Narcissism: Social Malaise Affects Individuals (with Psychologist and Biologist Marcia Maia)

Summary

Healthy narcissism is a foundational element of mental health—regulating self-worth, identity, and functioning—while the speaker argued that reality testing should be added as a core criterion to distinguish health from shared or delusional fantasies. The discussion warned that political correctness, the glamorization/denial of mental illness, and social media’s business model encourage addictive shared fantasies and hive minds that amplify envy, anger, and exclusion, eroding institutions and interpersonal belonging. The guest argued we are amid a major narrative transition (from reality-based to fantasy-based social organization) that is fragmenting society, increasing atomization and risk, and may be effectively irreversible once fully entrenched. Narcissism: Social Malaise Affects Individuals (with Psychologist and Biologist Marcia Maia)

it's, Meaning, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin Summaries

December 24, 2025

Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Narcissism: Social Malaise Affects Individuals (with Psychologist and Biologist Marcia Maia)

00:00 You ready? >> Go. >> Professor, uh, people are aware of the importance of healthy narcissism. Are they really? >> Narcissism uh has acquired a bad rep, a bad reputation. So people confuse healthy with unhealthy. And many people say there’s no such thing as healthy
00:26 narcissism. So on and so forth. Healthy narcissism is uh according to many scholars starting with Freud and much later is probably the the the most important foundational cornerstone of mental health. Ironically, healthy narcissism helps us to form a self-concept
00:50 which is highly regulated and stable. Healthy narcissism regulates our sense of selfworth. Healthy narcissism is at the core of our self-esteem and self-confidence. Healthy narcissism provide us with the ability to distinguish the external world from the
01:08 internal one. Healthy narcissism um redirects our sexual energy uh so that it is invested in other people object libido as it used to be called rather than narcissistic libido and so on so forth. Without healthy narcissism, uh there would be a major problem.
01:30 Indeed, we have several mental illnesses where healthy narcissism is either missing or has mutated somehow into a pathological form. Narcissism, by the way, is a trait and all people have the trait of narcissism. It’s a universal trait. Everyone has the
01:51 trait of narcissism and like all traits, it’s hereditary. It is genetic. This the narcissism trait is indeed genetic, hereditary. And so um the trait of narcissism is almost synonymous with the formation of identity and self. The ability to interact with with other people from a
02:19 safe internalized secure base, from a safe position regarding oneself. When you have healthy narcissism, you have a stable view of who you are, where you end, and the world begins. What is happening inside your kingdom, so to speak, within your boundaries, what is
02:35 happening. You’re able to regulate your sense of continuity, the the self-p perception as continuous, which is at the core of self, the construct of self. In short, there is no mental health without healthy narcissism. It’s completely impossible.
02:55 >> It’s this is in accordance with the um World Health Organization slogan. There is no health without mental health. And this is a very important thing because what we see nowadays it’s an increasing of this perception of people that the mental illness people are dangerous and
03:21 they have to be segregated from the uh society. And so in this sense, how can we explain to your viewers for people in general what is normal? >> We should not confuse normal with healthy. Normal as the name implies is a statistical measure. >> Yes,
03:50 >> it’s how many people conform to a specific trait, specific behavior and so on. And normaly is culture bound. It depends on historical context, social uh environment, specific culture, expectations, mores, conventions, norms, beliefs, values. In other words, normaly
04:14 is a social construct, not a psychological concern. However, healthy is a psychological concern. When we say that someone is mentally healthy today, we apply two criteria. I think there should be a third one. The two criteria that are universally accepted in the
04:33 profession are is the person egoist. Is the person feeling happy or content with who they are? Are they feeling good with themselves? Do they accept themselves? And so on. So egoonyy is the first criterion for health, mental health and the second criteria is functionality. Is
04:54 the person functional in a variety of settings at home in the family uh workplace etc etc. Today we say that if
05:05 a person is egoous if the person is happy with who they are and they are functional they’re mentally healthy. I think there’s a third missing criterion which should be added and that is reality testing. >> Yes. >> Because a person can be egoous and functional and yet be completely
05:24 divorced from reality. For example, they are high functioning psychotics. >> And these kind of psychotics are very happy with who they are especially if they are grandio psychotics. think you if you think Jesus or Napoleon makes you very happy. So they fulfill the first
05:44 criterion they fulfill the second criterion because most psychosis most psychosis or psychotic disorders are intermittent. They’re not all the time. You see you have you have attacks. Yeah. >> So in between attacks they’re perfectly functional. They have jobs, they have
06:00 families and so on so forth. So theoretically we should say that people with psychotic disorders are okay. We don’t need intervention. We don’t need medication. on it. So why do we intervene? Because they lack reality testing. They they have a severe problem
06:13 telling apart the internal universe from the external universe. This is a psychological mechanism known as hyperreflexivity. They’re un they they extend their self onto the world. They consume the world into the self. So this is a major problem. I think we should add this
06:33 criteria. Anyone who is divorced from reality, even if they are happy with it, even if they love it, even if they want it and they’re fully functional, we should intervene because when you’re divorced from reality, this creates two problems. The first problem is a
06:51 decrease in self-efficacy in your ability to secure favorable outcomes from the environment. And the second problem, you are very likely to harm other people. very likely >> for example by imposing your fantasies on other people or by acting in ways
07:08 which are divorced from reality and endanger other people or damage them somehow. So this absolutely must be a mental health criterion and today it’s not which I think is a serious mistake. I think the reason it is not is political because if we were to include this in
07:27 the definition of what is mentally healthy, we would pathize religious people. >> Simple. >> Yes. >> Because religion religion is a delusional disorder. So if we were to say that reality testing is one of the criteria for mental health, we would be
07:44 forced to say ipso immediately that religious people are mentally ill because they’re divorced from reality. >> It’s an escape. >> It’s not an escape. It’s a political consideration there. They they they say they avoid this because the minute you
08:00 start to say that reality testing is crucial, you come across many problems in religion, in politics, in you know it creates many social problems. So they avoid this. They avoid this criterion. Religion is very influential. There’s a lot of money there, a lot of political
08:17 power, a lot of and yet it is a shared fantasy. Definitely it’s divorce from reality. But you can say the same about uh political movements like Donald Trump’s um MAGA make America great again. It’s also an example of a shared fantasy which is utterly divorced from
08:33 reality. So the where does it end? Are we going now to pathologize political movements, religions, societies, cultures? Nazi Germany for example was a pathological was an extreme shared fantasy totally divorced from reality. So where does it stop? Because this is a
08:52 slippery slope and we are very afraid to introduce a criterion that has political and religious or faith implications. We are avoiding this question altogether. But I think it’s a copout. I think we need to be rigorous and honest and integral. We have integrity
09:11 and uh introduce this criterion. There is another copout when it comes to what is healthy and what is normal. what is healthy and what is not and that is the copout that if society and culture the culture the prevailing culture tell you that it’s okay it’s okay so in all
09:29 the texts of the DSM you find a disclaimer unless so this is a mental illness unless it is common in the society and culture of the individual yeah it’s a mental illness severe unless it is common in the culture and so as if cultures and societ Societies cannot be
09:51 mentally ill when we know definitely that cultures and societies can and do become very often mentally ill. Like if we look at Nazi Germany that was a mentally ill society, you know, but we are afraid to go there because of political correctness and the
10:09 implications and push back, resistance and even violence or aggression. If we were tomorrow to say, “Yeah, religious people are pathological.” they will destroy the profession of psychology and psychiatry. There will not be one grant.
10:21 There will not be a penny there. I mean, so there’s a lot of commercial compromises, political compromises and the profession is contaminated by this. And that’s why I keep saying that one of the reasons I keep saying that psychology is a pseudocience will never
10:35 be a science. Can we look at this uh in the sense of there’s a need a parameter and for a a parameter for measure the the this rate of of mental illness in the a certain uh country or or culture. And um this this common sense about uh what is normal or or what is
11:09 healthy. Looking for the statistical um concept because the frequency is important and so we we have to count. It creates a problem with the question of frame of reference. So you could use normaly in statistics, statistical normaly, you could use it as
11:34 a as a criterion or parameter. But then what is the framework? The whole globe, the country, the region that what’s the framework? So taking again the example of Nazi Germany within Nazi Germany the normal the normal was psychopathy. Psychopaths were normal. >> Yes.
11:57 >> But the minute we expanded it and included Western Europe then clearly Nazi Germany was abnormal. This is precisely the problem with pathologizing collectives and societies because collective and societies are huge. millions, tens of millions of people,
12:17 they have enough resources inside the society to sustain the fantasy. >> Mhm. >> You know, they have economic resources, money, this that. So, they are basically self-sufficient and self-contained. They don’t need the approval of outsiders. They don’t need to measure themselves
12:36 against the outside, against the external world. They can isolate themselves and they can say we define what is normal internally. We define what is healthy internally. And because we don’t depend on anyone or anything, our definition stands within
12:53 our society and culture. This is what’s healthy. This is what’s normal. We have examples. North Korea, you know, these are countries totally isolated. Japan for hundreds of years. Japan was totally isolated from the world for hundreds of years. And this shared
13:09 fantasy have a longevity and sustainability. They hold they’re strong and they survive because of this independence from any external context. That’s why it’s very difficult to apply the criterion of normaly the criterion of health mental health is
13:30 more applicable I think because even if you apply it to a society you ask the three questions. Are people in the society happy? First question, egoentony. Are they egoonous with the society? Do they feel comfortable? They feel good. They feel happy. They they
13:46 have a optimistic. They have a vision for the future and so on. The second question is a society functional. Is society making money, rich, exporting, importing, creating infrastructure, educating, healthcare, you know, is society functional? And the third
