My brother is a bigwig in the booze trade and I’m an alcoholic so you’d think that I would have access to top shelf hooch at mates rates. One of life’s fringe benefits.
Truth is, he’s never given me more than a beer from his fridge when I visit sporadically.
This is not to denigrate the man. I’ve never asked him for more than a beer from his fridge either. What I do get is titbits of info & insight that add value to my life as any relationship worth having should provide. We have some great chats & while being almost black & white in many regards, his knowledge & manner of imparting it is a welcome, pragmatic & revealing information stream.
During one such beers session many moons ago, while educating me on methods of booze brewing & distilling he remarked “All distilled alcohol is essentially vodka. The word vodka refers to the process of distillation not necessarily to just the distilled grain alcohol commonly referred to as Vodka”
Recently I decided to task myself with writing an article worthy of submission to ROK. The working title is “How To Shame & Get Away With It” (purposefully clickbaity) and I started to research & construct the narrative for the article. The more I read the more I found I had more reading & thinking to do on the subject & now am considering a more full exploration that will quite possibly exceed the word count quota for submission. So how does this all relate to the above?
In my research it has become abundantly clear to me that the value of shame inasmuch as an inherent social policing structure, an inbuilt human justice system if you like, is being eroded by the rise of narcissism on a social level throughout western society. A narcissistic personality is constructed by the individual precisely to ward off & defend against an amygdala attack such as in the form of shameful feelings. These people never let the shame penetrate & mature into guilt & humility which are the building blocks of bettering oneself.
In my readings I have come across general & more specific discussions on personality disorder types & have found it useful to relate back to various personalities that I have or had surrounded myself & was able to gain a lot of previously hidden insight. It is well known that personality disorders per se are on the rise amongst the population and so it is not hard to receive a lot of information from the world around you. What I’m finding is that on some level we are all narcissistic to a certain degree & it is shame, guilt & humility that ultimately work as gate-keepers to the narcissistic influence on the ego.
As concepts like shame, guilt & humility become passé while attention whoring & shooting your mouth off become accepted & normalised, it is abundantly clear to me that Narcissism as a personality trait is the most insidious of all. It is the baseline for all of the personality disorders, & also the degree to which that individual allows manifestation of other types eg. histrionic or obsessive-compulsive in their overall character.
Essentially, Narcissism is the vodka of personality disorders.
doun2others 