Hello, my name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, at least what’s left of me.

Narcissists and psychopaths are often compared to aliens, to extraterrestrials, people who had come from another planet. They share perhaps the same biology, they are based on carbon, which is helpful to some extent, but they lack the basic tools, the basic instruments to grasp, comprehend, digest, assimilate, understand, and then leverage the experience of being human. They don’t have empathy, because they don’t have empathy, they don’t have a workable theory of mind, they don’t fully understand emotions, what makes other people tick, why people react the way they do, and so on.

They have cold empathy, they scan people, and as they scan people, they discover the vulnerabilities, the chinks in the armor, and they can penetrate, so they are like intrusion detection systems, penetration testers, but nothing much more than that.

The inner experience of the narcissist and the psychopath, I believe, has very little to do with the inner experience of any other human being, even human beings with mental health disorders, and so they are often compared to another species.

If you talk to narcissists or a psychopath, they themselves will say, I am like a machine, I am a very sophisticated device, I am a very efficient computer, a robot. They themselves will say, I am the next step in the evolutionary ladder. Narcissists will tell you, I am superior to most people, most people are inferior to me, because I have traits and qualities that they don’t have.

Psychopaths will be very proud of their ability to manipulate people and to extract from them all kinds of benefits, sex, money, power, not necessarily in this order.

So psychopaths and narcissists themselves regard themselves, their essence, their quiddity, as non-human.

Could it be that there is a group of human beings who are actually not human?

Well, it depends how we define human, but under the most extensive definition of human, and even under the narrowest definition of human.

Yes, narcissists and psychopaths are not human, they are not human.

Similarly, it is conceivable to construct a form of artificial intelligence, which would, for example, write poetry, imitate emotions perfectly, display empathy convincingly, and yet no one would think that it’s a human being, because it’s silicon-based.

We make the mistake, we believe that if something is carbon-based, then we have an affinity with that thing. We have an affinity with anything that is based on carbon, I would call it carbon affinity.

So we have an affinity with animals, we have an affinity, we anthropomorphize animals, we attribute to animals human qualities, human traits, motivations, human psychodynamics, and of course, it’s probably, in all probability, very wrong.

The experience of being a dog can’t in any way, shape, or form be much connected to the experience of being a human being, and the experience of a narcissist and psychopath is even more remote, even less connected, because of the capacity.

And so I thought that today I would discuss aliens, extraterrestrials, and the rest of this video would be dedicated to the question, will extraterrestrials, will ET, will aliens come here to rescue us, to rescue humanity from the pandemic, from the destruction of the planet, from the mountain of deaths that we had, we are accumulating and had accumulated, from the ruination of future generations, we botched it, we screwed up big time, we screwed up between genders, men and women can’t communicate anymore, don’t team up anymore, all our institutions are unraveling, no one, no one would dispute, no one would dispute the fact that on the multiple levels and dimensions of existence, we had failed as a species, multiplications, quantity is not the only test, quality is equally important. And while our quantity is multiplied, in terms of quality, we have been set back badly.

And so will aliens come to save us, will they lend, take me to your leader kind of thing, we mean no harm, we come in peace, possibly.

I’m going to analyze aliens, ET, extraterrestrials, other planets, and so on and so forth, but bear in mind, it’s an allegory, it’s a parable, because what we are doing today, we are asking narcissists and psychopaths to save us, our leaders are psychopathic narcissists, our medical doctors are grandiose narcissists, many of our academics, the elites, media, show business everywhere are narcissistic or covert narcissists, or worse. We have let narcissists and psychopaths take over, we are led by them, our lives are determined by them.

In many, many respects, we had already been invaded by aliens, they are everywhere, they’re in the White House, they’re outside the White House, they’re in the swamp, they’re in academe, they’re everywhere, they are everywhere. We have been body snatched.

And so if aliens already control the planet, masquerading as human beings, shapeshifting as human beings, then you know, why not analyze the real thing, the real McCoy, the real deal, why not talk about proper aliens?

I am not suggesting that there are alien reptiles in charge. I will not mention the unmentionable name.

The sovereign suggesting, of course, psychopaths and narcissists are born to flesh and blood women. And of course, they are raised by flesh and blood, fathers and mothers, in flesh and blood families, in flesh and blood environments, and they’re exposed to all the exigencies and the institutions of human society. I’m not saying they’re not human in that sense, in the societal sense.

I’m saying that they lack the basic equipment to be human. They lack emotions, they lack empathy, and what is a human being without emotions and empathy, and they are in charge.

You don’t believe me? Open CNN. Watch the news. They’ve taken over. Let us talk therefore about aliens.

And bear in mind, when I say the word alien, substitute for the word psychopath, substitute for the word narcissist. I’m sure many of the same arguments would apply to them.

So here we go on our first intergalactic trip.

The various projects that comprise the 60 years old search for extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI, S-E-T-I, these projects raise two important issues.

Number one, do aliens exist? And number two, can we communicate with aliens at all? If aliens exist and we can communicate with them, how come we have never encountered an extraterrestrial? How come we have never spoken to an alien or corresponded with ET?

There are six basic explanations to this apparent conundrum and they are not mutually exclusive.

Number one, it’s possible that aliens actually do not exist.

Number two, it’s possible that the technology they use, they’re using is far too advanced to be detected by us.

And the flip side of this hypothesis that the technology we are using is insufficiently advanced to be noticed by them.

Number three, that we are looking for extraterrestrials and aliens in all the wrong places.

Number four, that the aliens are lifeforms so different to us that we fail to recognize them as sentient beings or to communicate with them.

They are all around us, but we just don’t realize because we don’t identify them as lifeforms.

Number five, that aliens are trying to communicate with us, but are constantly failing due to a variety of hindrances, some of them structural, some of them circumstantial.

And the sixth possible explanation, that aliens, extraterrestrials, ET, they are avoiding us because of our misconduct.

Example, the alleged destruction of the environment, the invention of nuclear weapons, or maybe they are avoiding us because of our traits.

For example, our innate belligerents. We are very belligerent species, very competitive.

Before we proceed to tackle these arguments, we need to consider two critical issues.

Number one, how can we tell the artificial from the natural? How can we be sure to distinguish alien artifacts from naturally occurring objects? How can we tell apart with certainty alien languages from random or white noise or other natural signals?

And the second question is, I’m a Jew, so everything comes in two.

Second question is, if we have absolutely nothing, in common with the aliens, can we still recognize them as intelligent lifeforms? Can we maintain an exchange of meaningful information with them?

And so we need to answer these questions before we can have any intelligent conversation.