All this advice by dating coaches and business coaches is malignant and pernicious and toxic. The environment generally online is toxic. I am hard pressed to think of a single major channel which doesn’t kind of propagate toxicity.

So be genuine. Be authentic. Be you.

Being you means recognizing your limitations, your shortcomings, your failures, your deficiencies, your deficits, your defeats, and your failures. It’s part of being you. That would negate grandiosity. Entitlement.

Definitely be assertive. Definitely enforce boundaries. But make it commensurate with your contribution or with your ability to contribute. Actual contribution or ability to contribute. Have a close correspondence between what you ask others to do and what you’re willing or able to do for them. Always bear this in mind.

And then entitlement will be gone.

Exploitativeness. Never think without giving. It’s very simple.

So, the hallmarks of narcissism are really not that difficult to recognize. Selfishness. Charitableness. Altruism. Putting yourself in other people’s shoes.

And then maybe moderating aggressive reactions. Or that happens a lot online.

Owning up to everything you do and everything you say. Possibly, for example, by not having an anonymous pseudonym online but using your full name. That’s a great step towards owning what you’re doing.

So, fight back against the culture of narcissism, for example, in social media. You can decide to not be a narcissist as an individual. You can make this decision. It’s easy to identify narcissism in yourself and in others. Don’t try to modify others. Don’t become a preacher. Don’t hector. Don’t be a guru.

Work on yourself. Just work on yourself. And by example, probably you’ll influence others. That’s on the individual level.

Each one of us should do this. I call it nothingness.

The principle of nothingness. Except that essentially you should measure yourself compared to your own yardstick. You should be the fountain of assuredness and certainty. Never form yourself. Never mold yourself to accord with or to conform with or to correspond to social expectations, roles, and common behavior. Just have a center. Have a center of gravity. Have a spine. Have an identity and adhere to them.

In all your daily, and don’t be grandiose in the sense that don’t pursue these lofty goals and huge projects. I’m talking about being a narcissist when you make coffee. Being a narcissist when you go to the toilet. Being a narcissist when you watch television. I mean, in the tiniest details of daily life, you can begin to eradicate your narcissism, your pathological narcissism.

And you need to begin to work with the tiniest details. You need to break down every action to numerous sub-actions. And then break these as well. And cater to the molecules and atoms of your life. Not to the big picture. Big picture is a narcissistic phrase. You need to reduce yourself to nothing. But in a good sense, it is from this nothing, this kernel, that you can grow to become you.

Don’t try to be someone. Don’t try to be something. Try to be you.

It’s your only chance because no one knows you better than you. This is on the individual level.

On the societal level, it’s much more complex and then much more pessimistic.

On the individual level, I’m optimistic actually. And of course, if nothingness, as I call it, you don’t need to call it nothingness.

If this anti-narcissistic movement spreads, like for example, environmentalism had spread. If this anti-narcissism movement spread from one individual to another by way of anti-narcissistic contagion. And then we have three billion people who are committed to anti-narcissism. Of course, it will have an impact on society and its institutions. So it’s a grassroots thing.

You don’t think big. You don’t think it’s institutional. It’s too late for this. Our civilization is utterly, utterly permeated by narcissism and psychopathy. There is no way to reform it from the top. There’s no incentive to reform it from the top because psychopaths and narcissists rise to the top. They wouldn’t reform the system.

Are you kidding me? Why would they?

You need to put pressure on them the same way that various movements are putting pressure.

Regrettably, there’s been a spate of recent studies in Canada, in France, in Israel, in other places, a spate of recent studies that show that this kind of social justice movement and transformative movements and intersectional movements and rights movements lately, they’re hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths.

Narcissists and psychopaths are taking over these movements and they are leveraging these movements as a form of virtual signaling. It’s about signaling. It’s not about the content. It shows the equivalent of likes in Facebook.

And that’s bad news. But it should be if we want to free the world of narcissism. The true pandemic, by the way, will come and go. Narcissism is with us.

And by the way, a lot of what’s happening with narcissism is actually narcissism. So if we want to get rid of narcissism, we need to start at home when we make coffee.

That’s where we need to start. We need to start at home when we talk to our spouse, interact with our child, and get our neighbor something that she needs. That’s where we start with anti-narcissism.

And as narcissism has been contagious, anti-narcissism is bound to be contagious because it creates a much more pleasant environment to live in. And maybe it will eliminate the need to escape reality altogether.

So there’s hope in this in individuals becoming anti-narcissistic, to expect society and institutions, what’s left of the institution, because no institutions are left really. There’s nobody there. There’s no family. There’s no community. There’s no neighborhood. There’s nothing left. Nothing, by the way, not only in the United States, China, you name it, it’s all gone. We’re alone. We’re alone in this.

