Why Demanding Equality In All Things Makes Us Narcissists

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Why Demanding Equality In All Things Makes Us Narcissists
 
The individual, many believe, must be cared for in all things despite the cost to others (a narcissistic notion)—all in the name of equality.

By D.C. McAllister   
July 21, 2017
 
In the 2009 book “The Narcissism Epidemic,” Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell make a convincing case that America is becoming infected with narcissism. They say there’s a growing number of people who have either narcissistic traits or full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a trend that has been increasing across all demographics since the 1970s, if not before.

The authors point to various causes for this rise: weak parenting, focus on self-admiration and self-expression instead of others, less community involvement, celebrity worship, the impact of the Internet and social media, and excessive materialism bolstered by irresponsible spending.

The Root Cause of Narcissism?

While Twenge and Campbell give some helpful advice on how to push against the tide of narcissism, I found myself frustrated as I read the book. They explain the problem and list various causes, but something was missing from their analysis. Yes, parenting is pathetic. Yes, we’re materialistic—we’re now the Gim-Me Generation. Yes, we have a culture steeped in self. But why did this happen? The causes they list seem secondary.

Certainly, as the authors cite, there were movements (e.g., the human empowerment movement and child-centered parenting philosophies) in the 1960s and ’70s that helped create the Me Generation, as well as shifts in social mores and values. Allan Bloom in “Closing of the American Mind” argues that a relativistic educational system has “impoverished the souls of today’s students.” Nihilistic German philosophies certainly played a role.

But values don’t suddenly change. Books and movements don’t catch fire out of the blue. Aberrant philosophies don’t instantly become acceptable. Something makes them palatable and attractive to people. What started the dominoes tumbling?

To find the answer, I decided to look further into America’s history—past the 1970s, past the 1920s, past the progressive era, and back to the beginning. There, among the building blocks of our nation, I found the answer. I discovered the rotten seed that has grown into American narcissism. It was there from our birth, festering. It’s part of us, something essential to being American.

The Problem of Equality

The cause of our narcissism is equality. Not equality before the law, where everyone is bound by the same legal code. That is a fundamental right and necessary for justice, freedom, and happiness in a democracy. I’m referring to equality of conditions—our economic well-being and social status, the material aspects of equality Europeans experienced when they broke from the caste system of their homeland, shedding aristocracy and an impenetrable class structure that denied them access to material wealth and limitless possibilities.

They were set free to achieve, accomplish, and accumulate according to their dreams. The servant had no master. The street sweeper could become a merchant. The poor could become rich. Families and groups didn’t define the individual or his future. All were equal.

The breakdown of the laws that stood in the way of opportunity was revolutionary, and we never want to return to those oppressive times. Living one’s dreams is part of being human, American, and free. Equality gave birth to joy and hope, creating a new way of living the world had never known. The individual could be his authentic self without being defined or confined by “others.”

But equality, like freedom, has its dark side. Just as too much freedom leads to libertinism, anarchy, and destruction, equality (or the expectation of equality) leads to entitlement, self-centeredness, isolation, idealism of human perfectibility and progress, autonomous individualism, materialism, and ultimately despotism.

As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “One must recognize that equality, which introduces great goods into the world, nevertheless suggests to men very dangerous instincts. . . . it tends to isolate them from one another and to bring each of them to be occupied with himself alone. It opens their souls excessively to the love of material enjoyments.” It makes him a narcissist.

We Kept the Evil at Bay, for a Time

In the beginning of our nation and for many years after, these potential evils were kept under control by an army of values and structures: political freedom, civic and political associations, family, media that formed connections between people, self-interest that led people to help others because they found it beneficial, and most important, religion.

Only the most perceptive of people living in those formative years understood the dangers of equality to the development of our nation and the necessity of these values to its health, but even they did not foresee how detached we would become from them. They believed the evils that lurked around the bends of America’s landscape would never be unleashed because its traditional values were unshakeable bulwarks and the equilibrium of our democratic ideals would remain steadfast.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Our values loosened under equality’s weighty temptations, and the evils of equality gradually broke free. The decline of these values, at times a trickle and at other times a flood, gave rise to a natural narcissism that we now see increasing at an alarming rate.

America’s Obsession With Equality

In Tocqueville’s work “Democracy in America,” which was published in 1835, he explains the negative effects of equality and how people prefer it even to their own freedom. “Democratic peoples have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves they seek it, they love it, and they will see themselves parted from it only with sorrow. But for equality they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion; they want equality in freedom, and, if they cannot get it, they still want it in slavery. They will tolerate poverty, enslavement, barbarism, but they will not tolerate aristocracy.”

We see more than enough evidence of this today. Equality is America’s golden calf, and freedom is its burning sacrifice: The rise of socialism on American soil, a high percentage of millennials who reject principles of liberty, the ardent following of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the justification for wealth redistribution and socialized programs like Obamacare—all are proof of our growing worship of equality.

Pervasive in our nation today is a hunger for material well-being, even if it’s supplied by the government. The individual, it’s believed, must be cared for in all things despite the cost to others (a narcissistic notion)—all in the name of equality. Many people think, “What is freedom if I’m not taken care of by the government? What does liberty matter when others have more opportunities and greater wealth than I have?”

This attitude is not a disdain for freedom, but a hatred of inequality. It’s perceived as injustice, and injustice cuts us to the core. Material “injustices” are so readily apparent to us that they become more important than freedom. We see every day whether someone has a bigger house, a better car, greater access to services. We don’t as easily see our freedoms being siphoned away by a growing government that promises equality in exchange for our servitude.

Equality Focuses On the Self

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http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/21/demanding-equality-things-makes-us-narcissists/