Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Narcissist’s Opium: How Narcissists Use Fantasies to RULE

1. 00:02 Good afternoon everyone. For well over a decade, I’ve been describing narcissism as a kind of global distributed religion. A religion which involves a missionary, godlike narcissist, a false self. The narcissist is missionary because he’s trying to convert everyone into his or her
2. 00:26 religion. This religion also involves a human sacrifice. As a child, the narcissist sacrifices his true self to the mollocike godlike divinity or deity, the false self. It also involves worshiping victims. So, I’ve been describing narcissism as
3. 00:47 this newly emergent religion, starting off as a primitive version of religion in the narcissist’s early childhood and then he uses the shared fantasy to impose this religion on worshippers far and wide. But religion is only one form of shared
4. 01:09 fantasy of many. Shared fantasy, as you may recall, is the way the narcissist relates to other people. One other person or a collective, a family or a church, wherever the narcissist is, his best friend, his spouse, his intimate partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, you name
5. 01:28 it, wherever the narcissist is, he or she attempt to impose a shared fantasy on others. Now, as I said, the shirt fantasy has very powerful religious undertones and overtones. There’s a missionary activity. The narcissist perceives himself as a kind of deity or divinity.
6. 01:51 There is they’re worshiping victims, the fans, the followers and and so on so forth. But religion is only one way of pedalling the shared fantasy to others. Shared fantasies, generally speaking, are narratives. They’re stories. They’re like movies or theater plays or scripts.
7. 02:13 Shared nar shared fantasies and narratives that serve as both organizing principles and explanatory principles. In other words, the narcissist uses shared fantasies to structure his immediate and far environment. He uses shared fantasies to modulate and modify
8. 02:33 the behaviors of others within structures, social structures, socioultural structures. So social fantasies are very very reminiscent of ideologies. They include an element of interpolation as Louis also described. They tell other people what to think and what to do
9. 02:55 within rigid boundaries within hierarchies within rungs of ladders and and so on so forth. These are this is the organizing aspect of a shared fantasy. But the shared fantasy also has a hermeneutic as aspect in other dimension. In other words, shared
10. 03:13 fantasy explains things. A shared fantasy makes sense of life, imbuss life with meaning and purpose and direction. Put the two together, the organizing function and the explanatory power, and you begin to realize why shirt fantasies are uh very powerful,
11. 03:37 very hard to resist, very compelling, very attractive. Shared fantasies also are very reminiscent of organized religion. And so we’re beginning to see that narcissism as a religious movement is founded on fantasies that are shared between the narcissist and his so-called
12. 04:00 flock, his followers, his congregation, his the collective is embedded in other people. But there are many forms of shared fantasy. There is the overt religious shared fantasy where the narcissist plays a messianic rescuer savior role. But there are other shared fantasies and
13. 04:24 today I would like to mention a few of them. Race and meritocracy are two narratives used by hierarchies to entrench the elites. So elites, all kinds of elites, financial elites or financial economic elites, intellectual elites, political elites, elites generally
14. 04:48 create hierarchies. They are of course on top and there’s a bottom bottom. And in order to enforce these hierarchies, to entrench these hierarchies, to render these hierarchies irreversible, what the elites do, they create narratives. They create narratives that
15. 05:09 cater to the fantasies and dreams and hopes and wishes of the people at the bottom, not the people at the top. Because the people at the top have has already have everything they could ever want. They cater to the needs and dreams and hopes and fantasies and wishes of
16. 05:27 people at the bottom. Hierarchies therefore are coupled with narratives. And the narratives are machavelian in the sense that the main aim the main goal of the narratives is to keep people at the bottom docsile hypnotized selfdeceiving and in a state of constant aspiration
17. 05:53 and false hope. I mentioned race. Race is an example of such narrative. By virtue of belonging to the white so-called race, you are immediately and instantly superior to, for example, the so-called black race. By virtue of belong being a Brahmin in
18. 06:14 India, you are instantly superior to the Dalits. By virtue of being a Christian, you’re superior to the Jews, etc., etc. There’s no such thing as race, of course. It’s a constantly it’s a totally nonsensical non-biological invention of the 19 in in the 19th century. There’s
19. 06:34 no such thing as race biologically or otherwise. There’s there are skin colors obviously but not race. And yet race is a very powerful organizing principle. And even more so, it’s an explanatory narrative. It’s a story about your superiority and everyone else’s inferiority.
20. 06:56 Race is a narrative often leveraged, abused the news by narcissists to entrench themselves at the top and to rule everybody else. Consider meritocracy. Merritocracy appears to be egalitarian, exact opposite of Narcissism, elites and hierarchies. And yet meritocracy
21. 07:19 is the most pedicious and insidious narrative imaginable. Even more than race, meritocracy says that if you have innate talent or intelligence and you work hard enough, you can make it. That is not true. That is counterfactual. That’s a lie. Social mobility, social upward mobility
22. 07:45 is has been declining for decades and is very near zero. The main determinant of success in life is whether you’re born to rich or powerful parents. Nothing else honestly and some luck being at the right place at the right time. So meritocracy is a lie.
