“I am in love with you,' I responded. He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh. 'Of course you are,' he replied. 'I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control.' It was my turn to laugh.”
― Anne Rice, Blackwood Farm
Here's the rub. We are all a little narcissistic. We are all a bit self-possessed. We all want to be heroes, be recognized, and remembered—even if only for the small things. Do not let people make you feel egotistical and ugly. Do not hate yourself. Do not worry if people see you as arrogant or self-possessed. Just be yourself with yourself. Romp. Play. Live. Do not commit seppuku at the altar of social expectations. You are what matters. There is a grace and grit to defining yourself in this "narcissistic" light, because it is what provides you with the ability to love yourself in a good way.
Cultivate Self-Love to Love Others
Self-love is what matters on a deeper level. Self-love is what keeps you functioning and happy. It is this ego adoration that gives you permission to love widely and wildly. The old adage goes: "you can't love others until you learn to love yourself."
I find this to be true.
Self-love is the vehicle that allows you to bring love to everyone, to heal the world. It will allow you to proudly affect change. This "narcissism" will then encourage you deal with any leftover insecurity you harbor, and your love will be boundless, moving beyond the self.
For truth and beauty and worldly compassion, let self-love reign. Free the ego for exploration. Do not be afraid to experience yourself in totality. It is this ability to be in tune with yourself that makes living so grand. It will hurt at first, but it will be empowering.
Forget the Self-Loathers; May They be Enveloped by Your Love
Once you have utterly accepted this self-adoration, you can dismiss the all the cults of self-hatred. You can forget the dogmatists and religious zealots who loathe the flesh and who hate humankind. Forget the cultural engineers who inspire you to replace self-love with political correctness. Forget the psychic vampires and their leechcraft. Forget all the hate mongers.
It is all this hatred of the self that spoils love, that wrecks a everyone's ability to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. That is why I am nudging you to move beyond that, and to be kind to yourself.
So just LOVE. Do it hard. Do it like you never have before. Let all the world know. Make it fucking contagious, and let it spread so that it blankets the world in your warmth. Maybe it will even spread to the haters and dogmatists, and perhaps they will be enveloped by it along with everyone else.
Your "narcissism" is a boon for this broken world. Let it be known.
My name is Sterlin. Follow me at @sterlinluxan and Psychologic-Anarchist. I also run the Psychologic-Anarchist Facebook page and produce YouTube videos. My interests lie in the intersection of counseling psychology and anarchism. I write about the depredations of psychiatry, and also the philosophy of compassionate anarchism.
You can not love others if you don't love yourself.
But loving oneself does not mean being narcissistic.
Narcisism is bad. It means self absorption and self obsession. It means not being able to be able to love others as one is too obsessed with oneself.
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The problem is that self-absorption and self-obsession is a subjective criteria based on judgement. Who is to determine want constitutes too much "self-absorption" and "self-obsession," or even that these traits are "bad"?
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Now that's a philosophy I can get on board with.
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interesting
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Hah. Yes!
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Awesome reframe, @sterlinluxan! Because I love me, I am able to love you. <3
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Thanks a bunch Erika!
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I agree with you! Greate post.
"Do with people who just like you want them to do unto you." Love yourself - for me, it means to know yourself to take this as you are, and learn to respect themselves. But we must also be humble themselves and others. Patience - be tolerant of people around you. I know it is not easy. There is a wise saying: If you walk through the woods and see the old dead trees lying on your way, you will bypass it. And if you suddenly branch hit you on the head or cheek, you do not pay attention to it. "So it is in our lives.
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Love so hard mothafuckas wanna fine me.
That shit e'er day.
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Haha. Yes! E'er DAY!
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very interesting article! I like it! Thank you...
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Not a problem. Thank you.
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I think it is incredibly important to learn to spot narcissistic tendencies. The state and society is practically there only to cover up narcissistic and psychopathic behavior
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Rock!!! :)
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Really powerfully written, and a great message.
So true.
Never thought about it like this before.. at least not so directly.. but I guess helping people to appreciate themselves is really the purest most high octane way to help with problems in the world.
Given the posting time I'm oddly curious if you were nursing a bottle of gin into the wee hours of the morning when you wrote this :-DD
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very well said and I think a lot of people won't admit to it, but they are )
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Absolutely. Thanks for this comment.
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There is no such thing as "narcissim".
it is something psychology (aka social engineering science) invented for social conformity.
Also please rephrain from using bullshit politically correct words such as "love" and "compassion" and then talking about "political correctness". It becomes rhetorically naussiating especially when I know your article is playing along my own ideas about compassion (I wrote this mostly because of reading people like you
Don't forget. One can "love" somebody an still beat the shit out of them.
Love is a subjective word and it can be twisted into different meanings for each and every one of us. I will be writing another article soon debunking this "love" thing you so passionately seem to abuse in your writing.
Thank you for the endless inspiration @sterlinluxan
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This reminds me of a Dutch song called "Ik hou van mij" ("I love me")
You can listen to it here, with an English translation of the lyrics in the description.
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Awesome post :)
I also wrote a post on self-love, HERE. Would love it if you checked it out and I could get some feedback!
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