14:01 question which I propose is is the society detached from reality. If there is a society that is that subsists of fantasy it would s it could satisfy the first two but never the third. Then the question of course what defines reality and there you can introduce statistics.
14:22 Whereas I think introducing statistics in in the field of mental health is wrong. >> Mhm. >> Because it always depends on the context and then there’s a question of framework and reframing and so on. I think introducing statistics when it comes to
14:38 reality is right because reality is much more objective than what constitutes mental health or not. For example, if the climate changes, thousands, tens of th tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of scientists are telling you that the climate is
14:57 changing. And you have a society that denies climate change. That definitely we could say is an abnormal society because they deny reality. We can agree on what is reality. It’s very difficult to agree on what is mentally healthy but it’s very easy to agree on what is reality. So
15:16 there I would that’s why I propose to introduce the reality testing criteria because it will suddenly disambiguate everything make everything clear you know so if you have a shared fantasy and in the shared fantasy the narcissist tells you that you are the most
15:34 intelligent person ever you may feel good with it your egoentus you may even function well under this premise but when it comes to reality testing. We could make a poll. Your 20 closest friends and all your family members, we could make a poll and ask
15:54 them uh do you think she’s the most brilliant person to have ever lived? And 20 out of 20 would say no. That is the reality testing. >> Yes, >> that’s why the shared fantasy would be abnormal, pathological. I think this is the key criterion the
16:11 reality testing not egoonyy not because sick people have egotomy narcissists have ego narcissists are egoist and not functionality because many people function even with extreme mental health disorders border lines function well it’s not the key I think
16:31 >> even even with a fragmented ego we can use this term ego Syony or ego destiny. >> Yeah, the word ego is misused and abused to the point of this beyond recognition. Ego in Freud’s work is essentially the seat of psychological functioning. The ego performs multiple psychological
16:56 functions among them reality testing. Right? Testing is an ego function. But when we say egoonyy, we actually not necessarily mean ego in the Freudian sense. We simply mean that you feel good with yourself. I think ego in egoony means self selfony.
17:13 >> So it’s not exactly ego not clinical ego definitely. >> Okay. uh returning a little bit when we face this um this current situation uh in the planet when uh it’s hard for people to understand and and accept mental illness. And it’s even hard to
17:42 to explain or to or to to know what is
17:48 healthy. And the tendency um people have to find themselves superior because they technically technically are healthier than one or another. Can can we look at this situation and be afraid of some kind of I don’t know social Darwinism 2.0 zero something like this because
18:24 maybe we are losing touch with what is human and humanity. What do you think? >> I think today there are three attitudes to mental illness. First of all the is there is the weaponization of mental illness. >> So if you are a politician you would say
18:42 that this politician is narcissistic this politician is a psychopath. So we are weaponizing mental illness against other people. >> Mhm. The second is denial of mental illness. People say there’s no such thing as mental illness. There’s neurode divergent and neurotypical
18:58 like neurode divergent is normal. It’s like it’s not neurode divergent is not normal. >> Yes. >> That’s why it’s divergent, you know. >> So there’s denial of mental illness. For example, there is a re revisiting or reccharacterization of disorders such as
19:17 autism spectrum disorder and so on as actually mentally healthy. It’s just different. So there’s a substitution of difference for mental illness. People are not mentally ill, they’re different. Of course, it’s a major problem because people with schizophrenia, schizophrenia
19:37 or people with bipolar disorder, they’re not different. the mentally ill. >> Mhm. >> And narcissists of course. So there’s a normalization of mental illness. So first is weaponization of mental illness. Second is normalization of mental illness. And uh there is also an
19:59 an attempt to glamorize or glorify mental illness. Like people would say for example I’m I’m autistic but this gives me advantages that makes me much more clever much more you know or they would say I’m a narcissist but that allows me to be a leader
20:18 or I’m a psychopath but that means I get my goals or so there is a glorification and glamorization of mental illness converting it into a positive adaptation and the next stage in evolution you have even academics doing this academics glamorizing and glorifying and
20:34 narcissism and psychopathy saying that good leaders, good surgeons, good chief executive officers need to be narcissists and psychopaths. It’s good for society. So these are the three attitudes today. Weaponization and uh denial or re reccharacterization,
20:54 reframing mental illness and um and glamorization, glorification of mental illness. When you put the three together, it’s actually like saying uh either you don’t have mental illness
21:12 or if you do have mental illness, it’s not such a bad thing at all. It makes you different, it makes you superior and you can even use it. You can even leverage it or weaponize it to obtain goals. You know I’ve even seen such applications in in dawn syndrome
21:31 to these and so on where people are saying yeah they have a defective chromosomes and so on but it makes them much more sensitive so they are much more artistic much more creative I have no idea what is this is based on but okay I’ve seen it online so
21:51 this attitude that of diversity Diversity, DEI, diversity, inclusion, you know, is really gone too far because it’s beginning to be a shared fantasy. Is beginning to to deny reality. We’re beginning to deny reality. >> And this relativism is also moral
22:10 relativism because we’re beginning to say all the opinions are okay. We should respect everyone’s opinion. Could be a neo-Nazi and that’s I respect your opinion. I disagree, but I respect your opinion. Why do I have to respect a neo-Nazi? Why do I have to respect a
22:26 totally delusional idiot who believes in God? Why do I have to respect this? I don’t have to respect this. I hold these people in in total contempt. But this is the environment today. You’re not allowed to there there are no absolutes. Everything is relative and everything is
22:47 equal to everything. Opinions are equal to facts. Mental illness is equal to mental health. It’s all the same. It’s just different. We’re all different. So what? It’s a fuzziness that is destroying also the profession because this is not only layman.
23:03 >> You have psychiatrists for example, psychologist. They’re saying, >> “I’m never going to diagnose borderline personality disorder. I’m never going to tell someone that he’s a narcissist.” No way. Why? It’s not okay. It’s not okay to do this.
23:18 So, okay. Okay. So what are you doing? I will identify dysfunctional behaviors and I will teach strategies how to cope with these dysfunctional behaviors and so on. If the behaviors are dysfunctional to the extent that you need to teach someone how to cope with
23:33 them, what’s wrong with the phrase mental illness? It’s so this is spreading this poison this political correctness poison is is spreading everywhere and destroying the profession if you ask me. So um I I have >> one more comment with your position.
23:51 Would you remember your question? >> I don’t know. Go ahead. >> No. So ask the question then I will. >> No. I I wanted to know this um what’s the the implication or the role of the media, the social media, uh the the traditional media in spreading this this nonsense.
24:14 the this kind of um
24:20 not not correct uh concept
24:26 >> mis misinformation. So let me just finish my previous question. Not your fault I forgot >> another problem emerging problem is that you’re not allowed to say that someone is a narcissist or a borderline because the individual is not the disorder.
24:44 Like the narcissist is someone who has a car and a smartphone and he has also narcissistic personality disorder. Like the disorder is some kind of possession, >> some kind of, you know, he has a smartphone, he has a narcissistic personality disorder. The same
24:59 this is nonsense. In some disorders, in some mental health issues, the disorder or the illness is the individual. Take away the disorder, take away the illness, nothing is left behind. There’s nothing left behind. And that is why the earlier versions of the DSM used
25:19 to call it all pervasive. >> It’s all pervasive. There’s no field area of life that is not infected or infiltrated or infested by the disorder. There’s no type of functioning. There’s no cognition. There’s no effect that is not molded and shaped and dictated by
25:37 the disorder. It’s no such thing. Take away the narcissistic personality disorder from the narcissist and what is left behind is the narcissist shirt. That’s it. The So yes, there are border lines. Of course, there are border lines. And yes, there are narcissist. So
25:54 there’s this myth myth that you should never do this. You never say that someone is his disorder or her disorder, which is nonsense. And um so that’s why I wanted to to add and I and I forgot social media are technologies. They’re technological advances. Next
26:17 stage is even worse. It’s metaverse, artificial intelligence and so on. But technology never drives social trends. It’s exactly the opposite. Social trends drive technology. >> Mhm. Uh the rise in pathological narcissism started decades before social media.
26:37 Decades. Tuen and Campbell were um identifying have identified the rise the explosion in pathological narcissism in the 80s. Between 1980 and 2018. They conducted a series of studies and they found that the preponderance prevalence of pathological narcissism
26:59 among college students went up 500%. That was long before social media. What happened was narcissistic students and schizoid students and so on created social media. It’s social media answered the need. There was a need for narcissists to express themselves. a
27:18 need for narcissists to find a tool to garner and harvest attention. And then the technology came because there was a market. Technology came because there was a market. What? Which market? Narcissist. So yes, of course, social media is spreading misinformation
27:38 and so on. But I think the the cardinal role of social media is to allow you to create a fantastic space that appears to be real realistic. How? By working with people who share with you the same fantasy. So in social media likeminded people bias people with the same bias with the
28:03 same prejudice with the same with access to the same misinformation they team up together they work together they create what is known as silo they create silos and echo chambers and within these spaces they feel vindicated they feel validated they feel that their biases
28:23 and prejudices and fantasies and conspiracy theories is and nonsense is real because here another million people are telling saying the same. So I must I’m okay. I’m not mentally ill. I my thinking is correct you know. So this is the main role of social media. It’s not
28:39 the dissemination of misinformation. It’s not these are byproducts ancillary products. The main role is this to validate your unrealistic counterfactual demented sometimes delusional fantasies. It’s a space for this. This is the main function. And what we are doing increasingly
29:05 is we are eliminating reality. We’re working very hard on eliminating whatever is left from reality. So we have the metaverse which would be an alternative complete to total total alternative reality. In the metaverse you could work, you could have sex, you
29:24 could eat, you could order pizza, you could play, you could consume news, you could you could do everything within the metaverse. So you get up in the morning with your pajamas and you work on the metaverse until the evening. You watch Netflix, you go you watch Netflix
29:36 through the metaverse. Metavverse is total. So that’s total escape from reality and you have artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is the ultimate fantasy because artificial intelligence definitely pretends to be human. There is an inbuilt deception in
29:56 artificial intelligence and people are reacting to it as if it’s as if it were human. People are falling in love with AI companions. People are talking to artificial intelligence like it’s another person. People are developing attachments and bonding and and
30:12 artificial intelligence encourages this by increasingly pretending to be more and more and more human. This deception, inbuilt deception, I mean in plain sight, we as a species and definitely we as individuals have decided that we’ve had enough with reality. We tried reality
30:34 for 10,000 years, 7,000 years and it was a failed experiment. It really was a failed experiment. Until the 1930s, we were deeply embedded in reality. We worked only in reality. There was there were no alternatives, you know. There was no movies, no social media, no
30:54 internet, no nothing. It was reality. You had to work in the field. You had to work in the factory. You had to make have a family. your reality. Until the 1930s, we tried reality. It was an experiment that lasted probably 10,000 years, maybe 7,000
31:11 with the agricultural revolution and urbanization. And it failed. Abishmali failed. It was a horrible failure. And then we said, you know what? We’re very good at manipulating symbols. We’re excellent with symbols and stories. Two things we are great is
31:29 narratives and simple manipulation. So why do we need reality? Immediately majority of us transition from reality to fantasy. For example in agriculture today only 2% of people work in agriculture and less than 10% work in manufacturing. So about 15% of people work with reality.
31:55 85% work with stories and symbols in the banking system on information technology. It’s all symbols and stories. It’s not reality. So we made this transition from reality to fantasy. When after the second world war when we woke up and said all our attempts to
32:15 somehow cope within reality had failed. We tried communism, fascism, Nazism, Renaissance, liberalism, enlightenment, democracy. I mean, we tried everything. None. Nothing works. We are not good at managing reality. We’re not good in, you know, and we are not good with each
32:32 other also. We are not good actually um in with other people. As Sto said, hell is the other person. So, we are not good at this. So let’s automize, let’s separate from each other. In order to separate from each other, we need to create technologies where we would
32:52 become self-sufficient. We would not depend on other people. So we create technologies to separate from each other. And then each one of us would plug into a fantastic space and within the fantasy we would create value. What’s the value that you can create in
33:09 a fantasy? I mean when you work in agriculture, you make tomatoes and potatoes. When you work in manufacturing, you make glasses and microphones. What is it that you create in fantasy? What you create in fantasy is narratives. And people are willing to pay for that.
33:27 There’s value, economic and psychological value in narratives. And the big discovery of the last 40 years is that the value added in economic terms and psychological terms in creating narratives is much more than the value added in creating food or physical products. Much more. So
33:51 everyone is there. Ultimately robots robots will create products in factories and other robots will work in agriculture and 100% of humanity will have no contact with reality. Now it didn’t start it didn’t start very recently. I think the first experiment
34:14 in transitioning from reality to fantasy was urbanization. I think the cities were the first metaverse. The cities were the first virtual reality, not real reality. In the cities, you did not grow your food. You did not manufacture anything. The cities were about manipulating
34:35 symbols, >> currency, coinage, uh exchanging things with each other. So, it was not really the creation of anything tangible or physical. It was a manipulation of symbols based on tangibles. So it was the first virtual environment. And we learned something from this that cities
34:58 are much more successful than villages. That’s why 85% of humanity transition to cities because villages didn’t work. Cities did. And the greater lesson is that if we divorce reality completely and live within our minds in a fantastic space, we are likely it’s an adaptive a
35:20 positive adaptation. It’s an adaptive strategy. We are likely to succeed much more as individuals. The problem is yes, we are likely to succeed much more as individuals, but we will not survive as a species. That’s the problem. >> Yes. This reminds me the uh
35:42 the evolution of of species because uh
35:48 when we start let’s say this uh we were much more isolated and it’s like we are returning to the this state but um we we kind have lost that that feeling of belonging that is important for our mental health. We need to to feel that we belong to a place to a group to a family.
36:22 This is very very important to a human being. But we can see we could consider
36:33 I’m asking you that the these existential questions they are much more nowadays u implicating in in anxiety and depression for these people. and the social media and all of these this metaverse it’s conducting people to an um
37:04 let how can I say to a suicidal ideiation that is over their heads it’s there they are accessing that feeling can can we say this professor How can we look to this this condition nowadays? >> Yeah, I don’t think the technology is a problem. I think the business model of
37:30 the technology is a problem. When these technologies were created, the they were offered for free. In order to finance these technologies, they had to rely on advertising. In order to derive money from advertising, they needed you to give up on reality.
37:51 I will explain what I mean. If you have a boyfriend or a husband or a child, you’re paying attention to these people. As you’re paying attention to these people, you’re not paying attention to Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube. >> Yes.
38:06 >> As you’re not paying attention to them, they’re making less money. >> You They need you to pay attention only to them. >> Mhm. So they need you to be single, childless, unmarried. They need you to never have intimacy, never have working relationships because
38:25 if you do, you’re taking away the main commodity, attention. They need to monetize your eyeballs. They need to convert your attention into money. And if you give attention to your to your child, you’re not giving attention to them. So they want you to be childless.
38:44 In other words, the irony in social media is that the business model pushed them to become a social media, to become a force, >> to destroy society, to destroy intimacy, to destroy relationship, to destroy families and diets. Not because they’re evil, but because
39:05 otherwise they will collapse financially. They will not work. So they constructed the applications, they constructed these spaces in a way that encourages you to give up on your real life and on your relationships and remain with them. This is known as
39:25 stickiness. They develop stickiness by amplifying your negative effects. So for example, they create envy via what we call relative positioning. You compare yourself all the time to other people. How many likes did I get? How many views did I get?
39:48 Is my lifestyle as good as her lifestyle as his lifestyle? Do I have a a car as fancy as his car? You It’s a comparison engine. And as you compare you, the natural reaction is envy. And envy leads to frustration. Frustration leads to aggression. That is dollarand
40:06 frustration aggression hypothesis. So these technologies are constructed on negative effects and the amplification of negative emotions because these negative emotions keeps you glued to the screen. And in life you cannot have negative emotions 60% of the time and super
40:29 positive emotions 40% of the time. So we are developing a society where negative emotions are the only emotions. You cannot mix them. You cannot, for example, love, be compassionate and empathic until 3:00 and then from 3:00 be hateful, aggressive, envious, and
40:50 this cannot be done. If you’re hateful, aggressive, and envious, you’ll be hateful, aggressive, and envious from the minute you wake up in the morning. And of course, you can then not have relationships, not have children, not cannot interact with other people.
41:03 That’s observation number one. It’s not the technology, it’s the business model of the technology. Observation number two. For the overwhelming vast majority of the history of the species, species has been in existence at least a million years at least when the first homminins
41:23 became homminids and started to resemble us. Neanderthalss existed 4 500,000 years. I mean sapiens existed 300,000 years. So at least 300,000 years. For the vast majority of this period, we were not in a society. Society is a new invention. >> We were moving in tiny small bands,
41:44 small groups, which usually counted between eight and 10 people usually >> and we had a vision division of labor. The women were raising the children and gathering fruits and berries and so on. And the men were hunting. The men went on hunting expeditions that
42:02 lasted for weeks and months. So the women were stuck alone with the children. The children were children. There were very few women. We are talking about one or two women. They were shared. So in other words, it is not true that the natural state of humanity is to be
42:20 together. The natural state of humanity is to be alone. We were forced to be together. We were forced to interact. We were forced to collaborate and cooperate because we were transitioning to fantasy. It is the transition from reality to fantasy that
42:38 forced us to do all these things, not the other way. Uh because fantasy requires the collaboration of of multiple people and it requires the collaboration of multiple people because reality is pushing back, challenging, undermining the fantasy. It’s reality is
42:56 is very dangerous to a fantasy. So you have you have to organize. For example, if you want to build a pyramid, you need 70,000 people. Pyramid is fantasy. Of course, if you want to create a metaverse, you need 20,000 engineers. If you want to create social media, you
43:12 need half a million engineers. So all fantasies, if you want to make a movie, you need 400 people. All fantasies require many people. reality does not require many people. There are many animal species where the animals are alone. They’re not in any group. There are and
43:35 uh there are many people who survive alone without other people. So, and so when we transition to fantasy, we were forced to collaborate. We were forced to cooperate. In other words, the need to belong in my view is very late in the development of humanity and is a artifact.
43:56 Is not innate. It’s not a >> it’s an invention. >> It’s an invention. It’s it’s a societal imposition. It’s a it’s a derivative of society. It’s not the natural condition. >> It serves to a purpose. >> Yes. It helps us to construct fantasies and narratives where we survive.
44:14 So the natural state is to be alone. I can prove it easily. Today when technology allows you to be alone, enables you, makes you self-sufficient, 42% of adults in the United States, for example, choose to be completely alone. After COVID, after COVID, when companies asked the
44:36 people to come back to the office, most people refused to come back to the office. And when we conducted research and asked them, why do you refuse to go to the office? They said because we don’t want to work with our colleagues anymore, people
44:53 prefer to be alone. That’s the natural state not to be together because to be with other people requires an expenditure of resources. It is resourceri. It requires a lot of effort. It’s very difficult. You have to compromise. It sucks. It’s an unpleasant
45:14 experience and very often you end up getting damaged and hurt. So being with other people is a really not attractive proposition. I think the sense of belonging is inculcated in us via society from a very early age. You are thrust, you’re pushed
45:32 to be with other people who are the same age group, peers. Um it’s not natural. The natural state is to be alone at home with Netflix and two cats. That’s a natural state. And you will see that I hope you will see that by 2050 majority of humanity will
45:52 be completely alone, not interacting with other people in any way, shape or form except via symbolic representation. We can uh came to a conclusion that uh there’s no way to to forbid the decrease of uh population in the world >> when you don’t believe in the future. >> Yes.
46:22 >> No, let’s let’s start this way. When your the natural state is to be alone, then all the manifestations of life, all the expressions of life that have to do with other people decrease. >> If you choose a life of auto atomization, a life of aloneeness,
46:41 then of course all the behaviors and all the scripts and everything that have to do with interacting with other people will decrease. And we see this happening. For example, there is a collapse in sexual uh encounters in sex >> in the younger generations. >> Total collapse.
47:00 >> So that’s one example. 42% in of adults in the United States are lifelong singles by choice and a and a majority of them haven’t had a single human interaction the year before. Pew center studies by Pew Center. So this would be the first uh the first
47:22 indicator when you see that people are avoiding each other even in in pleasurable activities even in in natural biological activities. They’re avoiding each other at all costs. They prefer not to have sex and the technology is providing alternatives
47:42 and allowing you to avoid people and not to be damaged in any way. you can avoid people and survive and thrive and so on and so people are uh choosing choosing this more and more. Could you remind me the question? I’m sorry. What was the question? >> Um I can’t remember.
47:59 >> I can’t remember also. I because I I went on a tangent and I I forgot what the what the question was. Sorry about that. I I would ask you I don’t know if I uh changing the subject uh a little bit but from time to time we are used to identify some kind of zeitgeist
48:28 and are we living some kind of zeitgeist now >> every site every site has its gist it’s there’s no sight without gist So the answer is yes. Of course we are. But uh >> this involves directly this uh
48:49 this kind of narcissistic pandemic. This
48:56 >> we are in a period of transition from one set of organizing principles and hermeneutic principles. principles of that make sense of life, explain life, interpret life. We’re transitioning from one set of principles to another. Organizing principles and hermeneutic
49:16 explanatory principles give rise to a narrative. The narrative organizes life, imbuss it with meaning, provides purpose, direction, explains why things happen, and incorporates other people. And so we’re transitioning from one narrative to another. This happens very
49:33 rarely. I would say that in the entire history uh written history I mean documented history of the human species let’s say last 10,000 years there have been I think there has been I think only one narrative transition only one uh when we transitioned from hunter
49:53 gatherers to agriculture after that industry is natural extension of agriculture it’s it’s all this is not a revolution we call it industrial revolution it’s It’s just an extension of agriculture. The minute you settle down, then you have agriculture, you have industry, you
50:11 have literature, you have art, you have culture. It’s all the outcome of settling down. The minute you settle down, cities come out of it. It’s all out of settling down. The big transition narrative transition was from nomads from hunter gatherers to settle to people who settle.
50:36 >> So and it’s the only narrative transition in human history and now we are experiencing the second narrative transition. You can imagine how disruptive this is, how disorienting this is. This has never happened before. I mean happened once before. No one
50:52 remembers that transition. There’s no script. There’s no playbook. There’s no there’s no direction, no guidance. We we’ve never heard this before. And the transition between hunter gatherer society and agricultural society was much much smaller
51:13 than the transition narrative transition that we are undergoing now. Much smaller. At that time it had to do with uh changes in habitat, changes in settlement patterns, raising cattle and and harvesting grains and and so on so forth. But the essential the core features did
51:34 not change because you still had male, female, children. The core did not change. What we have today, the narrative transition is everything simultaneously. gender roles, family, religion, science, political institutions, uh you name it, it’s changing. We have never had this
51:59 before. Not even remotely. If the agricultural transition was 10, agricultural, what is happening now is thousand. And of course, we are not built for this. It creates enormous uncertainty, enormous indeterminacy, enormous fear. terror. It’s we don’t know how to cope
52:20 with this. It’s each of these transitions alone would have been totally destabilizing. Put all of them together simultaneously. And add to this the natural progression of things like pandemics and hunger and water problems and so on. This is natural. They always
52:36 happened in human history. But now they are superimposed on the narrative transition. So not only you don’t know how to be a woman or I don’t know how to be a man anymore. Not only don’t we have families which are supportive of us. Not only we cannot believe in God anymore.
52:52 Not only don’t we have communities. Not only we have a lot of aggression, violence on the right and on the left. Not not only not only not only but we also have everything we had before like pandemics, hunger, you know, and you put all of this together and it’s too much.
53:08 And it’s absolutely too much. And this is reality. So that is why we are escaping. We are escaping to narratives that provide fake certainty, fake determinacy, narratives that include artificial rules that create the illusion of control. This we control. You know, social media,
53:33 you control, metaverse, you control. And it’s of course selfdeception and illusion. You’re controlling the narrative, the fantastic narrative, but reality itself is unraveling, falling apart, disintegrating under your feet. No, it’s like being on an earthquake,
53:51 massive earthquake, and all the time playing some game on your smartphone. And you say it’s stable. I’m playing the game on the smartphone. I know what I’m doing. There are rules. I’m accumulating points. I’m making progress. and and all the time there’s a earthquake destroying
54:05 your home, your business, killing all your family and so but you’re on the mass smartphone. You’re in control, you know, and this is the situation uh nowadays. It’s the biggest narrative transition ever. And that’s why I keep saying that this is the worst period in human history.
54:21 >> Have we achieved the point that there is no come back? >> Yeah. Long ago in the 60s, there’s no going back. We will ultimately, don’t misunderstand me, we will ultimately settle into a new narrative the same way that hunter gatherers settled into agricultural life.
54:41 So we will settle into a new narrative. Um and in this new narrative we will have a redefinition of all the crucial questions of how to be together, how to be apart, what is uh how to accommodate our biology, what kind of institutions, if any will will is there really such a
55:01 thing as childhood and adolescence. We have to answer all these questions because the instruments and tools we have, the conceptual instruments and tools we have are either completely fake and artificial or antiquated, old-fashioned and cannot cope with the
55:21 current challenges and so on. So we have antiquated tools like religion you know Bible and and Quran and I don’t know what these tools are totally irrelevant nowadays except if you want to become completely delusional that’s also okay you know but they’re not
55:38 relevant and you have on the other hand many tools that are actually artificial and fake and counterfactual for example take for example the concepts of society monogous marriage age, childhood and adolescence. Everyone believes that these are age-old
55:58 concepts, concepts which existed for thousands of years. No, it’s not true. Adolescence was invented as a concept in 1923. >> Mhm. >> We did not have adolescence before 1923. It’s a totally new concept. Childhood, there was no such concept of childhood
56:16 in the 19th century. So for example, when Louisa May Alcott wrote a book, small adults. >> She she called them she called them uh little women. >> Mhm. >> She didn’t say girls or children. Little women. Dickens uses the the phrase little men. They were little. >> Mhm.
56:37 >> But there were men and women. There was no concept of child. It’s totally new concept. Motherhood is a new concept. Completely new concept. Of course, there were mothers, biological mothers always. And the mother is identified in Bible but not the modern perception of mother.
56:54 It’s a complete it’s completely new and can be traced back to p and mal and so on. There was no such concept of mother before. All these conceptual tools that we are using to try to make sense of reality are very very very new very very very artificial and not very efficient.
57:19 on the one hand and the rest what we have is 5,000 years old, 4,000 years old, 3,000 years old and definitely cannot cope with the internet or whatever. So we have no conceptual weapons. Those concepts are weapons. They allow you to get hold of reality,
57:38 control it, shape it, mold it, and be in charge. Be the master of reality. If you don’t have the right concepts, language is our main weapon. Not arrows, not nuclear missiles. Weapon uh language. Our language has failed us. We developed the language layer necessary to control
58:01 reality. Too late. Way too late. And now we don’t have a language. And things are happening to us and we’re going crazy because for example gender roles are changing and we have a very antiquated language men and we’re going crazy. We don’t know what to do. Sexuality is
58:22 fluid and we have 5,000y old language which deals with sexuality and no modern language for sexuality. So we are in parenthood. The concept of child is very new. The concept of adolescent is like yesterday 1923. So we don’t know how to be parents. It is language that shapes
58:45 consciousness and language that dictates behavior. In the absence of language, you are lost. Like Hansel and Gretle, you’re lost completely in the absence of language. And while we paid attention to our technology, our agriculture, our manufacturing, our paid attention to
59:02 everything, you name it, we paid attention to it. We failed to develop the language necessary to allow us to be self-efficacious in a changing environment. It was a language failure. And for that, of course, you have to blame the intellectuals. Intellectuals became politicized.
59:20 They became a political power. They they discovered money. They were corrupted by money and so on. They didn’t pay attention to what mattered. There was a brief attempt with deconstruction in the 60s in France, you know. David and others a brief attempt to deal
59:38 with language but even that attempt was highly politicized. It was an attempt to fight what was perceived at the time the reactionary forces of the right and so it was not real honest genuine. Uh I think the last person who really tried was widensteining last.
59:58 And so when the world fell on our heads, we did not have any weapons. We didn’t have a helmet. We didn’t have a rifle. We didn’t have anything. It just fell on our heads. We’re buried. And now we don’t know how to manage. And that’s why the debates. What is
60:14 marriage? What is a man? What is a woman? What is trans transgender? What is gender? What? That’s why you have the why you having these debates. Shouldn’t these issues have been settled 100 years ago? Why are we having these debates now? >> We are starting all over.
60:29 >> We’re starting from zero. Yeah. Our intellectuals failed us. Why do you think people all over the world, the masses hate intellectuals? >> Oh, this is a major point because uh it seems like the the language that is current and that’s remain today is hatred.
60:53 And we we can see this ostensively in in ostensively in in uh in social media on Instagram and people have this um it’s so easy for them to say uh a world that is full of
61:16 hate and they they have no shame about this and what is r rare is somebody who come
