 So you say that if people would be more individuated and more conscious of their emotions and more comfortable being alone, a huge percentage of narcissistic abuse would be avoidable. And if yes, how solve, how do you come to this conclusion? Narcissists leverage, leverage your unresolved conflicts, leverage your cravings and needs, as I have recorded in the section about the Falfatal thing. Narcissists are absence, exactly like the Falfatal. They are about absence. It is the Narcissist absence that allows you to become anything you want within the Narcissist texture of fantasy. The Narcissist lets you idealize yourself and project yourself into him, and then lets you see yourself through his gaze and fall in love with yourself in the idealized form. Any affair with the Narcissist is autoerotic, is masturbatory, is self-love, self-infatuation, self-limitance, because there's nobody there. The Narcissist doesn't exist. It's a shape-shifting void. It's a simulation of a human being, and not a very good one at that. So clearly you're interacting with yourself. You're in a hole of mirrors. But people tend to self-deceive because they have no boundaries. Because they're terrified that if they don't please others, something horrible may happen. This is called catastrophizing. Because they have been wounded in childhood, and they need to be wounded again and again and again because they've learned to identify pain with love. The Narcissist gives you all these services, free of charge often, gives you all these things. The Narcissist is a pathological playground, or a playground for your pathologies. And so healthy people, after a while, a short while, they would walk away. They would never bond with the Narcissist or attach. They would not fall for the idealization phase. They would not want to see themselves idealized for the Narcissist gaze because they've had a functional childhood with a loving mother. They don't need to be loved again as an idealized baby. They don't need to replay. They don't need to have a second chance at life. The Narcissist comes to you and says, if you give me your life, I will give you a second chance at life. It's a, as we said, a Faustian deal. So I realize on your wishes and make all your broken dreams come true. I will heal you. I will mend you and put you back together. And I will put you back together in a much better version of yourself. I will better you. I'm the path to improvement. I'm the path, I'm a progressive path. All you have to do is promise me to, promise to give me full control over your life. Promise me to let me own your life. You just need to be owned and then I will take care of all the rest. Now this is of course the implicit or the explicit counter between people and dictators. The dictator sends a similar message. All you have to do is give me full control and then you don't need to worry about anything. You will have no responsibility. You will never be guilty for anything because all the decisions are mine. You're going to suspend both your disbelief and your agency. By doing this, you will also get rid of shame and guilt and responsibility and accountability. These are burdens. Jean-Paul Sartor said that the reason for angst, the reason for the existential type of anxiety is because you're forced to make choices. He said, in life you have to make choices. You have to choose. And this creates anxiety, creates angst. The dictator and the narcissist, who is a cult? The narcissist is a leader of a cult. Thank you very much. A narcissist is a dictator. Only his kingdom is new, the intimate partner. So the dictatorial message, the authoritarian messages, if you suspend your being, you will gain happiness. Or at least you will avoid negative emotions like guilt and shame. And it's an irresistible proposition in a world which fosters anxiety, negative affectivity, envy, hatred, rage, anger. In a world which constantly provokes you to feel bad. Here I come and tell you, give me your life. Give me control over you and I guarantee you that you will never feel bad again. Even if you wish, you can regard me as a reflecting pond or a mirror that you can see in me, whatever you want. So why not? So people fall for this time and again. We have a democratic wave which lasts 30 years and then people fall for it again. We go from one relationship which lasts 7 years and we fall into another one which is a replica. We learn nothing because learning is not involved in this process. It's far more basic. It's far more primitive. It's autophistic and also harks back to early childhood. In all this self-help industry and psychology, they will teach you. You can learn from your experience. You can learn from your experience on how to make coffee. Yes, maybe. Many people don't even manage this. But you absolutely cannot learn from your experience when it comes to your relationships, to your psychological dynamics, to mistakes that you make in life, to wrong-made selection, to bizarre choices, to self-destructiveness. There's no learning in any of this. In any of this. So what is the path of recovery if there is any? There's no recovery also and that is why people don't like what I have to say. The question about recovery is an American question. Americans think that every problem has a solution and every disease has a cure. So they were pissed off that there wasn't a cure for COVID immediately. Why should I put a mask? You should find a solution for me. The sad truth about life and reality is that extremely few problems have solutions. Most problems do not have solutions and most diseases don't have a cure. What happens to you gradually is you get habituated so you suffer less or you avoid. So you have a bad relationship and in the second bad relationship you suffer less and then maybe you will say I'm not going to have relationships again and you remain with Netflix and two cats and that's the rest of your life. That's the truth. 