More about Narcissists in the Age of Trump

I stumbled across this detailed article on twenty techniques used by Narcissists (and other malfunctioning types of people) in personal relationships -- or is it an article about Donald Trump? The full title: "20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You." The bottom line caveat: "If you think you’re going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness." In short, conversations are often attacks that only look like conversations.

In the hands of a malignant narcissist or sociopath, your differing opinions, legitimate emotions and lived experiences get translated into character flaws and evidence of your irrationality.
Narcissism is the main focus of the article, however, and Narcissists tend to be . . . well ... narcissistic:
Narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths and otherwise toxic people do this because they wish to divert attention back to themselves and how you’re going to please them. If there is anything outside of them that may threaten their control over your life, they seek to destroy it. They need to be the center of attention at all times. In the idealization phase, you were once the center of a narcissist’s world – now the narcissist becomes the center of yours. Narcissists are also naturally pathologically envious and don’t want anything to come in between them and their influence over you. Your happiness represents everything they feel they cannot have in their emotionally shallow lives. After all, if you learn that you can get validation, respect and love from other sources besides the toxic person, what’s to keep you from leaving them?
Chapters include Gaslighting, Projection, "Moving the goalposts," "Changing the Subject," Threats (including covert threats), Aggressive Jabs Disguised as Jokes and Shaming.

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Wabi-Sabi and many other emotions not well known by name

Are there emotions other than the commonly discussed ones? This article by BBC presents many others. Most of them have names in other languages, and I did not recognize any of these names. I did, however, recognize many of the feelings described in the article. Hence, the title of the article, "The Untranslatable Emotions," doesn't quite work for me, because I do recognize many of these emotions. Here are a few examples presented, and there are many others I enjoyed reading about in the article:

Natsukashii (Japanese) – a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer Wabi-sabi (Japanese) – a “dark, desolate sublimity” centred on transience and imperfection in beauty Saudade (Portuguese) – a melancholic longing or nostalgia for a person, place or thing that is far away either spatially or in time – a vague, dreaming wistfulness for phenomena that may not even exist Sehnsucht (German) – “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable

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Who are you? Strangers can get a good idea based on a few dozen of your Facebook “likes.”

Psychologist Michal Kosinski developed a method to size up who a person based on their FB activity. If you would like to get a small taste for what companies can do with Big Data, follow this link to Kosinski's own website (found in the above article). I did this, and I was impressed. Based on 60 of your FB "likes," a company can get a impressive read on who you are. This is not just a parlor trick. This type of analytics can swing a tight presidential election.

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Sneaking reliable evidence past flawed world views

When solid evidence conflicts with a world view, some people often reject the evidence rather than the flawed world view. In Scientific American's "How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail," Michael Shermer (a former fundamentalist Christian) suggests the following approaches to persuading such people:

If corrective facts only make matters worse, what can we do to convince people of the error of their beliefs? From my experience, 1. keep emotions out of the exchange, 2. discuss, don't attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum), 3. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately, 4. show respect, 5. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion, and 6. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews. These strategies may not always work to change people's minds, but now that the nation has just been put through a political fact-check wringer, they may help reduce unnecessary divisiveness.
The rejection of facts is often caused by either or both of two human tendencies: 1. Cognitive Dissonance: the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.
Psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-authors described what happened to a UFO cult when the mother ship failed to arrive at the appointed time. Instead of admitting error, “members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.
2. Backfire Effect: Corrections actually increase misperceptions.
Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.” For example, subjects were given fake newspaper articles that confirmed widespread misconceptions, such as that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When subjects were then given a corrective article that WMD were never found, liberals who opposed the war accepted the new article and rejected the old, whereas conservatives who supported the war did the opposite ... and more: they reported being even more convinced there were WMD after the correction, arguing that this only proved that Saddam Hussein hid or destroyed them.

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About Narcissistic politicians

How should one describe a person who is pathologically narcissistic? Psychologist Joe Navarro offers this on Narcissists:

They all have or had an over-abundant belief that they were special, that they and they alone had the answers to problems, and that they had to be revered. They demanded perfect loyalty from followers, they overvalued themselves and devalued those around them, they were intolerant of criticism, and above all they did not like being questioned or challenged. And yet, in spite of these less than charming traits, they had no trouble attracting those who were willing to overlook these features. These personality traits stand out as the first warning to those who would associate with them, but there are many others. Here is a collection of traits that I have collected over the years about cult leaders that give us hints as to their psychopathology. This list is not all-inclusive nor is it the final word on the subject; it is merely my personal collection based on my studies and interviews that I conducted in my previous career. If you know of a cult leader who has many of these traits there is a high probability that they are hurting those around them emotionally, psychologically, physically, spiritually, or financially. And of course this does not take into account the hurt that their loved ones will also experience.

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