Re:What collective narcissism does to society
by wpietri on Saturday November 06, 2021 @07:43PM
(#29134924)
> Isn't something being adaptive exactly what it makes it not pathological?
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.
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.