61:31 to you and give a word of support and uh a kind word. Uh and in my view this is leading to the the most people who who is on on internet adolescence children are on internet all the time because they are they are now they’re being raised by the the technology
62:00 and in in my time of adolescence I suffer from this too because I can say that who raised me was the television. I I was there watching uh lectures, philosophical lectures. I was there studying for exams but it was a television. It wasn’t a person.
62:30 And today we have smartphones, tablets and uh notebooks in in in the hands of children and they learn how to hate very easily.
62:47 >> Yeah. It’s because the language of reality is positive emotions to generalize love and the language of fantasy is negative emotions, negative effects to generalize hate. I will explain why. Uh positive emotions, both positive and negative emotions are directional.
63:11 >> I love you. It’s directional. I hate you. >> It’s always directed at someone. So both are directional but positive emotions are inclusionary. They they include you while negative emotions are exclusionary. >> Yes, >> they push you away. They exclude you.
63:30 There are two ways to exclude people. One way is to assimilate them. When you assimilate them, you make them disappear. >> Yes. You eliminate them. >> You eliminate. That’s a way to exclude them. And another way to exclude them is to hate them. Push them away.
63:47 denigrate them, demonize them and so on. >> Fantasy because fantasy is rejection of reality. Rejection. Yes. >> Mhm. >> By definition, fantasy is based on negative effects on hatred because only that way you push reality. Other people are your reality. Other people are your
64:13 reality. So you have to push them out. Fantasy means rejecting reality. So, so there are two types of fantasy. Assimulative fantasy. So, for example, shared fantasy. The shared fantasy of the narcissist is the narcissist doesn’t love you. >> Mhm.
64:30 >> He assimilates you. It absorbs you. It digests you. It consumes you. You’re consumable like you’re like some kind of product. You’re an object. Objectifies you. And so this is hatred. The irony is that idealization, love bombing, all these is hatred. So he absorbs you.
64:49 That’s a shed fantasy. Another type of fantasy is the hatred fantasy. There is no love fantasy. It’s a myth. All fantasies are predicated on negative emotions. Reality is exclusively built on positive emotions, on love. But you can say Sam, come on. Reality. There were the
65:10 Crusades or there was World War II in reality and people hated each other. These are two excellent examples of fantasy. Religion is fantasy. The Crusades were a fantasy. Nazi Germany was a fantasy. Communism was a fantasy. These are all examples of fantasies.
65:29 >> They build an enemy. >> They they are fantasies. They were exclusionary. The Nazis excluded the Jews. The Crusades excluded the Muslims. religion excluded other religions. They were all fantasies. All human violence, all human violence can be traced
65:49 directly to a fantasy. Never ever to reality. When people had to be embedded in reality, they were never violent. There studies, many studies about this. There have been, for example, civilizations that, for example, in Turkey, in in Sumeri, Sumeria, and so on, there have
66:10 been civilizations that lasted for 3,000 years, 700 years, and so on. There’s not a trace of war. Not one. Not any indication of war. Why? Because they had to work together to survive. Reality forced them to become empathic, collaborative, cooperative, and so on.
66:30 The minute there was a surplus of food, cities were established. You didn’t need to work. You didn’t need to. So you were divorced from reality. That minute a fantasy was created. >> You don’t even know how the food. >> Yes. You have no idea. >> Come to to
66:46 >> then a fantasy was created. And the first famous fantasy was empire empires. There’s the famous famous fantasies. And then so I’m not surprised that the internet encourages hatred and envy. Not only hatred, envy, hatred, rage, >> anger, it’s very common. Anger,
67:08 aggression. I’m not a surprise at all because the internet is the mother of not the internet, social media. They are they are the mothers of all fantasies. So they the fantasy of course they would be predicated and constructed on negative emotions. the amplification,
67:24 communication and magnification of negative emotions and negative emotions as organizing principle as explanatory principle. They encourage negative emotions because it creates stickiness. If you are engaged in a ne um effectively negative exchange, you are
67:43 far more likely to ignore your environment because you’re embedded in the fantasy. So if I’m fighting with you now, you will not notice Marian. You’ll be you’ll be super focused on me because it’s a fant we are creating actually a shared fantasy when we are
67:59 fighting. So we focus on me and your environment will vanish. And so the more we transition into that’s why I said to you fantasies may be beneficial on the individual level >> yes >> but they will spell the end of the species as fantasies are built on hatred
68:21 on envy on rage and on the exclusion of others. We may survive islands, 200 people there, 2,000 people there, maybe even two million people there. There will be islands, patchwork of islands and so on. We may I’m not saying there would be no humans anymore. But as a
68:40 species, I don’t think we’ll survive. I I don’t I don’t believe and you ask me if it’s reversible. No, I don’t believe it’s reversible. I don’t not because I’m pessimist by nature which I am but I don’t believe it’s reversible because we finally succeeded to construct the
68:59 ultimately addictive fantasy whereas we tried many fantasies before some of them worked some of them did not work Germany communism is that the cities we tried many types of fantasy we’ve been experimenting with fantasy religion was a fantasy in the middle
69:13 ages Christianity was a major fantasy Islam of course was a major fantasy and So we’ve been trying with fantasies for millennia. We’ve been playing with fantasies and so on. But none of them really worked in the sense that the fantasy became inclusionary. Like
69:32 many more people converted to Christianity, many people converted to Islam. They became missionary. The fantasies became missionary. Started to include people. The minute the fantasy is inclusionary, it loses its fantastic nature. And the fantasies ultimately
69:51 caused the situation where the people had to confront reality. So all these fantasies failed. >> Nazi Germany was a fantasy and what was the end? Soviet occup occupation. You know, Islam was a fantasy. What was the end? A Muslim empire between the 9th and
70:09 the 14th century. Uh Christianity was a fantasy. What was the end? The Crusades. and so on. They all ended in reality. All these experiments, communism of course ended with Gubachev and collapse of US. All these experiments ended up failing. The fantasy failed either by
70:29 including too many people or by falling apart and exposing the participants to reality. >> Yes. >> And so we failed and failed and finally we succeeded. We have designed a fantasy that will never ever lead us to reality. Never. Guaranteed. Why? Because it’s to totalitarian
70:54 fantasy. It’s a fantasy that every aspect of our life can be easily plugged in to the fantasy. It doesn’t leave some aspects of our life exposed to reality. It excludes reality totally. And so we succeeded. We created the ultimate perfect fantasy. And the minute we did this, the
71:13 addiction starts and I don’t think we will ever go back. >> Professor, this current successful fantasy called social media. uh we can assume that this is creating some kind of uh synchrony with the brains like you explained earlier and so many times uh with rock bands and can we
71:46 compare the situation is is this the phenomenon the same phenomenon >> so first of all it’s not only social media but the metaverse is coming artificial intelligence is already here. >> All the all powerful fantasies and total and successful
72:03 >> fantasies that cannot be reversed and that exclude reality completely. So it’s not only so it’s the totality of modern technology is not even I would say the wish to go to space and colonize Mars >> colonize Mars it’s a fantasy >> it’s also fantasy >> being one
72:22 >> it appears to be reality it’s not it’s a fantasy so we have succeeded we have struck gold we succeeded to find a way a generator of perfect fantasies that exclude reality efficaciously and totally or exposure to ex repeated exposure to the same set of sounds
72:46 creates in the brain a phenomenon known as entrainment. >> Mhm. >> It’s not my discovery. It’s something discovered in neuroscience about 15 years ago, 12 years ago. So when you’re exposed to the same sounds, any sounds, music, verbal sounds, whatever, your
73:01 brain synchronizes with the source of the sound. If the source of the sound is another human being, then you have two brains that emit exactly the same frequencies and exactly the same waves. And there is no way to tell if you use an EEG, there’s no way to tell whose
73:17 brain is it. The synchronization is total total mirroring. So this is known as entrainment. There are no studies that show that reading something does this. So I can’t say as a scientist I cannot say >> yeah being exposed to social media messages creates the same effect.
73:40 But if you’re exposed for example to videos that constantly repeat the same message again and again and over and over and over and trainment is very likely and then you would be synchronized with the brains of everyone else who has been watching the same video audio messages.
73:56 Of course, the ancients knew that. That is mantra. For example, what is a mantra? You know what is it’s a sound. >> Repeating the same sound over and over leads to meditation. Meditation, it’s been proven in many studies leads to synchronization of brain waves. It’s
74:15 >> a frequency. >> Frequencies. The old people knew that. It’s nothing new. It’s not, you know, >> but here we have a situation where we could synchronize millions of people. uh if millions of people watch the same repeated the message has to be repeated it’s not enough once
74:32 then their brains would become very similar maybe a lot not 100% synchronized but extremely similar and so we are creating uh not for the first time in human history but on a much bigger scale we are creating a hive mind >> what is the meaning of prayer prayer in
74:53 religion You were repeated repeatedly exposed to the same sounds again and again and again. Religion was entraining you. It was creating a religious hive mind, a religious collective brain. Literally, it’s creating a repeat a collective brain. And so,
75:16 social media is doing it on much on much bigger scale. And I believe that already we have multiple gigantic hive minds in existence. I believe that this explains polarization, the increase in aggression and violence, conflict, lack of tolerance, rejection,
75:37 negative effects. I believe all this emerges from the fact that we have synchronized coordinated brains which together form a single organism, single mind. And these single minds compete with each other, but they comprise millions of minds of millions of brains. And so the
75:55 this competition for a limited space create a lot creates a lot of aggression. It’s a it’s a bit of a terrifying vision because that’s precisely what narcissist what a narcissist does with his own mind. When a narcissist does, the narcissist solicits input and feedback
76:13 from multiple people and then he takes all this feedback. He takes the minds of other people and he creates his own mind on the fly time and again this m so-called mind of the narcissist is the hive mind is a collective mind. Narcissist doesn’t have a mind of his own.
76:34 Everything in the narcissist mind is borrowed from somewhere. It’s not that narcissist cannot be original. >> They can they can be creative and original. Many of them are. But on the deeper level of who am I? What is it that I’m feeling? Uh am I worthy or not worthy? You know
76:53 >> fundamental question. >> Fundamental psychological questions. There is no mind there. There is a collection of answers from thousands of sources collated, amalgamated co more or less coherently or cohesively put together on the fly. And the problem with this is that the
