No, not because I particularly identify with the sort, though having been called that by a variety of colorful individuals with outstanding personality traits and a plethora of self-aggrandizing opinions about their position in this meaningless world, this has more to do with the true type of narcissist, one concerned by Other standards as obsessed with themselves.

Specifically Narcissus, you know, the Greek dude. Or whatever, I don’t fucking know, maybe he was Italian, THE POINT IS THIS; it wasn’t his fault, nor is it really a bad thing to be a narcissist. This is my Thesis or whatever.

We start off the story with two happy go fucking lucky parents going off to see Teiresias, some blind prophet who can “tell the future” and what not. The parental unit ask the old man “what will become of our beautiful baby boy?” like all parents do with their biological vanity mirrors. This is the beginning of the end, and it’s not clear what exactly happens to our kiddo Narci while he’s growing up, but you can only infer if you listen to what Teiresias said to the new parents: “He will grow old if he never knows himself”.

I’m sure you know that Narci fell in love with a reflection and then killed himself thereafter. So just think about this for a second, why would Narci fall in love with a reflection of himself, in water of all places? Magic? Plot Holes? Greek God intervention? Whatever. Look. The point I want to make is, why would he have not fallen in love with his reflection sooner?

Because he was never given the opportunity by his parents (parents being both literal and belonging to the symbolic order).

Yes, so, you might see where I’m getting at with this. imagine raising a child in a house with no mirrors, probably no windows either because even glass reflects, and basically being locked up all his life living indoors. Never being able to go outside, to experience life, to interact with people, develop an identity, his parents being biological robots programmed to keep their little shit bag alive as long as possible, leading to a personality almost entirely analogist to solipsism.

So for no fucking reason at all our other than to progress this fairytale, our Hero goes out into the real world for a stroll in the park. Enter Echo, some fairy bitch who can only repeat what others say; big surprise. Anyways, she falls in love with Narci cus he’s greek and most likely handsome as fuck because his parents are basically demi-gods and this fairytale has to serve SOME kind of point. Anyways, Narci swerves the fuck outta that ho and she goes crying to Nemesis who basically says “I got you fam” and vows to avenge her fallen worthless slut by making Narcissus fall in love with his own reflection; which ultimately leads to him realizing his love will never be reciprocated and then he commits suicide or falls in the water and drowns depending on whatever variation of the same story you read, BUT! lets examine some shit real quick.

First of all, lets talk about this Echo first. Now, what kind of girl is she? Frankly I can imagine Echo being some pseudo intellectual, liberal, probably doesn’t shave her armpits because fuck the patriarchy, and has swallowed the golden cock of denial and totally believes that anything she does is totally A-OK buddy because female empowerment is all about doing whatever the fuck you wanna do with no repercussions for asshole-ish behavior nowadays. She’s probably the white girl you super-liked on Tinder that says she only dates dude taller than 6’3″ and that have blood type O negative and an amazing career that involves travel and free margaritas. But enough about my own projections on the contemporary women, lets look at some basic truths we can pull out of this.

Basically, all she can do is repeat what others say, she’s got no mind of her own, or rather, scratch that, she does, but she’s unable for some reason to actually say whats on her mind until she asks for revenge from Nemesis; basically feeling entitled to Narci’s undying adoration and love just because she mimics what he says and then gets as pouty as the posse of bros with untucked dress shirts and jeans and Payless pleather loafers in Las Vegas on a Saturday night that didn’t get laid and whose coke connect fell through. Now, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, it sounds like she’s got some self esteem problems, probably is in love with the idea of love, and men back in the day were probably able to have their pick of the litter, thereby forcing women to say and act the way they thought would best complement them so as to get picked and get married before they got ugly and infertile and no one would want them and they’d die alone with type 2 herpes they got from parading the bars in their mid 30’s after a divorce and is now living in some god forsaken condo listening to sly and the family stone’s greatest hits on repeat after overdosing on overpriced red wine from Safeway and the rest of the oxy’s in the 60 count orange prescription bottle that the doctor just “gave” her for a sprained ankle like some useless prize horse with a broken leg; chuck chunk, bang.

