Well, this isn't about individuals though, it's about groups.
And groups have legitimate political and material grievances against one another, not just "narcissistic" ones, as if everything is perfect in the most perfect of possible worlds.
>In my opinion, that's bonkers. To make one's own identity and purpose so deeply based in the inferiority of another group is fucking deranged.
Well, that's the case with the North too, and the whole American experiment was established on this, and continues on the same path: on the superiority religious zealots thrown out of Europe (and later immigrants adopted into their culture cult) claim against other countries. "Greatest country in the world", "Manifest destiny", "Home of the free", "leader of the free world", and so on.
Sure. I was talking about individuals in that sentence setting up for a later pivot to groups.
> groups have legitimate political and material grievances against one another, not just "narcissistic" ones
Yes, this is a thing I also agree with. And basically said. I don't get why you're writing as if you're contradicting me.
> Well, that's the case with the North too,
In some ways with some groups at some times, yes. But that isn't proof that group-level narcissism doesn't exist. Indeed, it is evidence for it.
Isn't something being adaptive exactly what it makes it not pathological? The definition of a disease is behaviour that produces adverse outcomes in the individual or group in question.
To take up your example of racism and subordination and slavery, I think it is fundamentally important to recognize it as the economical and political structure that it was to the benefit of slave owners, not as some sort of idea out of the ether or mental illness. The racist theory is the consequence or justification for the power relation not the other way around.
In the same vein my biggest problem with this theory of group narcissism is exactly what kind of thinking it leads to, from the article:
>"How, then, can we curtail the spread of group narcissism and promote more intergroup harmony? The good news is that, just as it’s possible to have healthy individual self-esteem, it is possible to have healthy in-group love where being a member of your group feels good and you have great pride in its genuine accomplishments"
Was the confederacy defeated by group therapy and promoting healthy in-group love among the confederates because they really just were insecure about themselves? No, people literally went to war and destroyed the slave economy and the institutions underpinning it. It wasn't an issue of mass psychology.
Not at all. Hannibal Lecter thought he was just fine, that it was the rest of us with a problem. And there are plenty of times in history where being what we'd consider a diagnosable monster was a path to success.
> It wasn't an issue of mass psychology.
You haven't demonstrated that at all. Psychology didn't exist until after the Civil War. And even now most of it is focused on helping individuals who voluntarily seek treatment.
Indeed, I think you've created a false dichotomy. After WWII, the victors intervened massively in Germany and Japan. They thought that military wasn't enough. In the words of Field Marshal Montgomery, they had to "win the peace". For him, that included changing how Germans thought and felt: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/456873/Military-legend-...
So was a massive war the only way to defeat the Confederacy once it was formed? Probably. But was that war enough to stamp out the south's culture of racial hatred? Definitely not. You can read the reports from the Freedman's Bureau to see how the racial terrorism of Jim Crow was present during Reconstruction. I'd argue that failure to address the group psychology was one of America's biggest failures.
We stopped doing that because at some point we worked out that it was gross and - eventually - that it was also very unhealthy.
Technically it was a local minimum - a place to pause, but not somewhere you really want to stay.
Narcissism is similar. It's a hugely problematic way of being in the world that has been normalised for centuries. If we're lucky we're about to outgrow it.
Lacking empathy for others and for the environment is an issue of psychological hygiene and cognitive effectiveness.
In the same that poor physical hygiene causes serious health issues in the population, poor mental and psychological hygiene causes emotional and behavioural issues.
You could argue cannibalism should be a free choice and keeping the old ways is not only not harmful but a matter of honour and dignity.
No doubt those arguments were made when it was on its way out.
Narcissism is similar. It's incredibly corrosive personally and politically, and there isn't really a good argument for tolerating it.
Cannibalism is considered hopelessly abnormal behaviour today, and with any luck individual and collective narcissism will soon go the same way.
Seriously though, just like individuals who undergo a serious and dangerous psychotic episode often need to be restrained, even to the point of being shot if no other options are available that work, to avoid them causing massive damage to themselves or those around them, the same happens to nations sometimes.
Also, just like can happen in a small group with a psychotic individual, sometimes the crazy person wins.
For a nation that involves invasions, embargoes, etc. self-harm for an individual would be a country performing purges or genocide on it’s own people, or destroying it’s own economy due to some nonsensical ideology.
The issue with nations is the sheer scale of the damage they can cause, as compared to one standalone individual.
If say China starts going after neighbors, it’s roughly like it the 300 lb, heavily armed, weightlifter in the neighborhood starts going on a rampage on his family. Not much anyone can do without a whole lot of hurt for everyone.
Most individuals display self-interest, material and otherwise. But most individuals aren't narcissists; they lack the grandiosity, the entitlement, the monopolization of conversation, etc. [1]
You can look at a similar difference between groups. E.g., to me as an American, Canada is not my "tribe". I might believe that each group has different strengths, and I might be quite happy to stay an American. That's perfectly normal. Indeed, having lived abroad a few times, those periods in some ways sharpened my sense of American identity.
In contrast, look at the American Confederacy. There's a ton of material on their grandiosity and entitlement, but the most obvious piece of evidence is their own Vice-President describing what the heart of their project was: "our new government['s] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." [2]
In my opinion, that's bonkers. To make one's own identity and purpose so deeply based in the inferiority of another group is fucking deranged.
Now was their real material interest underpinning that? Sure. If they didn't get to treat humans like livestock, the Southern aristocrats might actually have had to work for a living. God forbid they have to live by the sweat of their brows like everybody else. So their narcissistic derangement was adaptive in some sense. But that doesn't make it less diagnose; individual narcissism is also often adaptive in that sense.
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech