On The Inter-Relationship Between Ethics and Narcissism

You cannot separate man from his/her narcissism, hedonism, and ethical/moral righteousness. And sometimes - indeed oftentimes - these factors clash in a big way either internally and/or socially as man tries to wrestle between these different polarities and 'conflicts of interest' in his personality and nature.

The full embodiment of man's paradoxes are endless - no philosopher will ever get to the end of them all. Indeed, from a Hegelian point of view, man's evolution is a constant challedge of breaking through and integrating different polarities, different paradoxes. Thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis was, and still is, the Hegelian 'dialectical and evolutionary formula'. It's a simple but effective formula for understanding how and why man bangs his head against all extremes in a conscious or subconscious effort to find some sort of more orderly and healthy balance in the middle. Technically this search and striving for balance is called 'homeostasis' and it applies to every aspect of man's life and culture from biology to medicine to philosophy to psychology to law to politics to business and economics to religion...

Unfortunately, in man's philosophical and/or lifestyle forays out into the 'extremes of existence', he can get 'stuck'. Two of the most dangerous paths are: 1. uncontrolled narcissism (selfishness, self-centredness, hedonism, egotism, power, revenge, violence..), and 2. uncontrolled righteousness. Oftentimes, the two are inter-connected and support each other in pathology. Ethical righteousness can often mask the hypocrisy of an underlying narcissistic agenda. Narcissism needs to be balanced by altruism with most systems of humanistic ethics balancing narcissism and altruism (getting and giving)in a manner that we call 'fairness'; similarly, ethical righteousness needs to be balanced by tolerance, empathy, and compassion.

Much has been written about man's capability for obsession, compulsion, and addiction - a common direction of narcissism - and I could write much more.
How many homes have been broken up - and are still being broken up - by alcoholism, drug abuse, excessive partying, gambling...? I call this phenomenon, this personal and social problem, the 'narcissistic lifestyle'. When you multiply this personal and family problem thousands of times over, then you have what might be called 'a culture of narcissism' or as Erich Fromm used to call it, a 'pathology of normalcy' (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955.). What is the core essence of this problem? Uncontrolled narcissism - ME!, ME!, ME1 - and the crumbling of personal and social ethics and integrity, in the family, in business, in law, in politics, in science and medicine, in religion (which is supposed to be the biggest fighter against narcissism) - everywhere you turn and you look you see money, conflict of interest, sex, power, fraud, manipulation, revenge, hate, and violence compromising and sabotaging personal and social ethics and integrity.

Where do we start to fix this problem? I see the need for at least a three-pronged, sustained philosophical, lifestyle, economic, and legal attack on this problem:

1. A need to re-establish more solidarity and stronger economic, ethical, and loving roots in the family - even in broken families.

2. A need to establish more ethics, integrity, and philosophical integration in government, fueled mainly by a citizen demand for increased transparency and accountability. Government crimes should be treated at least as seriously as corporate business crimes. Politicians and government officials should have no immunity and soft landings to their crimes. Nor should they be allowed to work in the 'dark' - behind closed doors, in 'hidden' meetings, and behind obscured, abstracted, manipulated, and/or hidden monetary numbers. All taxes should be visible, not hidden. Double taxes should be illegal. And all taxes should be collected for the purpose they were intended to be collected for and nothing more. It should be illegal to siphon them off into a different account, particularly without the people's knowledge and awareness. In Canada, how man millions if not billions of dollars have been siphoned off from the people's federal pension fund with the people not knowing about it, or vaguely knowing that they have been manipulated and robbed, and the government officials who committed this deed - and who are probably still doing this deed - not being held accountable for what they did, and/or are doing? What Alan Eagleson went to jail for corporate pension fraud, government officials, in the last twenty years or so in Canada, have done with impunity - and are probably still doing with impunity. Meanwhile, they sit in parliament, pass raises to themselves, keep updating their cost of living allowances and expense accounts, collect early pension funds, collect gold-plated pension funds, 'double-dip'...need I say more?