Now, traditionally we see this story as one that condemns Narcissus for being too “into” himself. That you should basically try to avoid loving yourself. I can’t help but notice this happening even when I go to the gym and see that one girl who literally stares at herself while she slowly walks up the stair master, looking at every single inch of her body in what I can only imagine being something similar to the scene in Silence of the Lambs when Buffalo Bill is standing in the mirror wearing his skin suit going, “Oh yeah, I’d fuck me” (and after getting off that, going to the leg curl machine and doing it inverted [aka wrong] and doing pelvic thrusts that look exactly like she’s strengthening her “muscles” so she’ll be able to do reverse cowgirl longer than whomever she fucks can last before busting on her 200 thread count sheets from Target). Well, power to her, there’s nothing wrong with that, maybe a little neurotic, but you’ll see that there’s a double standard there. If it was a guy putting in the same amount of effort, maybe even less, it’d be weird. It’s ok to be a girl who treats her body like a sex object (make no mistake, no matter how far “feminism” has come, the objectification of the womanly body has only become further cemented in just that, only this time, it’s encouraged blatantly while denied vehemently), but for a guy to do that to his own body, it’s seen as “compensation” of some sorts. So if you want to talk about oppression, I think it’s important to put your money where your mouth is. Go ahead and look up how boys are repressed in schools, shamed for their “violent” tendencies to want to play with guns and stick swords, censored and silenced when they write about death and destruction in their writing, and attaching concerned notes from the teacher to their parents, warning them of “psychotic” behavior patterns. But I won’t delve into that right now, frankly even if I did your confirmation bias would forbid you from even considering the alternative schema. But the takeaway from this deviation is the parallel’s between Narcissus’ demise and society’s refusal of his self-realization. Which leads me to my next point.

Lets not forget Narcissus’ parents here. It goes without saying that while friends and family will say you weren’t raised right when you were a teenager, as soon as you go into adulthood, it seems like all those excuses of blaming your parents for your bad behavior suddenly go out the window. As if, it doesn’t matter because you should know better when you turn a certain age, so why the fuck do I have to listen to anything my parents tell me to do while growing up if it’s just going to suddenly CLICK one day. Yeah, stupid. it doesn’t work that way. There’s a reason cognitive behavior therapy takes intensive sessions that last from weeks to years; the damage is nearly irreversible, everything done is basically learning how to override the behavior, but you never truly get rid of it.

Now I’m a firm believer that a man (for all intensive purposes, man means hu[man], so fuck off, I don’t care about your pronouns and feel-good-fairy-dust-linguistic-fugazis) is responsible for his actions in life, that the decisions you make define not only you as a person, but also humanity (here’s looking at you Sartre, you cross-eyed toad). But of course, if you take a look at those sections when Sartre mentions this, it’s so goddamn abstract that it has no place in this world. Yes, yes, I know all about “situations” and whatnot, but frankly the whole thing stinks of aristocracy that I can’t even fathom why anyone would actually take his philosophy seriously and apply it to their own life unless they were some pretentious douche with an organic cotton infinity scarf and overpriced cappuccino with the image of a Totoro that also has twenty tattoos and still lives at home with his parents. Even Sartre seems to be one that advocates for “staying in your means” instead of overcoming the odds with his concept of situation. But anyways, before we dive in to this next part, I do want to say that above all else I do believe that the most important aspect of being human is having a choice. And so you can see the crime of Narci’s parents as being one akin to existential robbery. Remember those words, “He shall grow old if he never knows himself”.

What kind of life is worth living if you never know yourself?

So here is the dilemma at last. All the time we’re taught by society and parents and administration and etc and etc that you shouldn’t be so consumed with yourself, you gotta stop being so “selfish” and contribute to the greater good.

Well fuck that.

Once you learn about the origin of all this, it becomes clear (to me at least) that the Other could best be described as Ginsberg’s depiction of Moloch in his poem “Howl”; this demonic overlord demanding sacrifices of souls and bodies, the metaphysical scapegoat of liberal libido, a fascist, one who doesn’t let you suck endless cocks in back alley gas stations by saintly motorcyclists, basically a Freudian father preventing all of us from fucking each other into oblivion.

But while this doesn’t seem like such a bad thing when framed a certain way, it does bring up an interesting question. Yes, of course having the freedom to fuck whomever you please or do whatever the hell you want with your free time is an awesome plan. What comes after is likely something akin to hedonistic anarchy, an explosion of sexual and death-drive energy that will consume us all and everything goes to shit and the human race is no more. I’m of no objection to that scenario, I don’t find a convincing reason for this “human race” to continue, especially in the fashion that it is going, and with the whole almost inevitable repeat of post WW-1 Germany; rounding up the Jews and slaughtering them all to make Germany great again, only this time its Mexicans and Muslims and Black people too, as a result of the metaphorical “masters” having realized they aren’t able to contain us to be their little slaves any longer.

