm going for here. I'm not trying to make a hate-club or anything. I think there's genuine insight to be had here that could be very helpful for a lot of people.

[–] Donk@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

sounds like a high level class but i'll be interested to follow along and see where it goes. I'm hoping to join or set up a mutual aid group, so knowing behaviours to watch for and how to navigate them will likely prove useful.

[–] millie@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This seems pretty constructive to me. I know there are people who will say that confronting narcissism as narcissism isn't helpful, but I feel like that couldn't be further from the truth. As someone who's been affected by these patterns of behavior for decades, it's the realization of how the pattern works that's given me a way to defend against it. Narcissists tend to want to atomize their behavior in other people's eyes so that the patterns won't be seen. It's easier for them to deflect from a single incident if that's the only thing that's allowed to be on the table, but it's never about a single incident, it's about the pattern.

Deception and minimization are much simpler goals in a world where their victims aren't supposed to look at the past, or aren't supposed to draw conclusions from patterns of behavior. But when you do pay attention to the past and you do look for patterns and cycles, that's when you can see what's going on and defend yourself. That doesn't just apply to individual relationships, it applies to our societies. The entire capitalistic model is one of atomizing wrongdoing and denying responsibility in the face of capital.

I definitely think this could be a positive thing, and I don't think that's outweighed by the people who exhibit these patterns having the need to shut down conversation about them. If people come in to derail things or demonize people who are trying to figure out how to get out from under the very real harms caused by narcissistic abuse, that's what banning is for.

A huge amount of childhood trauma and abuse is enabled by people shying away from recognizing and calling out narcissistic patterns of behavior. If some of the people perpetrating the next iteration of that cycle have also suffered from abuse, that's not really an argument for letting the cycle continue.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I feel like focussing on narcissism is a bit of a red herring. Yes, these people exist and often thrive in capitalist societies, but they are not the main cause. I can see a certain interellation when narcissist thrive and that in turn pushing "regular" people also towards egoistic behaviour, but ultimatly the capitalist system works as intended and it isn't some hidden cabal of narcissists that created it.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, these people exist and often thrive in capitalist societies, but they are not the main cause

In most toxic management, in most companies with terrible ethics, you will find a narcissist at the root of the problem.

I am less sure than OP that capitalism is purely a narcissist system, but at the very least, it seems clear that a lof of the negative aspects of capitalism are caused by that psychological profile and it seems like it rewards them.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would rather say that it is a middle management issue in larger firms. Sure, the absentee owners might also be narcissists in some cases, but regardless of that it is very convenient for them to have an ethically challenged middle management and narcistisst are often exceptionally good at sucking up to the bosses.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

high management and middle management have different profile. I feel the Gervais principle captures their dynamics well.

Thing is that there are tons of intuitions and experiences about that phenomenon, and an existing but scarce scientific literature, and very little serious debate. It touches politics, work place, personal relationships, parenting (I mean, the support subreddit /r/raisedbynarcissists has 1M subscribers)

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, that is a funny read, but it clearly describes upper and lower middle-management and not the actual bosses / company owners. Those have their own issues i.e. mostly being almost entirely isolated from reality by generational wealth.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

The amount of psychopaths in higher management equal the amount in prisons: https://psychology.org.au/news/media_releases/13september2016/brooks

And according to someone I know who went into the highest echelon of a big international company, at some level, it is much more prevalent than that.

[–] an_angerous_engineer@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When I am talking about narcissism, I am talking about something much broader than NPD. The ICD 11 revised the whole section on personality disorders so that they are no longer separated into clusters (A, B, and C) and are now characterized on a per-individual basis by a combination of atomized descriptors. One of the major reasons for doing this was because there is a lot more overlap between them than the categorization of discrete disorders implied. The lack of empathy that characterizes narcissism was present in basically all of cluster B and frequently occurred with several disorders in clusters A and C.

Narcissism is way more common than you think. I estimate that they make up at least 1/3 of the population, and probably more like 1/2 (and exactly how I've arrived at these numbers is something I'd want to write about). Those "regular" people who are "pushed" into egotistic behavior? They're actually low-grade or covert narcs who are being given permission to be narcissistic by our culture.

The capitalist system does work as intended, but the reason that it is intended to work the way that it does is because it was designed by narcissists from the very beginning (another topic we'd be discussing, with sources), and it serves them very well. They weren't a hidden cabal, though, and the emergence of modern capitalism didn't happen overnight. The system gradually emerged piece by piece as various people tried to solve various problems (and it probably all started with the issue of distributing portions of tribute to one's lackeys).

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't think Adam Smith was a narcissist. At the time many of the novel capitalist ideas were an genuine improvement over feudalism.

Believing a third or even half of the population has narcissist tendencies seems odd to me and something I can not say for the people around me even though I am well aware of the issue and somewhat sensitized to it. Are you studying for an MBA by any chance? That would explain a selection bias in the people you meet 😅

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Adam Smith described an already existing system he observed and whom emergent properties he appreciated.