In North America - both Canada and the U.S. - we are seeing the 'crash of the middle class' through overtaxation ('The Boston Tea Party Effect'), and middle class incomes not rising at the same rate of speed as their living expenses. Thus, people have to work longer and longer hours, often working two or even three jobs, just to break even. Less disposable income. Less time for family. The kids are left without roots and solidarity, love, ethics, morality, integrity... They hit the street, often get involved in the wrong activities, join up with similar kids in the same boat, join gangs to get the 'pseudo-solidarity and roots' here that they weren't/aren't getting at home. As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs; 'Everything is broken.'

3. Laissez-Faire Capitalism is dead - or at least it should be. It doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? It doesn't work because it quickly beomces Uncontrolled Narcissistic Capitalism. Ethical Capitalism is sabotaged - and collapses. Even Adam Smith didn't trust businessmen - for good reason. Money changes everthing. Conflict of interest. Greed. Manipulation. Fraud. Coercion. Collusion. Adam Smith's vision of Laissez-Faire Capitalism assumed fair play. But you know what they say about assumptions.

4. War and International Relations: 911 changed everything justified the military pursuit of Osama bin Laden. America had the world on its side in this endeavor. How, all of a sudden, did 911 justify a switchover to Iraq, and the pursuit of Sadaam Hussein? The world may be a better place without him but to my knowledge 'vigilante justice' on a personal or group level is illegal in America. Why should a country - even the most powerful country in the world - be allowed to get away with it? Why? Because America - and the rest of the world - was duped. Manipulated. America pulls out of the United Nations - and loses the sympathy and respect of the rest of the world. Now the rest of the world is not looking at 'America The Just'. It is looking at 'Imperialist America'. 'Narcissistic America'. America rushes to arms in the name of God, Freedom, Democracy, and Justice...The usual ideology. Most of the Middle East goes up in arms. Not all of these are 'terrorists' but rather see America as the terrorist coming in to destroy their country and kill their people. Iran - as pathological as this country may be - goes further up in arms. So too with North Korea. Russia goes into shock when Bush announces that in the name of democracy he wants to put missiles in Eastern Europe. There's another international relations blunder. Now Bush wants Eastern Europe.

As time goes on, more and more of the rest of the world is not buying into Bush propaganda. Now too, neither are most of the citizens of America. Most of them know that they were duped. No weapons of mass destruction. 911 justifeied Afghanastan and Bin Laden; not Iraq and Sadaam Hussein. Bush - and the American Government - lost his/its focus. Bush took his 'eye off the ball'. Or stated otherwise, he turned his eye to a 'ball of more interest'. Why? Who knows? There are the usual ideological justifications. And the alternative underlying conspiracy theories. Oil. His father not finishing Sadaam off in the first Gulf War. The bottom line is that it will probably go down as the greatest international relations blunder and disaster in American history. It has tarnished President Bush's political reputation forever. Who knows how long it will take America to climb out of this national and international mudpit? Is the war in Iraq diminishing the possibility of Middle Eastern terrorists from coming to America? Or is the war in Iraq practically guaranteeing that more and more Middle Easterners - 'terrorists', 'freedom-fighters', and/or 'vigilantes' - will want to get to America for generations to come to avenge the destruction of their own countries and their own families and friends? Violence begets violence. Hate begets hate. 'Victory breeds hatred for the conquered is unhappy.' - Gautama Buddha.

Meanwhile, the body counts mount, seemingly without end. How can we not be reminded of Vietnam? National debt skyrockets and the American dollar flounders. The American economy flounders - except those corporations that are supporting the war. I think Dwight Eisenhower said something about this problem.

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'In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.' - Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961

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Should we be concerned about war? Should we be concerned about pollution? Should we be concerned about global warming? Should we be concerned about anti-biotic-resistant deadly diseases? Should we be concerned about the extent of private corporation and government-infested narcissism, conflict of interest, greed, corruption, scandal, lack of transparency, cover-ups...?