So to me, the biggest question for an individual at this time, and likely of any time, is “where is my place in the world?”.

The world, frankly, doesn’t give a shit about your feelings. In fact, the whole global economy and its subsequent “world powers” seem to be able to exist virtually without any input from you or your comrades.

(By now you’re probably wondering why I seem to be going off topic, but I’ll come back to it in a second, just wait, couldn’t resist calling you out on your bullshit.)

So why does this society need a person to not be a narcissist, and to be a well-rounded individual who is more concerned with the fate of his country and its citizens than his own needs and desires? Why can’t I binge watch game of thrones and jerk off to April O’Neil getting banged by her step-brother in the shower and then go to the gym and pretend like none of the above ever happened when I strike up a conversation with a lovely lady who probably responds very well to attention and my cut abs and who’ll likely give me the clap but I’ll justify it in my head and say I don’t care because just look at her wow, and then go home, jerk off again, and go to sleep with the Surangama Sutra on my nightstand?

Frankly, it’s all a game of appearances to me. Everybody is, how you say, frontin’. I don’t really believe in free will, and neither does anybody else for that matter, but they’re too afraid to admit it to themselves. Even as I write this now, I re-read several passages and that voice doesn’t even seem to belong to me, it sounds foreign, I want to reach out and grab those fingers tapping the keyboard and just stop it, but I can’t; my mind doesn’t have fingers. Instead I’m condemned to this body, an automaton that incessantly seeks out pleasure and pain in an indistinguishable manner. We are all alone in this world, no matter what anyway tells you. Our atoms furiously trying to escape in every direction, but we refuse them the right to become other things, other plants, other animals, other people, other patches of dirt, worm food, nutrients. So while that I have these fuckers trapped, shouldn’t I spend that time looking out for number one?

At this point if you didn’t notice, this is whole essay or what the fuck ever is mostly concerned with a male view, because I ain’t no bitch. Sarcasm (about the whole assholish part not the male part, agh whatever).

So lets look at Echo, that sweet, sweet, darling nymph. Ok, she looks pretty good, yeah, alright. Now lets examine Narci’s reaction to her advances. Now, as someone who is entirely self-contained in their being, there really is no need for the traditional notion of love. In fact, everything to a narcissist has to have something to do with their own personal gain on some level. Why do any action if it doesn’t benefit me? You could look at Echo and see a beautiful lay that would probably rock your cock off, but when you live a life of solitude, sex doesn’t really seem all that interesting when compared to the biggest question that there is; what am I?

And then she has the gall to cry all the way to Nemesis and ask for revenge. For what exactly? For denying her because Narci wasn’t all that interested in her? Doesn’t that seem childish? Did Narcissist really deserve to be raised the way that he did? To really only want to learn how to love himself first and foremost, and to realize only too late that he was unable to? And yet, he’s the prideful one, the one whose entire personality, who he is, is the object of scorn? Shouldn’t we point the finger at the parents? At society? At Echo, for being so vain as to fall in love with a man for his looks?

That was another tragedy that seems to go unnoticed for Narci. That of, what kind of man am I that attracts “that” kind of woman? And this is my issue with just people in general, especially the extroverts, whom I despise and for good reason. Why can’t you just be happy by yourself? Why do any of you feel the unbearable urge to be among one another, knowing full well what a shit show that is. You are never having as much fun as you are in the pictures you post online. I’ve seen the setup and the faces after, those pictures of you sorority sluts piggy backing in the middle of some suburban street with an unopened bottle of cotton candy Smirnoff and laughing faces that are extinguished after the flash goes off, spending the entire night in corners on your phones telling everyone how much fun you are having on twitter while orally and facially expressing disdain at any kind of inebriated explosion of enjoyment from other people? Or the bros who make themselves look more fucked up than they really are, and then being pissed off when the hot girl they wanted to go train on in their sister sorority was just not down for that shit, then raging by smashing a can into your forehead and reaching for the nearest person smoking a cigarette for a free stogie as if it was owed to them, and scowling when it’s a fucking camel crush, but still smoking it anyway. We are all despicable things down towards the nitty gritty, and being social beings, we are predisposed to value our own worth with the company that we attract and oh my god that line from perks of being a wallflower is coming back, “We accept the love we think we deserve”.