31% of adults in the industrialized world have chosen to not have relationships. They're lifelong singles. Gradually this is becoming more and more common. People are atomized, they are self-sufficient. Technology allows them to be, to need no one so they don't need anyone and they close the doors and they disappear into their own bubbles. This is a practical way to cope. But to say I've had one bad relationship with the narcissist, now I know how to identify a narcissist, how to avoid a narcissist, how to manage a narcissist. This is counterfactual. That is not true. You didn't end up with a narcissist because you didn't know things. Because there was a lack of learning or some ignorance. You ended up with a narcissist because this is who you are. There is no such thing as a bad partner. No such thing as a bad partner. Every partner, never mind how bad, is responsive to your psychological needs. Otherwise they would not become your partner. End of story. So that brings me to another question about the responsibility of the victims. I'm not answering anything before I have my coffee. Let's go. Do you want to put it on pause? We're drinking coffee live. It's performant. If I can learn it. You're not just my boundary setting, assertiveness. Wonderful. Healthy. I was healthy. No money. I think I can manage hopefully. I know we're men. We're not supposed to be men. It's something. We're switching gender roles here. Right. There's very feminine coffee here. We'll see. I didn't cook the coffee. I'm just serving it. Yeah, yeah. Excuse us, excuse us. You don't want coffee? No, no, just drink. Every time I become nearly religious is when I drink coffee. There must be a God. There's a question for your spirituality later on. There must be a God who has created this. Well, if he created coffee, then he created everything. I'm not sure about everything, but we definitely must have created coffee. He just jumped in to do the coffee bit. You don't have coffee. Don't forget the tip. Yeah. Yeah, where were we? Okay, so this was live, you know, performance. Yes, coffee service by a man in Budapest. So anyway, about the responsibility of victims. Do they have any, because remember you saying once you're in the net, it's not much you can do, but then you also talk, it's really beautiful and inspiring the monologue of yours about what you're thinking and yes, there is a certain kind of hope that you're not definitely going to be drowning in the well. So where's the truth? When I said there's no learning and there's no solution, it simply means that you cannot approach the same situation or recreate the same situation and expect a different outcome because you have gained some knowledge before. In other words, knowledge and learning will not change the outcome of any particular situations. End of story. However, you can work on yourself rather than work on other people. For example, to say from now on, I'm going to choose partners who are not narcissists. That is the wrong orientation. That is outward orientation. You must never attempt to change the environment. Not even your actions in the environment. This is wrong orientation. The only thing you can change efficaciously to some extent is yourself. You should change yourself. Naturally, what will follow is different choices, different outcomes, and so on and so forth. Now, some of the self-help industry tell you to change yourself but the orientation is still outward. Like I will change myself in order to make more money or I will change myself in order to choose the right mate. This is still outward orientation. If you are goal-oriented in the process of self-improvement or self-change, this is an orientation which will guarantee failure. The only reason to improve yourself is yourself. Nothing external, not money, not work, not other people, not your mates, not your children, not your nation, none of us. Only you. So victims are not responsible because responsibility implies an interaction with an external entity of some kind. You're responsible to the state, you're responsible to your children. They're not responsible for anything, but they would do well to work on themselves without any goal in mind. And one of the things they can do is they can individuate. They need to work on separation and then become who they were meant to become. This can be done, there are techniques, well-known techniques, they work well and so on and so forth. But here we come again across hindrance or an impediment. People are terrified of separating. We live in a society where people are enmeshed. Enmeshment is the common form of relationship management. Enmeshment can be in many forms, can be financial, it can be emotional and so on. But there's always some form of enmeshment going on. People seek to merge and fuse. And this is the outcome of the wrong messaging sent by the romantic movement in the 19th century. Up until the 19th century, the concept of love and relationships was transactional on the one hand. But it was much healthier in many other ways. The romantic movement starting more or less in the beginning at the beginning of the 19th century and more or less in Germany, of course, where else, and then spread to the United Kingdom. This romantic movement broadcasts to you, said to you that if you don't experience a highly specific type of love, it's not love. And this highly specific type of love requires your disappearance. It requires your annulment or even annihilation and reappearance or rebirth through the agency of the loved one. So it was a highly religious approach to love because it was the story of Jesus Christ. You needed to crucify yourself so that you can be resurrected through your love and the loved one. He was your agent of liberation and so on. And we got stuck with this. We got stuck with this. And so today romantic love is about merger and fusion. And so people are terrified. When you come to someone and say, you need to learn to separate. You need to learn to individuate. You need to learn to put firm boundaries and healthy boundaries. You need to impose them firmly but not aggressively. You need to... The hidden or the implicit messages, you need to be left... You need to stay alone. You need to be