So to rebuild institutions, it must be from scratch. It is the first time in human history, first time in human history, that we are alone in the Black Death in the 14th century. The Black Death has had decimated between one third and one half of the population of Europe and probably killed 100 million Chinese as well. We don’t know. It was the greatest conflagration and calamity in human history.

But people had institutions to revert to. They had the church. They had the family. They had the local gentry. They had the aristocracy. They had the monarchy. It was much easier because they had somewhere to turn to. They had support networks. They could revert and refer to other human beings.

Today, we are so atomized. We are alone, completely alone. We are left with no support networks, no safety nets. This is horrible. And it’s the first time in human history this has happened.

And so we need not only to embark on a movement of anti-narcissism on the individual level, but we need to recreate society literally from scratch.

We may not end up with the same institutions. For example, maybe marriage and family will disappear as an institution. We may end up not with the same institutions, but we damn well need institutions of one type or another. We need them and we don’t have them.

Creating functioning institutions is number one priority for any anti-narcissistic movement. Narcissism is the individual malignant assertion of oneself in the face of an institutional void.

We empower ourselves because we can’t derive power from others anymore. Institutions are ways to channel collective empowerment, to accomplish collective goals.

So when you are embedded in an institution, for example, in a functioning family, you don’t need to be a narcissist because you get what you need. Your needs are met.

But if you’re in an institutional void, it’s everyone for himself. You become selfish, you become dissipatic. It’s a jungle out there. It’s fake until you make it because you have to survive somehow.

Rebuilding institutions is a key to transforming ourselves from narcissistic to anti-narcissistic society. It’s a key.

And that is another element of what I call nothingness.

Because to rebuild an institution, you need to give up on this fake self-empowerment. You need to let go. You need to transfer some of your power to the institution. You need to pull your power with others.

Relationships are about compromise. Relationships are about loss. Loss of some autonomy, loss of some power. Living together is an experience of enlarging yourself through diminishing yourself.

When you’re in a relationship, you first diminish yourself. But with a sure knowledge that your self-diminishment will lead to a larger whole, it is this crucial step of self-diminishment that must be done on the individual level. And it’s not easy because people feel fake empowerment through, for example, social media.

If you have a million followers, why would you diminish yourself? But it’s fake, of course. These followers are fake. They’re avatars. It’s make-believe. It’s not real. It’s not real in any way, shape, or form. It’s not real. Dating online. Tinder. It’s not real. It looks real. It’s not real. Anyone who has ever been on Tinder would tell you it’s not real.

Even if it ends in a meeting, even if it ends with a one-light stand or even a marriage or a relationship, the beginning was not real. It’s not real.

So we need to rebuild reality.

But there is no way to rebuild reality before we diminish ourselves, before we give up these fake powers, our fantasy.

We need to transition from fantasy where we are omnipotent and omniscient, and we need to transition from fantasy to reality.

Well, we are humbled. Reality humbles us, limits us, constrains us, forces us to compromise.

And this is the transition people find very difficult.

Because you see, fake empowerment is misinterpreted by the brain as real empowerment.

Dopamine reacts the same to pornography as to real sex.

Consequently, statistics show that the majority of young people prefer pornography to real sex.

Dating among people aged 25 and younger, dating, actual dating, face-to-face, smell-to-smell, taste-to-taste, body-to-body, sex, dating had declined 56% among people under age 25, Twenge and Campbell studies. And sex had declined dramatically. The number of sexual partners among the young is down, we think, around 30% according to studies.

And if you define sex more rigorously, close to two-thirds of young people never had sex. That’s bad. A lot of that can be attributed to technology. To pornography. Pornography is a form of fake reality.

But our minds, our minds, our brain, is not built to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Not built to do this.

That’s why people kill in the name of religion. It’s a fantasy, but they’re killing it. I mean, there are real life consequences to fantasy because our brain misinterprets fantasy as real life.

So pornography is a full substitute to sex. Let it be clear. It’s not second best. It’s not fake sex. It is sex. Full substitute. People don’t feel the need to date and so on.

Among the young, I told you, about two-thirds are sexless. This is shocking, absolutely shocking. It’s not that I’m advocating for one-night stands, but this level of disconnect is terrifying. There’s no other word to describe it.

Yeah. It is horrific to think about that they may never have that connection if they are so disconnected from one another.

But being connected, we have two other findings, if we mentioned sex. We have two other findings.

For example, we find that when youngsters do get together, finally, rarely, in some countries, never, like Japan. But when they do get together, they’re trying to implement techniques that they have seen in pornography. So the sex becomes very impersonal, very objectified, violent, violent, literally violent, aggressive. There are many, many, many cases of injuries and so on. So even the sex is horrible and that leads to withdrawal, sex aversion among the young.