23. 08:05 It’s a storyried lie because it’s very appealing to the sense of inclusion and diversity and equity and equality. It’s a lie that hijacks the tropes of progressivism and liberalism. Metoritocracy is a story that we tell people at the bottom. A story that goes,
24. 08:31 you also can belong to us to the elites. It’s only up to you. Of course, meritocracy sets people up for failure because if you do fail to make it to the top, something is wrong with you. Not with the elites, not with the power structures, not with discrimination, not
25. 08:48 with bias, systemic or otherwise, not with misbehavior and corruption. None of this, not not with income inequality. None of this has anything to do with the outcomes of your life. the way your life turns out to be depends 100% of you. Goes the meritocratic lie.
26. 09:11 And so meritocracy and race are two examples of narratives that underly shared fantasies. The shared fantasy attendant upon meritocracy is known as capitalism and the shared fantasy attendant on race is known as racism. They’re founded on the twin pillars of
27. 09:31 grandiosity and entitlement. Elites create narratives which allow people to feel superior, enhance this their self-concept and and innate feeling that they somehow have have attained supremacy. So the narratives, the shared fantasies that narcissists leverage and use and impose
28. 09:58 in order to rise to the top, they are founded on grandiosity. The grandiosity of the non- elites, the grandio defenses, the narcissistic defenses of people at the bottom, people who who would never make it, failures, losers, or just people stuck in the middle.
29. 10:19 So this is the first element. The second element is entitlement. The narcissistic shared fantasies among which you can find religion and race, meritocracy, they broadcast a message of entitlement. Merritocracy says you’re entitled to be rich and famous and and powerful. Race
30. 10:45 says you’re entitled to be superior to other races. Entitlement and grandiosity are key clinical features of pathological narcissism. And in this sense, these narratives, these shared fantasies, religion included, race, megritocracy, they are highly narcissistic.
31. 11:08 And that’s why narcissists thrive when they make use of these narratives. Now narcissism itself pathological narcissism itself is a religion is a religion and it’s a secular religion distributed and it multinodal and it makes sense of religious tropes and religious um
32. 11:30 artifacts and religious thinking and rituals and ceremonies and so on. It’s a full-fledged religion by now. But this religion is often coupled with other narratives such as race, such as meritocracy. And so that we see a confluence of what some people call intersectionality.
33. 11:51 We see a confluence of these narratives. It’s very rare to find a pure narcissistic narrative. Usually the narrative contains strands and elements from multiple pieces of fiction. And so uh you can find Christianity which is also nationalistic also racist.
34. 12:15 You can find a meritocratic system which is based on race. You can find a meritocratic system which is based on religion. For example, the Puritans in the 17th century claimed that people who are rich are blessed by God. You see here a conflation of religion and maybecracy.
35. 12:35 So narcissists use narratives that keep people at the bottom peaceful, that give people at the bottom a false hope and an alleged ostensible trajectory to the top, which is a complete concoction, is completely counterfactual, not real. And so people at the bottom are stupid
36. 12:59 enough to buy into these narratives or maybe hopeless enough to buy these in this desperate enough. They’re desperate. So they buy into these narratives and it keeps them happy. It’s like being embedded in some kind of movie with a happy ending.
37. 13:15 And so if you believe in meritocracy and you don’t have two pennies to rub together, you don’t have food on the table, but you believe in meritocracy, you can lie to yourself that one day things will be different. one day you will be ultra rich, you will have a
38. 13:27 yucked and the beautiful girl. If you believe in race, you can convince yourself that even though you are uneducated, ignorant, idiot, um, impoverished nobody, you can convince yourself that you’re superior by virtue of being white. So these narratives
39. 13:50 cater to grandiose defenses or grandio cognitive distortions, entitlement and they provide a hopeful trajectory trajectory towards hope and this is these are the key elements in narcissistic fantasies. Now there are many other narratives which I’ll not go
40. 14:10 into today. Gender narratives, men and women, men are superior, women are inferior. Sexual orientation narratives, something is wrong with homosexuals. Thereby, therefore, they’re defective and maybe even malicious in some way. Ethnicity, you know, you can belong to
41. 14:29 the same alleged race. There’s no such thing as race, but you can belong to the same skin color and yet um consider some
42. 14:38 part of of the group as inferior. So for example, we had the Nazis and the Jews. They were both white. The their skin color was white and yet the Nazis considered the Jews to be an inferior and malevolent race. Uh academic accomplishments. If you are a professor
43. 14:57 like me, then by virtue of your irudition and learning, you’re superior to others and you can hold them in contempt, which I do abundantly. There’s a narrative of money. If you are rich means you are a genius. If you are rich means you are blessed, maybe by
44. 15:15 God. If you are rich, the universe smiles upon you. And if you’re rich, you’re exempt from laws, mores, conventions, and norms. These are all narcissistic narratives. They all have organizing powers. Rich people are at the top. The Nazis were at the top.