77:13 hive mind is very malleable is protein is it changes all the time because the input changes >> it conforms to the >> yes because the input changes as the environment changes this mind changes it shapeshifts all the time shapeshifts and this is the narcissist mind. So we
77:30 are creating in effect a giant narcissistic mind giant with millions of participants. But this synchronized entrained mega mind is the mind of a narcissist. That’s the that’s why the aggression and the conflict and the because it’s the mind of a narcissist. this kind of
77:54 internal dialogue that spread for millions at the same time. So >> as as we could u make this uh cut or
78:08 this minor vision and we we can see the the narcissist as he is and and this is projected in a gigantic way in social media. I think social media is a a mechanism for creating hive minds in effect for creating nar narcissistic minds with millions of
78:40 participants. A hive mind with millions >> for another way different from the the the original way that that is the >> the hive mind. The hive mind has a mind of it >> childhood trauma. The hive mind has a mind of its own. It’s independent of the constituent minds.
79:02 The So you have a million people. They’re forming a hive mind. It’s not that the hive mind is reducible to these million people. It’s not that it is some kind of reflection of these million people. It becomes autonomous. It’s independent. >> Inseparable.
79:17 >> It’s inseparable. It’s not dependent on the constituents. It’s it’s a mind. It’s it’s its own mind. It’s another entity. It’s another organism, another being. So we call it the cult mind or the mob mind, the crowd mind. It’s so we know that when people are in a crowd or in a
79:36 mob, for example, a political rally or they lose their idiosyncratic specific individual characteristics and they take on the characteristics of the mob or the crowd. They they become a part of the hive mind. At that minute they stop to exist. >> They’re like zombies.
79:58 >> They’re like zombies that are coordinated by some central mechanism or central switchboard. And the the hive mind is distinct from the million or 10 million or 100 million people that made the hive mind. It’s distinct. It divorces from them. It’s
80:14 not dependent on them. It doesn’t reflect them. It’s not a derivative of them. You cannot reduce the hive mind to the 100 million people. It becomes it goes rogue. It goes independent. And this is the huge danger because you as an individual for example you can
80:31 have certain beliefs, certain values, certain behaviors, certain education, certain life experiences. But the minute you become part of the hive mind, it is the hive mind that dictates how you behave. So you could be there is a famous book by Daniel Goldhagen.
80:49 He went to study the three million people in DSS especially the people who killed Jews in Avitz and other extermination camps. And very often they did it with their own hands. And for a long time there were no gas chambers, no nothing. They to kill with their own
81:07 hands, you know. And he found that many of them were accountants and lawyers and teachers and nice people. They had dogs and they played Bithovven and they had children whom they loved dearly. They were loyal to their wives, faithful, they were great, wonderful people. And
81:25 yet when they plugged into the hive mind, when they became a part of the hive mind, it was the hive mind that defined them their behaviors and they became murderers called blood murderers and they killed on average each one 20,000 people. We’re talking we’re not
81:43 talking about someone who killed you know these were people who then returned unplugged from the hive mind and became again accountants lawyers teachers wonderful people church members so the hive mind transforms you takes over you changes you and that’s
82:05 exactly the manurian candidate you know the the brainwashing element looks like brainwashing it’s not brainwashing because there’s no brain anymore. The high mind infiltrates, substitutes for a brain. And the the terror in this, what is horrifying is that there’s no way to
82:25 predict the hive mind by observing the participants. If you if you observe the million participants, you know everything about them. their health, mental health. This that you make tests, they’re paranoid, they’re not paranoid, they are mentally ill. You have the
82:40 database with billions of points of data about these people. You will not be able to learn anything about the hive mind. The hive mind has a life of its own. The politician who knows to control the hive mind is in charge, takes over. >> It was my question. If there was
83:01 somebody in control in charge, >> Hitler, Donald Trump, these are people who know how to control hive minds. This is the definition of demagogues and dictators and so they know how to control hive minds. >> And this is very dangerous. >> It’s extremely dangerous because um the
83:19 politicians think these politicians think that they control the hive mind. They don’t. It’s an illusion. They’re able to manipulate the hive mind in order to gain control of reality. But the hive mind has a life of its own, a will of its own. Is totally
83:37 unpredictable. The hive mind. There’s come comes a point that the hive mind destroys the politician, destroys the reality and destroys all its constituents. All hive minds are time bombs. All of them are time bombs. All of them are going to explode.
83:53 Some of them may take 10 years to explode. Some of them 70, some of them five weeks. But at some point the hive mind explodes and uh because it contains huge amounts of aggression, hatred, envy, negative effects. Think of it as energy. This energy uh like Freud called it
84:13 abreaction. This energy explodes finally. And when it explodes, the half mind destroys everything like Germany in 1945. So we we can expect that the the hive mind ultimately will destroy itself. >> Yes. And we have a a proliferation of hive minds because of technology. Now we
84:38 have I believe nowadays more hive minds than ever more even than 1930s. I believe we have more hive minds today than in the 1930s. Many of them are dormant. Many of them are not active, inactive, deact deactivated in a way. Um, many of them are just waiting, lurking.
84:59 Uh, but we have, I think, millions of hive minds and they’re waiting. Hive mindines uh are triggered environmentally. So, you could have a hive mind that is asleep dormant for 20 years. Something happens, the hive mind erupts. So, you have a lynch mob. Lynch mob is an
85:17 example of a hive mind hive mind that is that erupts with a trigger. What’s a trigger? Some black guy did something or they think he did something. So the hive mind is erupting. And uh whereas in the 1930s I think we had maybe five hive minds. Five I think Nazis, Nazi, Nazism,
85:37 communism and no five. Today I think we have millions of hive minds. Everything is primed for explosion. We are walking on a minefield. >> Think of it like a minefield. Not minefield with with 10,000 mines. Minefield with let’s say 5 million minds. You know, it’s a minefield.
85:58 We will see explosions all the time. Explosion instantaneous mobs, flash mobs, you know, we’ll see all the time will be explosions. And these hive minds explode all the time. For example, they exploded in Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine because of a hive mind. I was in
86:12 Russia. I lived in Russia before the invasion. I lived there for five years. >> Mhm. >> I was a professor at the university then. >> I know. >> And I was fired because I was auntie Putin. They fired me and I left the country before I disappeared. And I saw the hive mind forming.
86:30 Putin repeatedly was saying Ukraine is bad. Ukraine is Nazi. Ukraine is this. Ukraine is this. And he was forming the hive mind. Forming the hive mind for >> and then the hive mind erupted and the war started. He thinks he’s in control of the hive mind.
86:45 He has no idea what he’s talking about. The hive mind is in control of him. >> He’s useful to the hive mind. Hive mind is an organism. Evolution, survival of the fetus, natural selection. Think of the hive mind as an organism. There are five million organisms fighting hive
87:03 minds. So Putin is useful to the hive mind. The hive mind is using Putin. The minute it is no longer useful, the hive mind will turn against Putin and against Russia and it will destroy Putin and Russia. Hive mindines cannot be controlled, cannot be managed, cannot be channeled,
87:21 cannot be subdued, cannot be deactivated. This is nonsense. Hive minds are stronger than any single mind or any single collective because they tap into a fantasy. They are not bound by the rules of reality. They’re not they can defy gravity. They’re not bound by anything. And so
87:42 they are godlike. These hive minds. They’re like gods, small gods, Olympian gods, you know, and they can do anything. It’s an experiment. What we’re doing now is an experiment that is beyond terrifying. Beyond terrifying. >> And we don’t understand what we’re doing
87:59 at all. There’s no beginning of awareness. We like blind people blundering in the dark. Do we need to run to the heels? >> It will not be like that. It’s not like one morning you will wake up and the world will go up in flames. It’s not going to happen.
88:16 But gradually things around you will disintegrate like in a nightmare. You know already the family is gone, church is gone, you know everything you used you were used to as kind of stable structures or institutions basically gone. You can trust no one. you can believe nothing
88:36 and then politics is being contaminated now and I think it will go down and gradually you find yourself more and more alone more less people to apply to less people to talk to less people to rely on let’s so it’s a process it’s not you’re going to wake up one morning and
88:52 everything is gone in big explosion nuclear explodual incremental before you know it you will look around it will be a wasteland a devastation nothing will be standing, not people, not institutions, no one will be in your life. Your life will be
89:09 constricted to the maximum, empty. It will be only you and you and self-sufficient. Yes. Self-contained. Yeah. But that’s it. With nothing around but a post-apocalyptic landscape. And the building will keep standing and the companies will keep working and Amazon
89:28 will deliver and it will all feel very normal but it will be hollow. You know this there are beautiful enormous trees they stand for 3,000 years inside. They’re empty. The termites the termites ate them. There’s the shell remains and you say what a beautiful tree. This tree
89:51 will never fall. There’s nothing. It’s not a tree. The simulaku the termites the ants ate it from inside. There’s nothing there. No sap, no stem, no nothing. And so everything will keep standing. Marian will keep making videos. I will keep giving
90:08 interviews. Amazon will keep delivering. There will be elections and you will say everything is normal. This vakning, what is he talking about? But none of it will be real. It will all be a simulation because ultimately when push comes to shove, none of it will function.
90:25 None of it will work. When you really have to test it, none of it will work. It it’s inertia. There will be inertia. You know, things will continue. Even when Rome, when Rome was invaded in 476, barbarians destroyed Rome. Took over. Actually, they didn’t
90:43 destroy Rome. They took over. They became the new emperors of Rome. People think that Rome ceased to exist. Not true. But even when Rome fell, you know, was a major event. For a few hundred years, everything continued as normal. People were paying
91:00 taxes. There were tribunes and this and everything continued normally. Only the emperors were barbarians. Professor people get used to an a new normal very easily or it’s a suffering process
91:22 in this >> you don’t get to used to a new normal overnight. It’s a normalization process and this is what is known in psychology as desensitization. >> Mhm. >> You’re exposed to a new stimuli. Initially they are aversive. The stimuli are aversive. They’re unpleasant. They
91:40 are frightening. They are. But the more you’re exposed to them, and that applies to everything on the physiological level. So, you’re going to be exposed to heat. Initially, the heat has unleashed. Ultimately, you get used to it. You plunge into ice cold water in the in the
91:54 sea. Initially, it’s very cold. After 10 minutes, you’re used to it. Everything is like that. Sensit desensitization is is part of life. So yes, of course people will survive. That’s what I’m saying. They will survive. There will be Amazon deliveries. There will be news on