Should we all say that 'epistemologically and/or ethically it depends on your point of view'?

Should we all 'just chill'...and 'take another pill'...?

Or do we need to seriously - individually and collectively - take a hard look at ourselves, how we are living, what we are doing to make this world a better or worse place to ethically live in? And raise our idealistic expectations? Demand ethically and idealistically more from both our government and our private corporations - especially the ones that work hand in hand with each other? Do we really want to keep 'looking the other way' while significant private corporations, significant lobbyist groups, significant levels and areas of government all 'feed each other'. Hey, I come from the taxi industry so I have seen how this kind of stuff works. Someone gains. Someone loses. And it's usually not fair. Oftentimes it's enough to make a person who still has some integrity left sick to his or her stomach. But here is the main problem. 'Diminished Expectations'. We have all come to more or less 'accept' and/or 'tolerate' this kind of human and cultural 'toxicity'. While the toxicity-level - the pollution level - keeps growing higher. In our government. In our businesses. In our hospitals. In our doctors offices. In our drug stores. In our schools. In our universities. In our supposed 'unbiased, research facilities and labs'. The plague of human narcissism uncontrolled, unadulterated - fed by 'diminished expectations' and 'people looking the other way' gets thicker and thicker and thicker...

Is there enough 'David Suzukis', enough Kevin Trudeaus, in the world to make a difference? A real, significant, corporate, government and cultural difference? Or is it all just 'whistling in the wind'? 'Blowing in the wind'? 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall'. Is that acid rain or metallic rain - or both?

Change - real change - has to come from both the top and the bottom - government, business, education, medicine, families...

For you and me, it starts from the bottom. How much are we really - each and everyone of us - willing and prepared to individually and/or collectively do significant things to change the tide of the greatest pollution of all - the greatest toxicity and poison of all - human narcissism and greed out of control to the point where it does not care who it hurts and/or even who it kills - just as long as it 'benefits me'. That is the collapse of all ethics. That is ethical nihilism. Narcissism - uncontrolled - will eventually lead us to ethical nihilism unless we turn back and start caring about the ethical choices we make, particularly the ones that could in the end spell Armageddon (i.e., pollution, toxic food, toxic water, toxic air, global warming, war, government, corporate and medical corruption...) To me, it is not a pretty picture the direction we are going. It is time to raise our ethical expectations and turn back. It is time to balance the equation between religious altruism and Nietzschean narcissism. Both at their extreme are intolerable (self-denial vs. self-infatuation). Any theory, any philosophy, any lifestyle, carries within it, the seeds of its own self-destruction (particularly when taken to its extreme). Hegel said that - or a modified version of it - and it was probably one of the most profound sentences ever written in the history of Western philosophy. That is why we need 'philosophical bridges to bridge the gap between philosophical extremes'. That is the philosophical ideal and goal of DGB (Dialectic Gap-Bridging) Philosophy. It is not going to happen overnight. It is not going to happen with any one essay that I write. This essay is just one step in the direction of 'narcissistic reversal'. For any significant change to happen, there will be many, many more steps to be taken both individually in each of our lives, and collectively on corporate and government levels. We need another 'Glorious Revolution', a combined 'Scottish, British, French, German, and American Enlightenment'. Where are Locke, Hume, Smith, Jefferson, Frankilin, Paine, Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesque, Hegel, and Nietzsche when we need them?

We have to re-invent them anew, amongst ourslves, from top to bottom. They are not coming back to us. Nor is this 'revolution', this 'Enlightenment', going to happen by itself. New intellects and new activists are required - with ethics and integrity. Corrupt, toxic, narcissists - and we all have partly been there but must turn back before we get caught up in the overpowering narcissistic tide - please step aside.

dgb, Feb., 19th, 2007, updated Aug. 7th, 2007, update Sept. 21st, 2007.