There’s a huge phenomenon of sexual aversion among women, young women. The dynamics are bad because we are conflating and confusing fantasy with reality. Our brains are not built to tell the difference.

We need to exit. We need to have an exit movement. We need to exit.

We need laws that will limit the use of social media to a few hours a day, to, I don’t know, absolutely forbid it under a certain age when the brain is still forming and so on. We need laws to regulate pornography. We need to take action, absolutely. The internet is sick and sickening people and had a very deleterious effect on society. And I’m not an old cotcher. I’m old, but I’m not an old cotcher.

It’s not that I’m one of these typical old men who, you know, everything is bad in the young generations. No, these are regrettably facts.

They’re based on studies. Many of these studies are conducted by 20 years old and 30 years old. It’s not age really. It’s not age-appropriate science, you know? This is science. This is absolutely science.

We know, for example, it’s a fact, documented fact that people who use social media, the rates of depression are three times higher and the rates of anxiety are five times higher. That’s a fact. People who use social media commit suicide 54% more often. That’s a fact.

It’s not vacuum independent. It’s not 60-year-old, okay, boomer. It’s a fact. It’s a fact.

Social media is killing us, literally. And among young women, the rate of suicide is skyrocketing. If they use social media, not among the group that does not use social media.

We have control groups. Do you think, I mean, I can’t imagine logging on to Facebook 10 years from now. Hopefully not. Do you think social media will eventually trend away? No. It caters to very, no, it caters to very cleverly caters to the twin psychological needs that I’ve mentioned.

The escape from reality and the illusion of power or self-empowerment. It’s very cleverly and cunningly and I could safely say malevolently constructed. It was with this in mind that they had constructed the softness, conditioning and so on. It’s really up to the individual, the burdens on the individual to set the boundaries and limitations with social media.

It’s an addiction. It’s difficult. It’s like you would say to an alcoholic, you know, please stop drinking. It’s an addiction. It rewires the brain. It’s an addiction. It caters to the dopamine pathway and so on.

I lecture on neuroscience in various places. A medical doctor, it’s up with the brain. It’s a huge problem.

And so we need to intervene via regulation. We need to impose restrictions not only on social media, but on social media, for example, video gaming online, MMOGs, the big video games, multiplayer video games. That’s an entire environment on its own.

People, this has effects in real life. People kill each other in real life, steal from each other in real life in order to participate in the multiplayer video games. So there are various kingdoms, various environments, and they’re all escapist because people can’t take reality anymore. It’s way too much. It’s way too much.

Yes. I think you gave a nice summary with regards to what we can do as an individual and not stress so much about the society, what we can’t change, but just start more in our home and with ourself, I think is the best way to go.

Make your own coffee, make your coffee authentically. Just do the smallest thing as you.

Because amazingly, when we do anything in today’s world, we reverberate and resonate with media images.

When we dress, unconsciously, we retrieve media images of women dressing. When we make coffee, it resonates immediately with advertising. On the advertisement, people make coffee. We don’t leave our lives anymore. We act. It’s all acting.

So when we make coffee, we conform to the images of making coffee in advertising, in popular movies, online maybe. We mold ourselves to act.

And this is not my observation. This is observation by two French geniuses. One was Paul Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre, who said that when a waiter works in a restaurant, he is not himself. He is acting the role of a waiter. And he is acting the role of a waiter because he had observed other people observed other waiters in movies. He read about them in books. And so he’s imitating a waiter as he appears in mass media.

And there was another guy, Guillemot, he wrote a very difficult to read book, but amazing book called The Society of the Spectacle. He wrote it in 1968. He says, society is going to become a spectacle. And all of us are going to become actors. And of course, Shakespeare preceded him. We are all actors. But it’s gone too far.

Because when Anthony Hopkins acts, there is Anthony Hopkins and the character. But we disappeared. Only the characters are left behind.

We need to recoup and regain ourselves. Take ourselves back from the characters and discard the characters.

If you make coffee, make it authentically. Make sure it’s you who is making the coffee and not the gorgeous blonde in yesterday’s advertising. Very good. Thank you, Sam. This has been just a delight to talk to you. Always learn something new. If you guys again are new to Sam, he’s all over the internet. He has Facebook, he has Twitter, he has Instagram. I’m wondering if you’re going to get TikTok. No. That’s my red line. That’s my limit. I don’t dance well. Very good. So thank you guys for watching. And if you enjoyed this video, please leave a comment below. I would love to hear your feedback and hit the like button as well as the subscribe button. Thank you for having me. Thank you. And I apologize if I monopolized the conversation. No, it was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I’m going to log out now and wish you all the best. You too. Bye-bye.