Believing a third or even half of the population has narcissist tendencies seems odd to me

It is actually just a matter of putting your threshold somewhere. Like every dimension of psychometrics, tests exists and will measure a spectrum. They will put people left or right of the average level of narcissism, so like in any other metrics, you can call half of the population "more narcissist than average". You can also split the spectrum in 3 equal part: selfless, normal, narcissist and you have a third of the population, or you can use the DSM definition of pathological narcissism disorder which only considers cases acute enough that they cause distress in the subject and prevent them to hold any job durably, which are the typical criteria for disorders, and with that they consider 6% of the US population has it.

It makes sense however to note that narcissists cause damage before reaching the pathology threshold and calling it a disorder. Toxic politicians, CEOs, conspiracy theorists pushers, have (approximately) functional lives and do not report suffering from their traits, it causes pain to others before it does to them. The matter of where the threshold is, is a worthy matter of debate and one could argue that this specific disorder makes the "subjective feeling of distress" criterion invalid.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am not a fan of having arbitrary and highly fluid definitions of pathological conditions as they lose all meaning that way. If you can massage the numbers to cover 50% of the population, then nothing stops you to go even further, and then we are in the territory of claiming that human nature is inherently egoistic (with some rare exceptions maybe).

And I don't see much point in having such pessimistic world views and they also don't fit to my personal experience 🤷

It is still worthwhile to look out for toxic behaviour pattern, but I don't think we should be chasing shadows and expecting bad intentions behind what most people do. Because that then just becomes a self fulfilling prophesy as others are quite sensitive to even unspoken accusations of bad faith.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago

I am too deeply disturbed by the malleability of psychological definitions. Especially as they describe an important phenomenon that we can observe. We need to have clearer definitions, and I don't really have an answer here, but this is one of the many important subjects to discuss in that domain!

One thing I am pretty sure of is that the "narcissistic personality disorder" does not capture the whole extent of the problem.

[–] wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We’ll arguably be advocating for discrimination against narcissists, and while the term ‘narcissist’ doesn’t currently refer to an individual that would be recognized as having a personality disorder under current diagnostic criteria (the term is currently broader than the relevant criteria), there is ample evidence that it probably should (that is, the criteria should probably be broadened to match the term). That said, we’re talking about a group that is defined by the patterns of abusive behavior that its members express

If you're going to vilify an entire group of people, do so based on their actual behaviours and not on the personality trait(s) that they share. I would view discrimination against narcissists (as defined by personality traits) as equally inappropriate as discrimination against homosexuals, autists, schizophrenics, and so on. That said, I'm not an admin, so I can't stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

[–] an_angerous_engineer@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you’re going to vilify an entire group of people, do so based on their actual behaviours and not on the personality trait(s) that they share.

We are villifying them based on their actual behaviors. It just so happens that when you look at the reasons for those behaviors, you see that it is caused by a personality type/disorder, and as such, naming the group that behaves badly in this way also essentially names the personality type/disorder. You simply cannot separate the two concepts, because they are causally/definitionally linked. As such, it is paradoxical to simultaneously condone discriminating against the behaviors and condemn discriminating against the personality type.

[–] wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago

I don't know enough to say whether the two are in fact definitionally linked other than by your own definition, but even if they are, it comes down to a matter of phrasing. "If someone's brain works this way then X" is different than "If someone tends to behave this way then X" in the realm of ethics. Whether there is any material difference is another matter. In any case, do what you want. It seems like an interesting topic.

[–] rainha_da_sucata@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I can see you're getting some push back, so I just want to propose a half-baked idea that maybe could help you in your endeavor: what if instead of focusing on narcissism in politics the community would be open to discussing different psychological aspects that clash or monopolize with current/historical systems?

Example1: autism and the general perceived inability to participate in society. I completely empathize with a mode of thinking in absolutes, which in turn leads to difficulties in navigating a system where sometimes people follow the law to the ts, sometimes bend and massage the truth out of things. (Extremely broad interpretation)

Example2: on conversations about ADHD people bring up how that might have been a feature in past societies, but no one really discuss how people with ADHD can adapt and use their advantages in today's world, or how could we shape today's world to make it inclusive to all neural divergences.

Granted, I'm no academic in the psychology field and I could be talking s*** for all I know, so I apologize in advance for that. I just feel like we miss on societal advances by not acknowledging all these new things we learned about human psychology in the aspect of our political systems.

Side note: have you seen this article? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago

Autists and ADHD do not harm society (usually it is society that harms them). Helping them integrate better do require some adaptation but it won't come at a huge price for non-autists or non-ADHD.

Narcissists damage society and usually integrate already very well with it. They don't want to change, either themselves or society, to lower the amount of damage.

[–] millie@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago

There is a fundamental difference between neurodivergence and narcissism. The solution is not to point the finger at neurodivergent people for the sake of some false both sides narrative.