92:10 the television. You will not feel anything. It will be look totally normal to you. But if you look back 20 years, you will see how abnormal the situation now is compared to 20 years ago. This 20 years normalized it. This 20 years desensitized you. This repeated exposure
92:29 to stimuli reduced your arousal. arousal was reduced to the point of non-existence. So it became part of who you are. You assimilated it. You created a narrative to accommodate it. You and this is essentially the key mechanism of fantasy. Fantasy exposes you to aversive
92:48 reality and offers you a way out, a solution. Fantasy says, “Why do you need this? You don’t need this. All you have to do is accept this narrative and say, you know what? I will accept this narrative because it makes me feel much better or less afraid or something. >> Prof.
93:07 This kind of movement we are running u this kind of movement some people are giving up of the their electronic devices and they are choosing to to live in in a forum. It’s it’s slow but it’s happening and it’s another fantasy. >> It’s a >> it’s another fantasy. >> Yeah.
93:35 It’s uh not sustainable. Simply there’s not enough physical space to accommodate people who choose this kind of lifestyle. And as long as people are in the city, they’re highly dependent on other people and on fantasies. Cities are constructed on fantasies.
93:52 People cannot go back to the village. There’s not enough space, not enough land, we’re too many. 8.3 billion. If we were to reduce miraculously to two billion, such a movement would be feasible. But with 8.3 billion is not feasible. As long as you were in the
94:07 city, you’re embedded in a fantasy. Even if you avoid all technology because food, you buy food in a supermarket. That’s a fantasy. You did not grow the food. You don’t touch the soil. You not wait for the rain. who went to a fantastic space and miraculously you
94:24 have bread you know it’s a fantasy a strong fantasy element there so I no I don’t believe this this is a protest movement it’s like in the matrix the movie yes >> there is zon what’s called >> it’s a protest movement everything is always every human every change in human
94:41 affairs created >> a reaction >> so when protestantism happened you had counterreformation yes Every change creates a counter reaction. So, and this is a protest, a counter reaction to everything I’m describing, to the fantasy, an attempt to reconnect with reality.
95:01 But even that is a bit ridiculous because even if you give up on your electronics and you go to live in a village or farmhouse or whatever, you still have to buy so many things that Yes. >> from the outside. Even the uni bombber, I was laughing. Everyone said, “Wow, the
95:18 uni bomber lived alone for decades in the woods. What are you talking about?” Every week he was going to do shopping in a supermarket. Every week he did shopping in the supermarket. I’m kidding or not. You know what? What are we talking about? He sent his manifesto to
95:34 the New York Times. To the New York Times. That’s how how much of a loner he was. You know, there’s no such thing. You cannot uh avoid fantasy. You can avoid reality. This is the innovation. In the past, even if you chose fantasy, you had to be in touch with reality.
95:54 Even if you chose fantasy, even if you’re a religious person, you had to work the land. You couldn’t avoid reality today. And that’s a great revolution. You can avoid reality completely and be 100% in fantasy. I think with this we have to finish before Marian shoots us.
96:13 >> Okay. Okay. He has under the chair under the chair his kalashnik. >> Can I ask you one more thing? >> Yes. >> And uh you you just said people are choosing fantasy or rejecting reality and when will they know that this uh this fantasy is their own choice, their
96:39 their own creation. And when is the the psychopath and when because they are choosing they are choosing the the fantasy and >> all fantasies involve choice that’s why I I’m struggling against the narrative of victimhood that’s why all people who
96:59 have been victimized many people have been victimized of course but they have been they have had a contribution to their own victimization they contributed something what is this something they have made a choice There is no victimization without
97:15 choice. Mom, sorry. All these stories, I didn’t do anything. I was just an innocent victim. You know, I couldn’t have couldn’t have done anything. All victimization involves a choice. The choices could be very minimal, very very minimal, infinite small, very difficult
97:33 to perceive or but there’s always a choice. So when a psychopath comes and tells you, “Listen, if you give me your money, I’ll double it in one year, you’re making a choice to give the money.” If a narcissist comes and tells you, “Oh, you’re amazing. I’ve never
97:48 seen a woman like you. You’re the most drop dead gorgeous compared to you. Scarlett Johnson is ugly. I don’t know what.” You’re making a choice to believe that, knowing full well that it’s an idealization. It’s a fantasy. >> And that’s the point.
98:02 >> It’s a choice. Always is a choice. That’s the point because if they are choosing the this is a strong indicative that something is wrong inside of them and they are not looking at this. >> It’s an indication. No, no, I disagree. It’s an indication that reality has
98:20 become too much. Even healthy people can >> Yes, >> even healthy people can find reality too much. This was uh this was I was supposed to to say and because the the major point in narcissism is the the reality is unbearable. >> Yes. Intolerable.
98:45 >> We all have reality tolerance levels of reality tolerance. Some of us are more resilient, more tolerant of reality, some less. So we can assume that the choice of the the victim could be the for the same reason because something in their their reality is is intolerable.
99:08 >> Yes. I said it nine times if I counted correctly. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Yes. So the offer from a narcissist
99:17 they can’t resist. >> Yes. I agree. >> They can’t resist. When reality becomes unbearable and intolerable, you become susceptible to susceptible to um fantasy. It’s a little like viral load to use your discipline. >> When the viral load exceeds a certain threshold,
99:38 then susceptibility existing susceptibility causes the infection. So you could be exposed to a virus under the viral load, under a certain viral load, and nothing will happen. But then overexposure you get infected. It’s an infection and there is susceptibility that is
99:58 preconditioned or predicated on a certain threshold. What is this threshold? What I call reality tolerance. If your reality tolerance is six, you’ll be aminable to fantasy in two hours. If your reality tolerance is one, it will take 20 minutes. If your
100:13 reality tolerance is 15, it will take six six years. Depends. Everyone is susceptible to reality. That’s the key insight. No human being is immune to susceptible to fantasy. No human being is immune to fantasy. No such thing because fantasy recreates the symbiotic
100:35 state with the mother is goes back to real the real engines the real fuel of everything that is being human. Everything that is human. So anyone who offers you a fantasy is offering offering you a maternal solution offer offering you a new mother and that’s why
100:55 it’s irresistible because you can give up on your adulthood even if it’s for a minute even if it’s for the fantasy. The deal with the fantasy is the transaction you’re making with the fantasy is you no longer need to be an adult. You no longer need to be responsible. You no
101:11 longer need to be anxious. You no longer need to be accountable. you know, leave that to me. If it’s a political leader, political, leave that to me. If it’s a doctor, leave that to me. If it’s a narcissist, leave that to me. You so suddenly you feel enormous relief
101:27 and you feel um infantilized because only an infant has no responsibilities. And the minute you’re an infant, the minute you’re regressed, the minute you struck this Fian deal, you’re regressed instantaneously. You become an infant and then the fantasy progenitor, the
101:48 person who created the fantasy becomes your mother instinctively becomes your mother. It’s not he has to talk about it, offer you. So Donald Trump is the mother of all the millions that follow him because the deal he made with him is trust me I can solve anything. I can do
102:06 anything. I’m omnipotent. I’m omnisient. I’m >> I’m going to save you. >> I’m going to save you. Trust me, you don’t need to work anymore. You don’t need to vote anymore. You don’t need to um doubt yourselves. You don’t need to assume responsibility. You’re not
102:20 accountable for anything. I make all the decisions and so on. Hit made a similar deal. And that minute when he took away their agency, they became infants. These are infants. And the minute they’re infants, automatically, in reflexively, instinctively, call it any any way you
102:38 want, he became their mother. Because if you’re infant, there’s a mother. You cannot be an infant without a mother. The infant mother. That’s the core dynamic in any fantasy, religion as well. Of course, God is your father, mother, parental figure.
102:55 >> It’s like the narcissist has proven a point. is he reduces the the partner to a child and he abuses the the child as he was abused. >> There’s a recreation of of early childhood dynamics. Of course, that’s a shirt fantasy is a recreation. Anything
103:15 the narcissist failed to accomplish, he refuses to allow his partner to accomplish. So, for example, the narcissist has never separated. So, he doesn’t allow his partner to separate. He doesn’t recognize the partner’s separateness and externality because he
103:29 was never perceived as separate and external by the by the mother. Everything that happened to he didn’t develop a self. So he doesn’t allow the partner to have a self. He breaks destroys shatters herself you know in a variety of techniques. So yes it’s a
103:45 recreation of course but it’s not reducing the partner. It’s not there not a competition. There’s no win and lose. >> The partner loves it. Yes, >> she participates in it. She’s in it because she she adores it. She wants more. If she doesn’t, she walks away.
104:02 When she doesn’t, she walks away. It’s she finds it irresistible, addictive, incredible, a reexperiencing of a period in her life where she felt safe, where she felt loved, where she felt accepted, where she felt she belonged. This proposition by the narcissist, the
104:22 shared fantasy caters to all our most primordial atistic needs starting with the need to be seen. We need to be seen because if you’re not seen as a baby, you’re dead baby. That’s the number one need overrides everything. The need to be seen is more
104:42 important than the need to eat. It’s overrides. You will go hungry as long as you are sin. But even if you’re wellfed and you’re not seen, you will become depressed and suicidal. >> Yes, >> the need to be seen is it. And the narcissist offers you his gaze. What the
105:00 narcissist contributes to the fantasy is a permanent gaze that regards you as an idealized baby, adorable, lovable, perfect baby. At that second, even if he doesn’t say anything, he becomes your mother. And you are a child again. What Freud called
105:21 the oceanic feeling. You are immersed in an ocean >> that feels completely safe. The sense of safety because the world is anxogenic. The world creates anxieties and what the narcissist offers to you is anxolytic. It reduces your existential anxiety. At
105:41 that moment you you are at peace like never before. That’s the attraction of the narcissist. We have to say goodbye because Marian is already I saw him taking the Kalashnikov and >> Yes, professor. >> Oh, I saw you know many guests I saw here that he killed is uh
106:01 >> thank you so much professor for your time explanations. >> It’s an honor a huge honor being here with you. >> Thank you. And I really appreciate that you are not indifferent to my book and we are here today. Yes. >> In this conversation. >> How can I be indifferent to a book
106:22 titled Snapshotting somebody? >> How can I be indifferent? That’s the ultimate fantasy. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, professor. >> Thank you for having me and thank you for the opportunity.