lonely, which is, of course, not true. But they don't dare to go there. Because they're terrified that the end result will be left alone. So they prefer dysfunctional, hurtful, damaging relationships to the alternative of being a strong person but a lonely one. And it didn't help that extensions of the romantic movement, for example Nietzsche, brought us exactly the same message. Nietzsche said, if you heal yourself, if you become a superman, a superman, but then you will be alone. He said, loneliness or aloneness prove that you are now a superman. So the message was, there are two options. Either you're a weakling, spineless, societally controlled idiot and then you have relationships or you work on yourself, you work on a new morality, you evolve next stage in evolution, you become a superman, but then you're alone. That means you will never have a relation. That was a message of Nietzsche. That was a message of Kierkegaard, actually. Kierkegaard said, if you want to attain happiness you need to make a leap of faith. Kierkegaard was religious. He suggested God as the alternative. You need to make a leap of faith. But Kierkegaard said that a leap of faith would put you apart from humanity. The first thing Kierkegaard did after he wrote about a leap of faith, he went to his fiance and he said, I cannot marry you. I'm sorry, I'm calling off the engagement because I discovered a new principle of a leap of faith and it requires that I be alone. And then you have the existentialist who told you that man is alone. The condition of being human is that you need to make choices and so on. Alone. No one can help you. Nothing. You need to be authentic. And authentic means to set yourself apart from society. Totally apart. You never emulate any role to never work, fulfill expectations of other people. In other words, for 150 years the message that we are receiving from philosophy, from religion, from you name it, the message is either you work on yourself, you improve yourself, you evolve as a human being, you grow and develop but then you must be alone. Or you give in and give up. And that would guarantee your integration in society but you have to, the price is, you're stagnant. Right, but then this would say that in the contrast is so extreme that this would mean that there is no such thing as a healthy relationship because you're either dependent or completely autonomous and there's no material ground. Which clearly there is. For some people there is that. The wrong message of all these disciplines was that relationships require not compromise or negotiation but sacrifice. The core word that underlay all relationships was sacrifice and that is a religious thing of course. That's why I'm saying the model was Jesus. In a relationship you need to sacrifice something. Small, big, but it's based on sacrifice. Well of course a good relationship is not based on giving, it's based on taking. Now that's a no-no. You're not supposed to say this. This is selfish, this is not specific, this is entitled, you're not supposed to say this. But a good relationship is not about giving. It's about taking and what do you take? You take the separateness of your partner. Good relationships are based on pushing the loved one away, not on merging with the loved one. A good mother pushes her child away. If she doesn't push her child away, he will never separate. He will never become an individual and never be happy in his entire life. He will be stunted. He will be a narcissist, I don't know why. A mother's main role, main, number one, and two and three, is to push the child away. All our love relationships are recreations of the primordial maternal interaction. Our role within relationships is to push the other away. When we push the other away, we allow that other person, separateness, boundaries, and self-actualization of potential. We give the other person the impetus to walk away into new experiences and to develop and to evolve. But we are told exactly the opposite. We are told that in relationships we should pull the partner towards us. We should give all the time, actually bribe, bribe the partner. It's corruption. These are corrupt relationships, you know. What should we take from good relationships? We should take the partner's separateness. The partner goes out to the world and brings the world to us. His separateness guarantees the richness of the relationship. The partner contributes her private non-couple experiences to the couple. And each partner takes these experiences. It's all about taking. It's like the two partners go out to the world and bring the world to the table, and then each one of them takes the other's experiences. It's sharing, basically. It's sharing, but it's sharing that is based essentially on taking. So how is then true intimacy created then in this situation? There is nothing more intimate than having access to another person's experience. Nothing more intimate. Even sex is an experience. So when done properly, it is the most intimate, the pinnacle of intimacy. When done wrongly, then it can separate, actually. So we see, for example, that the attitude to sex today is wrong, because sex is cast as giving. So when we interview women who participate in casual sex and one night stands, then we ask them, what were you doing there? They say they wanted to give to the partner, to the male partner, even in one night stand. They wanted to give to the male partner. And so even this is based on giving. It's a wrong orientation, but none of this can be said out loud. None of this. No mainstream media will publish this. No one will think of it even. You will lose your job and your tenure as a professor. None of it. There's an enormous censorship everywhere. An enormous censorship everywhere. And you could ask, why? Why? Why would we send a censor such big? Because the concept of giving is intimately linked to consumerism. It's a capitalist concept. The concept of taking is essentially free agency. So in the concept of giving, the partners consume each other. They become each other's commodity. It's like, what can