We have been hearing a lot about narcissism. There are two problems with the concept. One is that nobody knows what causes it. The other is that nobody knows how to treat it. Which means that nobody has anything worthwhile to say on the subject.
If someone is too much into himself, then the solution is bringing to his attention the situation of other people that stand to interest him. Someone on the Internet once told me that he used to find himself fascinating until he started paying attention to other people who were more fascinating than himself. I am pretty sure that there will always be someone more fascinating than you, whoever or wherever you happen to be; and paying attention to such things stands to extend your worldview.
When I was 18, I had strong – and not reciprocated – feelings for a woman named Joanna. A graduate student named Doug told me that instead of obsessing over Joanna I stood to achieve greater benefit by paying attention to problems around me. The result was a newsletter, on which Doug and I cooperated, exposing corruption in the university. The obsessive mentality that many condemned became fruitful in bringing people’s attention to things that merited their attention. What was seen as sick became fruitful; and a mentality that is attacked became grounds for constructive action.
So we see people saying that self-centeredness, egotism, hubris and more along the same lines is the source of all evil. I ask this, what is worse, being self-centered or being a Nazi? The totalitarian ideologies of the world all in-weigh against individual ego and subsume it under the ego of the collective. And far more wrong has been done for totalitarianism than has been done for egoism.
To come up with anything new, one must think in original ways. A person who does that will always have people calling him – crazy, selfish, evil, whatever. Yet such people make the biggest contributions, and people owe vastly to those who do such things.
My situation was an unusual one. I spent the first 12 years of my like in the Soviet Union. Under Communism, people were meant to work for the benefit of the collective, and I adopted that creed. When I came to America my Communist schooling got deconstructed, at which point people started saying that I was selfish. This is beyond ridiculous.
So we have Ayn Rand making a virtue of selfishness and equated it with creativity and ingenuity. This had any number of unexpected effects. People were not ready to see selfishness as a virtue, but they were ready to see the creative people as selfish. She ended up hurting the very people that she was trying to help.
Is selfishness the worst thing in the world? I can think of any number of things that are worse than selfishness. A terrorist does more harm than a businessman or a lawyer. A Westboro Baptist does more harm than a businessman or a lawyer. A Nazi does more harm than a businessman or a lawyer. So do many in psychology.
From the perspective of the self, the world consists of the self and others. To benefit the world, you benefit everyone – both self and others – whom your actions affect. Both self-interest and altruism are valid. People should be free to benefit both others and themselves. At which point the totality of one’s actions becomes positive, and benefit reaches everyone you stand to impact.
So neither self-orientation nor other-orientation is either good or bad. Both are capable of both. Wrong things can be done for the self, wrong things can be done for others. I want to see more people adopt a double-edge sword of benefiting both others and themselves. That way is accomplished a full benefit. And people both do good and do well.