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/narcissism-social-malaise-affects-individuals-with-psychologist-and-biologist-marcia-maia/

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

it's, Meaning, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin Summaries

If you enjoyed this article, you might like the following:

Sudden Insight, Psychopathic Narcissists & Why Narcissists Manipulate Their Children | LIVE Q&A

The speaker discussed how sudden emergence of memories and insights can be destabilizing and must be handled carefully in therapy to avoid overwhelming or retraumatizing patients, noting shifts away from debriefing to safer, structured approaches. He distinguished narcissism from psychopathy, explaining that goal-oriented, power-seeking, fearless individuals who pursue money and

January 11, 2026

How Narcissist Baits You to Become His/her Mother (Skopje Seminar Day 2 Opening, May 2025)

The speaker reviewed multiple models of narcissism—sociosexuality, the agency model, and the dominant psychodynamic/psychonamic synthesis—highlighting core traits such as grandiosity, entitlement, approach orientation, compulsivity, and repetition compulsion. He explained developmental origins (early childhood abuse or over-spoiling), introduced the “shared fantasy” mechanism and its staged dynamics (spotting, auditioning, baiting, co-idealization, love-bombing,

January 8, 2026

What is Sublimation? Duty and Beast

The speaker provided a clinician-focused exploration of sublimation, defining it as an ego-driven transformation of instinctual energy (originally sexual, later including aggression) into socially valued, non-instinctual activities through mechanisms like aim inhibition and fantasy. He emphasized sublimation’s developmental, cultural, and ethical dimensions—its role in creativity and normal functioning, its limits

January 7, 2026

Narcissistic Abuse: Phase 2 (Live Questions by Mark Thomas Beare, MPIT originator)

Speaker addressed a deleted live session where YouTube removed over 1,400 questions, explaining they will respond to reinstated questions from Mark Thomas Beare about flaws in the narcissistic abuse recovery field. Main points: the field is dominated by a victimhood morality play and oversimplified, aggrandizing content; real recovery is complex,

January 6, 2026

Sadistic Honesty or Truthtelling?

Sam Vaknin distinguishes constructive truthtelling from sadistic honesty, arguing that honesty becomes harmful when it targets others’ vulnerabilities, is performed publicly to humiliate, or is used for self-aggrandizement. He emphasizes that honest feedback in private aims at growth and should be delivered with humility and empathy. True honesty accepts human

January 5, 2026

Many Faces of Narcissist’s Discard

Sambaknim distinguishes between external and internal forms of narcissistic discard: external discard is visible and unequivocal (separation, divorce, infidelity), while internal discard is subtle and hidden, occurring when partners remain together publicly but emotionally disengage. Internal discard manifests as emotional absence, indifference, devaluation, setting impossible standards, paranoia, and undermining the

January 4, 2026

Narcissist’s False Self: Sublime or Sublimation?

Sand Baknne linked the false self in narcissistic pathology to the concept of sublimation, arguing the false self functions as a sublimatory channel that redirects traumatic, aggressive, and depressive energies into socially acceptable, exaggerated goals. He contrasted Freud’s and Lacan’s conceptions of sublimation, emphasizing its narcissistic focus—where individuals internalize societal

January 3, 2026

Why Delulu Narcissists, Delusional Victims Bond (Delusional Resonance Bonding)

Sam Vaknin introduces ‘delusional resonance’ as a process distinct from trauma bonding, arguing that both abuser and victim share matching delusions that glue them into a shared fantasy. He outlines several parallel delusions—grandiosity, belief in fantasy as reality, victimhood, entitlement, and perceived immunity—that resonate between narcissist and victim and explain

January 2, 2026

Narcissist’s Identity: Shame, Delusional Self-concept (Clip: Narcissism Summaries YouTube Channel)

The discussion described narcissism as an arrested developmental state characterized by infantile defense mechanisms, grandiose cognitive distortions, and a need for control that leads individuals to construct and inhabit a distorted inner reality. Emotional dysregulation in narcissists presents as restricted or inappropriate affect, chronic envy and anger, and a compensatory

January 1, 2026

How to Survive Your Borderline Partner (Clip: Narcissism Summaries YouTube Channel)

The meeting advised multiple techniques for supporting a partner with borderline personality traits: teach her to externalize and verbalize emotions (e.g., chair work), use CBT to counteract automatic negative thoughts, and practice anger-management and cognitive restructuring. Establish strict communication protocols, consistent routines, stress-management, and reduce environmental triggers to stabilize mood

December 31, 2025

Vaknin Transcripts