you give me? Why should I stay in this relationship? What am I getting out of? It's a transactional attitude of you are a product to me and I'm a product to you. And we both consume each other. It's integrated in the psychology and philosophy of consumerism. So consequently, if you offer an alternative model, you would be undermining the foundations of capitalism. Capitalism started off. I'm sorry, I'm meandering all over the place, but it's interesting to link with this. Capitalism started off. Capitalism started in probably, if you want to go very far, let's say in the 13th century. In the 13th century, there was a new arrangement, a new group of states, or pseudo states, and they created something called Solverein. Solverein was a regional custom area, exactly like the European Union. And the Solverein included the Baltic states and today's Netherlands and so on and so forth. So because there was a unified customs area, trade flourished and exploded and required finance. In come the Jews and the Lombards and so on and so forth, and they opened the first banks. Marco Polo used a bank. When he was traveling, he used a bank. He had checks, the equivalent of today, or checks, anyway. So capitalism initially was about facilitating exchange of goods and services via common means of exchange. It had no philosophy behind it, none. No one said capitalism is good, capitalism is bad. There were alternative methods of economic organization and they were perfectly acceptable and they coexisted and they were not competing. There were no politics attached to any of these. But then capitalism got poisoned and corrupted. It started with the industrial revolution. The concept of growth, economic growth was introduced into capitalism. And capitalism became focused on securing economic growth. More or less in the 18th century, you read Ricardo, you read Smith, they begin to discuss economic growth. Why is growth bad? The concept of growth is very poisonous, very toxic. Why is it? Because in order to secure growth, you must increase consumption all the time. So consumption became the organizing principle of economics. And together with it, there was a new ideology intended to interpolate. Interpolation was a concept invented by Louis Althusser, who was a new Marxist philosopher. And Althusser said the advertising industry is intended to interpolate us, intended to push us to consume. And this was the birth of consumerism. Create needs, right? Create artificial needs in us via essentially brainwashing. And there was Gidebore and many other philosophers, but the main one was Althusser. And so consumerism became the ideology of consumption, which became the foundational pillar of corrupted, malignant capitalism. I'm a capitalist by conviction, don't misunderstand. But this is malignant capitalism. But you can't in human psychology. You can't entertain more than one organizing principle at a time. That's a maxim in psychology. If you have an organizing principle, you will apply it everywhere. Just to explain what is an organizing principle. An organizing principle is a way to interpret life and reality so that it gives you a sense of meaning, purpose, direction, goal orientation, and makes sense of the world. This is called an organizing principle. When you have an organizing principle, you can't entertain too because they would automatically compete. The minute people adopted consumerism as an ideology and organizing principle, they applied it everywhere. And they applied it to relationships of course. And so they converted, they objectified their intimate partners and rendered them products. Consumption had infiltrated human relations and then took over human relations. And today we consume each other like commodities. And the minute you consume each other, it's about what you give me. It's about giving. What do you give me? What can you give me? Why should I stay in this relationship? And so the threshold of tolerance in relationship collapsed. My grandmother would have tolerated a lot from my grandfather. I'm not talking about abuse. There doesn't have to be abuse. Certain traits, certain quirks, certain personality, idiosyncrasies. Human have tolerated much more. But if it's all about consumption, what can you give me? You are just a product. Then you know I will change to version 14 of you. Or I will replace you with Android. You are an iPhone. So the level of tolerance in relationship collapsed completely. It was her trigger to replace publics. A better problem. And we need to go back. We need to go back and decommandatize people. Stop regarding people's products. And the only way to do this is to separate. The only way for me not to see you as a product, not to see you as a source of giving, is to realize that you are separate from me. And to let you separate. How to do that? Push you away. There's no other way. I push you away. I give you personal space. I give you personal time. I give you an opportunity to explore, to develop. And you will be so grateful to me. That your love will increase. And you will come back to me. And share with me the new riches that you have found. The Marco Polo. Your Marco Polo travels. And this will make our togetherness even more. You know, flourishing and wonderful. And Rumi said it long before me. And he said that if you want the bird, you should set her free. That's exactly what came to my mind. Also as a guy here, it's trying to tell me something. Just for you to understand, the only word I got was again. What they're saying is that we need to vacate the room. We can continue in another office if we want. Is that okay with you? I'm not telling anything off because I discovered that people like to have a view behind the scenes. Okay, now they will. Christina, you're the audience. Do you find what they're talking about interesting? Yeah? It's pretty vast. We're covering a lot of ground with rubies. I will consume the coffee because it's free. No, Joe. Maybe with the water and the coffee. But the rest is okay. So here we are moving to another room. You can see my neck. This is my