45. 15:34 Straight people are at the top. Men are on top. Learned people are more important than the object great unwashed masses of polo plebeians and so on. So narratives, narcissistic narratives generate hierarchy and what Wilkerson calls cast. Now the aim of these narratives,
46. 16:01 meritocracy included, the aim of these narratives is to fight off equity and true equality, including equality of opportunities. The idea of these narratives is to oify the existing hierarchy to cement the role and the position of the elites and of course to allow narcissists to
47. 16:27 blind everyone by the with the light to to blind them by the light to to lie to them in such an egregious manner that it would sound believable to provide a narrative which calms down the potentially revolutionary or rebell ious masses. So the narrative has is twofold. It’s a
48. 16:49 tranquilizer. It’s anxolytic. It reduces anxiety and fights off negative effects in the population like rage and envy and anger and hatred and so on. So that’s one function of the narrative. The mental or the psychological function. The second function of the narrative is
49. 17:09 to make sure that people do not rise to the top. This the space at the top is limited. People do not rise to the top. There’s not equity and not equality. The starting conditions in your life determine the ultimate outcomes. You are born to rich parents, you’re likely to
50. 17:28 end up even richer. You’re born to educated parents, you’re likely to end up educated. Period. It’s a hereditary transmission as Pikati and others have observed. So narcissistic narratives intend to rigidify, solidify, oify, and
51. 17:53 fossilize social reality because narcissists benefit from a lack of dynamics. Narcissists benefit from fantasy which supplants and replaces reality. Narcissists are are great at selling to the masses or to the nearest and dearest depends on the size of the
52. 18:14 audience. But they’re great at selling to the audience some kind of a paracosm, some kind of a fantastic space or story, some kind of pathological hope of malignant optimism. They’re great at this. Equal opportunities and upward social mobility are myths.
53. 18:37 Over decades, studies in social sciences, economics, sociology, other other branches of social sciences. Over decades, it has been demonstrated conclusively there’s no such thing as upward social mobility in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada.
54. 18:57 situation used to be a bit better in the Nordic countries, but even there it’s on the verge of vanishing. And there’s no such thing as equal opportunities. If you’re born to the right family, your opportunities instantly are not equal. There is no level playing field. It’s a lie.
55. 19:16 Consumerism, religion, both the divine type and secular ideologies, they are opium to the masses. Markx was right about this. All these narratives are atomizing. Their intention is to prevent cohesion among people at the bottom among the 99%. The aim, the main goal of these
56. 19:45 narratives is to impose a super structure to impose some kind of alternative reality, virtual reality, as I said, a paracosm that would prevent people from getting together and challenging the existing order. They are automizing narratives. They
57. 20:07 want to keep people separate and apart. And of course, one way to accomplish this is with technology. Our modern technologies, all of them, no exception, social media, multiverse, a metaverse, I’m sorry. Um, artificial intelligence, smartphones, you name it. All our modern
58. 20:26 technologies have two goals in mind. To divorce us from reality and to keep us apart from other people. They’re not social media. They’re asocial media. and they’re fast becoming antisocial media. The these technologies reflect the overriding narratives of the
59. 20:45 elites because they were created by the elites in academ. The elites created these technologies and and and then sold them on to the people and what they do they pit people against each other. They prevent solidarity and they divorce people from
60. 21:03 reality. They detach them. They render people um um less capable of gauging and evaluating reality properly. The imperiality testing, in short, they gaslight people. Empathy, sharing. They’re destroyed. They’re destroyed in these narratives. They are considered to some extent um
61. 21:28 counterproductive, self-defeating or self-destructive. And now some members of the elite come out openly against empathy, against sharing and against solidarity, social solidarity. At the extreme, these narratives encourage the culling of cohorts of population groups.
62. 21:50 Culling could be actual physical biological culling, eugenics, and culling could be non-biological. You can cull populations socially, for example, by preventing access to specific types of higher education or by um imposing higher taxation, a higher burden of
63. 22:12 taxes on on people who earn less and a lower burden of taxes on on multi-billionaires. That’s an example of social culling. So narcissism all always ends up benefiting a precious few at the top at the expense of absolutely everyone else at the at
64. 22:34 the bottom. But the genius of narcissism that it is really a form of religion exactly like religion. It convinces you you whose whose loss fuels the profits of the elite. It convinces you that your loss is merely a cost you are paying in order to progress upwards and become
65. 22:59 ultimately a member of the elite. That is the big lie of narcissism. You can make it too. It’s only up to you. And while you’re at it, you should feel superior to some other arbitrarily defined group of people. And you should feel entitled to what’s coming. What’s
66. 23:20 coming is only good. It is a drug, an opium, exactly as Marxist said. Not that I’m a Marxist, mind you, but it’s a drug. And it’s a drug sold by the greatest experts and purveyors of fantasy to have ever lived, narcissists.