I’m not advocating for obsessing over yourself as some essential God or Goddess, no way. The kind of narcissism that I advocate for is one and the same with the story of Narcissus and Echo; two polar opposites in the Aristotelian tradition of values that exist between an extreme and deficient example. The former tragically withheld from himself, failing to attach the body to the self. The latter being one entirely content with being the person that has nothing inside of them remotely authentic. Every action and word spoken is to please the Other or an other. You see this even nowadays with brand identification. People don’t like or wear or consume anything for the sake of pleasure itself, it’s for social brownie points for lack of a better word. The Products consumed, which can be anything from virtual to physical goods, actions that are in themselves “trends”, personalities, biological modifications like piercings, tattoos, and sex changes, to political and religious ideologies (even atheism can be considered a religion, with science as its catechism), ethnicity and cultures, sexuality, diet, fitness, and the list goes on and on.
The issue is in identifying where one lies on the spectrum; one end being authenticity and the other end in-authenticity. Despite having called out the above “Products” as being attributed to in-authenticity, it really lies within the individual themselves. There’s nothing wrong with being a vegan, one person may find that they don’t like that animals are being killed for their nutrition. What is wrong however, is being a vegan for the value that it has to raise one’s social status with that individual’s preferred group of idealizations, or people, while not subjectively identifying with the lifestyle authentically. It’s an entirely subjective matter, and the situation is further complicated by just how unconscious these processes of authenticity can be. You say you like bananas for A, B, and C, but what if it the case that you liked bananas because of some other reason, such as, they were the fruit that your ex-girlfriend loved in middle school? and that when you realize that, you suddenly begin to hate the taste of bananas because she broke your fucking heart in two at the 8th grade dance when she went to go grind on Nick? How can you ever be sure why you like anything that you do? anything that you hate? or anything you just don’t know about yet? As you try and piece together a coherent narrative for yourself, you are likely to find that this is impossible without admitting its complete bullshit. In fact, the first step to recovery is admitting to yourself, right here, right now, that you are entirely full of shit. We all are. Shhh bby is ok.

What comes after is something akin to the shedding of skin. Everything hitherto has been a delusion. Even water will begin to taste like something again. You have to be willing to reexamine everything you thought you knew about yourself and really ask yourself the question, “is this really important to me?” because if it’s not, than it’s time to let it go. It’s going to be hard, the sunken cost fallacy is a good explanation for this. Anything that you feel you put in time or resources becomes valuable to you because of the time and resources put in, but not the actual recipient of this time or these resources. I’m not asking you to strip naked and walk through the streets of King’s Landing with a frigid bitch ringing a bell and exclaiming “Shame” every 4 steps. But in your mind, this is what you will be doing. Those crowds of people that you feel disappointing, their shit and spit falling all over you, a cacophony of insults spewed for the sheer sake of inflicting pain onto you, is a fabrication that you have created within yourself to justify being so attached to these hopes and dreams and ideologies you hold in such high esteem; even they are not real, let them go.

In a more simplified explanation, the kind of narcissism that you should strive for is ultimately the quest for self realization. It’s the rejection of the matrix and its illusions, and believe me when I say that we are living in the matrix this very second, although in this case, there is no body outside of it, no tangible “real world” that can be experienced. Our bodies themselves are merely machines that interpret and then perceive, giving us some picture of what we feel, see, or think. Our bodies are the Machines that suck our energy, allowing us to have consciousness in order to keep the whole thing going. People seem to smile when they hear something like “Life finds a way” whilst ignoring the brutal and disgusting nature of existence. Everything is forever encroaching upon and eating itself in a cycle of death and consumption over and over again for the simple sake of existence. That is what you are, first and foremost. You yourself have been robbed by your flesh of any innocence or free will, and so I advocate for the retaking of the flesh, to accept your condition but fight against it, to transcend the carnal world and rid yourself of those primal desires and become the master of your own mind. This problem concerns your very being itself, and not just your petty social standing in the world or your relation to it. I urge you to commit metaphysical suicide, and be born again. Only this time, you will be full aware of yourself and everything all at once. It is the only way. It must happen. You must become You. Which is no one.