neck. Looks much better than my face might do. Thank you. Sorry. Lighting is really bad. That is the room they always do. We are your guests. We are sorry that we are bothering you. It's a beautiful fireplace. Okay. So that was a nice deep dive into relationships and capitalism and exchange. I don't know. I like to collect things. I think one of the major problems of today is that people remain pigeonholed. They never collect things. But everything affects everything. Philosophy affects economics. It affects relationships. Everything is interconnected. We just pretend that we are isolated. We are never isolated. Also I think pop culture is brainwashing us into this enmeshed. I can't live without you. You're the air that I breathe. You have all these love songs. They are hints of co-dependence. So no wonder people... Of course mass culture always reflects mores and conventions of the time. It's never deviant. It's never revolutionary. It always reflects the current thinking. Especially mainstream culture. Mass culture. We're not talking about subcultures. have subcultures where the revolutionary, revolutionary ferment starts but the main mainstream and so but you know this this the 18th century 19th century you had similar songs similar they were not on radio or something but they had similar songs troubadours okay um we'll be jumping around in subjects which I think are important going a little bit back to narcissistic abuse and then when you realize you're in that situation you have given a perhaps a full interpretation 360 degree interpretation to when you know you go there's no real there's no saving there's no really saving the situation um why is this no contact rule which you have defined so important and what does it mean in its fullness no contact is not uh people say my grandmother invented no contact not you because my grandmother walked out on my grandfather what good for your grandmother but that's not no contact no contact is a set a set of 27 strategies uh which all together are intended to totally insulate you from any dimension and vector of narcissistic abuse narcissistic abuse is a chimera it's a hydra it it's like water it would find a path of least resistance so if you block one area it will come through you block the door it comes through the window you block the window it'll come from under the floors you need to block everything so there's 27 strategies on how to do that and you must implement all of them simultaneously and uncompromisingly it's about keeping the narcissists away from you and away from anyone who matters to you and if there's no other choice because for example you have children together or something working only through intermediaries so he's allowed to to talk only to your lawyer or to your accountant and they have instructions on how to filter his messages so they should get rid of all the emotional side and so they should just convey so it's it requires training professionals around you and you know it's a lot of work no context there's a lot of work it's not just walking walking away there's another issue of course you can get rid of the narcissist or the narcissist much more often get rid of you but he's still in your mind you have an interject of the narcissist you have his voice in your mind speaks to you there is a period of prolonged grief after the narcissist is gone because you are grieving multiple dimensions and aspects of the relationship you're grieving him of course you are grieving the broken dream the shared fantasy you're bringing grieving yourself through his gaze you will never see yourself again the same way you are grieving who you could have been or you could have become had you not met him the damage is enormous who you're grieving this etc etc so there's so many aspects of grief that in most cases the grief is prolonged prolonged grief syndrome has been just included in the dsm there's a text revision of the dsm published a few weeks ago and they included finally prolonged grief syndrome it's being in grief for a period longer than one year that's prolonged grief all all relationships with narcissists end with prolonged grief i have never i haven't come across a single exception and not only is it prolonged grief but you continue to interact with the interject of the narcissist in your mind and you can't shut it off there's no effective way to shut it off there's no effective way to shut it off because the narcissist creates a mind mesh he because he actually is absurd he is able to infiltrate you he is able to render you the totality of the relationship so because there's nobody there you kind of flow into all the spaces of the relationship you invent the narcissist i'm trying to how to communicate absence is very difficult you invent the narcissist there's nobody there ever there was never anybody there this is something the victims must understand you were not chosen because there was no one there to choose you you were not special because there was no one there to appreciate your specialness there is nobody there it's an absence avoid it's a howling it's a black hole but exactly like a black hole around the black hole all the objects are affected by the black hole's gravity so similarly you change your trajectory you change your mass you become a different type of object it is this it is his absence that shapes you and because normal healthy human beings don't know how to cope with absence you invent him you simply come up with him he is in other words a figment of your mind and so because it is you interacting with you then you can get rid of you the only option it seems to get rid of the narcissist in your mind is to go out of your mind the mind is gone and he's gone otherwise no it's an infestation is in all empty spaces is in all spaces of your mind another solution which is a little more benign than going out of your mind is to separate an individual that's another solution that's a lengthy and super difficult process because it's very frightening separation you need to separate not from any real person but you need to separate from maternal introjects in your mind you need to separate from your mind elements of your mind known as introjects you need to separate from them and then once you have separated from them you need to become something distinct from them it feels a lot like developing schizophrenia or multiple personality for a while it feels that way but at the end of this process you will you will have gone through something known as constellation or integration all the elements of your mind come together and they form a unity which is then known as the authentic self most victims of narcissists have deficiencies and deficits in separation individuation narcissists takes advantage of this and he forces them to merge of use and mesh and so you need to reverse the process so basically if you try to put a positive spin on this coming out of such an abusive situation is a chance for you to be reborn yes or return to your original self which is a it's a growth inducing experience if you if you handle it properly so some victims will tell you it was a blessing because I changed I grew up I became mature I now I have boundaries I discovered myself it's a small minority of victims but these victims were able because they had a much a much bigger healthy core this healthy core protected them but many many victims don't have this so that what the narcissist does he regresses you the minute you meet you come across a narcissist and you become his intimate father he regresses you to early childhood he becomes your mother as we said so he regresses you to early childhood and he leaves you stuck at an infant time stage you're an infant the narcissist is gone you're an infant and you need to grow again you have to go through all this process again we've talked about a bit of spirituality before and I was wondering I've watched many many other videos no that's impossible but do you have any spiritual quality of aspect of your life have you had any metaphysical experience during your life during your life journey or luckily it didn't take the smartphone you know I once gave an interview on this guy there and he asked me so what do you think about consciousness he said I don't know I don't know what he's conscious no no no but what do you think about I can't think about something I don't know which I cannot define it's not in the absence of terminology there's no meaningful discourse similarly I have no idea what is spiritual so it would be very difficult to answer your question if by spiritual you mean non-scientific or non-rational or illogical or some I don't engage in such things I don't have time in 62 if by if by spiritually mean religious then of course I don't engage in this this religion is an institutional practice and religion is a particularly poisonous toxic and abominable institution in all its forms no religion accepted so definitely I don't engage in this it lives the if I push people who claim to be spiritual spirituals if I push them to define it they would have an extremely and so finally they revert to vague generalizations it's something I cannot explain it's a personal experience it's a mystical experience it's a oceanic feeling okay nice very nice I don't do this I do this when I write poetry I wrote a word winning poetry this I do when I write poetry or fiction not when I give an interview about rigorous disciplines such as science or even pseudoscience it's like psychology there's no place for for indeterminate phrases like spirituality or consciousness or even God even God is indefined that's the best I can do to answer I adhere to the scientific method of course it requires faith you have to have faith in something so some people have faith in God I have faith in reason it's unsubstantiated there's no way to prove that it's it works I mean it works in reality but there's no way to prove that it's always correct so it requires a leap of faith my faith is reason and rationality some other people's faith is a law or god or whatever that's it okay thank you okay let me see it's feeling empathy towards a narcissist a dangerous luxury no one can really afford a narcissist is a vector of destruction the equivalent I think of a virus or a hurricane it's a force of nature because we're all part of nature the distinction between human natural is of course idiotic counter counterfactual we're all part of nature this tray and this this kettle they're natural totally natural because everything humans create is natural because they're part of nature a beaver builds a dam the dam is natural so everything is is natural the narcissist is a part of nature and exactly like other destructive vectors should be avoided I don't know I I don't know the last time I read about something who empathizes with viruses or has great great sympathy for for hurricanes and I don't understand why would anyone empathize with narcissists or there is the underlying presumption or assumption that narcissists are human and that leads to a very complicated issue known as the intersubjectivity agreement I'll try to summarize it in two three sentences even if you don't want me I'm a narcissist I don't care so I'll try to summarize it in a few sentences how do I know that you are human how do I know that you're human I have no access to a mind I have access only to one mind and even that is very limited and that mind is mine I have no access to a mind and even much worse I have no way to prove or disprove that you have a mind so I'm forced to rely on your self-reporting but there's a problem there self-reporting is mediated by a language when you say red and I say red we can objectively agree on a frequency which corresponds to red but there's no info for you to communicate to me your inner experience of the color red so what we do we create a deception the biggest deception by the way which underlies all other deceptions this deception is known as empathy it's a deception the the philosophical term for empathy is intersubjective agreement it's intersubjective agreement relies on a set of underlying assumptions one because you look like me outwardly you are like me of course immediately you can see it's a nonsensical claim in a hundred years time there would be robots or androids or humanoids or I don't know what you want to call them but would look exactly like you the second underlying assumption is because you look like me and you are me according to assumption number one you your inner processes are identical to identical to my inner process I have no way to substantiate and the third assumption is because of only above your experience of your inner processes is identical to my experience of my inner processes all these are of course idiotic assumptions and the intersubjective agreement is an idiotic agreement empathy is another word for a set of behaviors and experiences that emanate from the intersubjective agreement empathy has three components reflexive cognitive and emotional and supposedly empathy develops as we age starting at the very early age as we age and then finally we reach the pinnacle of emotional empathy but empathy is not it's never about you empathy is always about me even when even if I were to possess empathy and I'm proud to say that I don't but even if I were to possess empathy it would still be about me and not about you and the reason it would always be about me is that I have no access to you I have no idea who you are I don't know what's going on in your mind I cannot describe I have no I know nothing about you zero how could I empathize with you I empathize with my projections that's what I empathize with it's about me it's always about me empathy in other words is by far the most narcissistic act by far it is totally solipsistic it's totally isolated from others it's assuming for you how you must be feeling telling you what are your inner experiences and reacting as if I'm right I'm always right when I empathize with you I'm always right because empathy is supposed to be non nonverbal or preverbal I'm always right I will not go now into academic analysis of empathy and so on so forth it is not an accident that empathy was invented by Germans I'm not kidding you the concept of empathy was invented by Germans and so empathizing with the narcissist has two problems the narcissist does not exist it's a force of nature it's largely inanimate it has no internal the narcissist has no internal processes actually and so therefore empathizing with the narcissist even if it were possible which I claim that is impossible even if it were possible would be empathizing with a non-entity and that is definitely agreed by everyone to be nonsensical but even if the narcissist were an entity empathizing with the narcissist implies that empathy is possible and I'm saying that empathy is aligned the deception that we all engage in pretending that we have knowledge or access to other people which we don't ever not in the least not even one percent not even zero one percent nothing zero I know nothing about you I have no idea if you're not a robot nor can I prove it or disprove it nothing I have to rely on yourself reporting on the fact that you look like it well you don't look like I don't want to be something but you're not much better so it's basically a false simulation of the other person we would not have survived had we not invented these deceptions these fantasies these lies we would not have survived the religion for example is a mass deception but still it it does regulate social interactions to some extent it does modulate psychological processes to some extent it has it has some value so we engage in it empathy is a lie is a deception end of story but we accept it we engage in it if I were to if I were to talk to you strictly as a clinical psychologist anyone who believes that a Jew was the son of god died and then rose from the dead has delusional disorder and must be treated urgently with medication anyone but we don't dare to say this because there is value in religion political value in economic value of course a lot of money but also social value it's social capital of some kind same with empathy but also that's taking metaphors word to word which is no the Christians believe that Jesus really was the son of God and really rose from the dead if you go to a Christian and a true Christian evangelical for example you tell them that it's a metaphor he will tell you that you it's a religious and you are blaspheming even in Catholicism the the Eucharist the Eucharist the the wafer and the wine they don't symbolize or represent the flesh and blood of Jesus they become the flesh and blood of Jesus this process is called transubstantiation yes well cannibalism is exactly in the church okay um let's go for one last one what have we missed out on something that's important take a time I love the sound of my voice plus the view is magnificent both views yeah this is important when you discuss narcissism narcissistic abuse and their behavior so you talk about clinically diagnose people but many of us meet people who are somewhere on the spectrum maybe higher lower how much of this content of your advice is interpretable in these situations we don't know many people are not um clinically diagnosed here two scholars are the authorities on your question one of the one of them is Lynn Sperry and the other one is Theodore Millen both Sperry and Millen suggested that we should distinguish between narcissistic style narcissistic personality or also known as narcissistic personality organization and narcissistic personality disorder narcissistic style is being an a-hole being a jerk so many people are like that they are nocturnal they are arrogant they are this they are that they are not malignant they don't they don't have the pernicious effect the bad effects that I'm describing in my way similarly very few people with narcissistic style which is the next phase next level narcissistic style simply means that your misbehaviors would characterize all your interactions in all fields of life they would not be limited let's say to the workplace all the intimate relationships but they will be who you are even there only a small minority would have such a horrible impact on the lives of their nearest and dearest and so only people with narcissistic personality disorder have this have manifested these outcomes that's why a lot of the content online is rubbish a lot of it you had a fight with your husband he's a narcissist it's a lot a lot of it is rubbish and many if not I would say almost all the self-styled experts and their self-styled dogs are wrong often wrong catastrophically wrong it reached the point where a group of academics felt the need to go on to go public on in Washington Post and say that we should ignore and I was not among them they said that we should ignore everything online on gaslight because all of it is wrong that's not something that's Washington Post and pre-eminent scholars and so on we are terrified in academia and I'm teaching in universities and so on I'm teaching in the outreach program of the CS consortium of universities which include among others Harvard and Princeton you know minor universities so I'm in touch with all this this milieu international conferences we are terrified of what's happening on terrified every concept has been corrupted beyond recognition every clinical entity has been utterly demolished by nonsense every and you have people with academic degrees in psychology who go online and declare themselves to be experts on narcissism and yet the only thing they've ever published was about receptivity to vaccines that's the only record of anything they've ever published and yet they they claim to be experts on narcissism we have people online who with academic degrees who have never ever participated in any international conference on cluster B personality disorder and yet they claim to be expert this is really bad what's happening on top but I'm also angry at my colleagues because they won't go on YouTube it's beneath them you know they they don't dirty their hands they remain stuck in academia ivory tower at least I dirty my hands I go I go online they're trying to fight this tsunami of misinformation and disinformation and nonsense and victimhood identity and but it's hopeless of course I'm I'm tilting at windmills there's no way to stop this to stem this tide and anyone who tries is is deranged by the YouTube algorithm because the victimhood guys or in girls they get a lot more traffic and generate a lot more advertising for YouTube so YouTube tends tends to encourage foster and disseminate misinformation and disinformation had YouTube and the likes social platforms not been subjected to political pressure to this very day you would have conspiracy theories terrorism videos and so on on these platforms because they bring a lot of traffic and they can monetize the eyeballs no one puts pressure on YouTube to to ban or block channels with wrong information about narcissism they they put a lot of pressure to ban and block Donald Trump so he was banned and blocked but as a result of political pressure for well for most of the instances of YouTube there were open channels of ICs on YouTube with decapitation videos for years for years four years at least only huge it takes huge pressure to you know get rid of David Ike was was on YouTube for well over 10 years Alex Jones was on on YouTube and elsewhere with Sunday hook conspiracies and so on for well over eight years so they have no incentive on the country they've incentive to have the kind of toxic venomous poisonous destructive content that attracts viewership because they monetize it by selling advertising and so we don't send chance even if all the academics in there by the way if you go online we're kidding you know I I saw videos by Kovut with 2000 views the I saw videos by Kernberg the biggest number of views was 20 000 I saw videos by Campbell who is the current authority on study experimental studies of narcissism with Sean 20 and so Campbell got the biggest number the highest number I've seen was half a million but most of his videos were like 70 000 20 000 10 000 no one watches these people they are the authorities no one watches them humans many no one watches they want to watch once I mentioned Kernberg in one of my videos and a woman wrote to me Kernberg really has no idea what he's talking about he should watch some videos by Romani I'm kidding you're not I invented that most of the language and I invented many of the diagnosis in use today for example inverted narcissists the main test for covert narcissism is built on my work I mean I can show you references after the session and yet I'm receiving comments you have no idea about inverted narcissism you are getting it or it's a diagnosis I invented you're getting it or wrong you should watch less carbon or what wasn't that you know this is how bad it is so it's a lost fight exactly like misinformation about vaccines or misinformation conspiracy theories and so on people despise expertise reject authority want nothing to do with anything establishment and anything institutional the irony is no one can be less establishment than me I mean I'm a rebel at the time in prison if you wish call me criminal no problem you're a punk I'm a punk I'm anti-social I'm everything and yet I'm now because I have a title professor in front of my name I'm now the establishment you know I'm punished for being the establishment is it maybe also simply people wish to have very simple and easy answers to not really because not really because science does provide similar for example if you have COVID you should get the vaccine it's extremely simple but they don't want anything to do with institutions experts authorities and so this is this is a rebellion against the foundations of civilization there's a wish to undermine destroy the foundations of civilization because there is a perception that civilization has left many people behind and does not provide the solutions anymore or that civilization is out of control like why do we need physics we ended up with nuclear weapons okay so physics is nice but now we can all die because crazy Putin would drop nuclear weapons in Ukraine so yeah but maybe we should maybe we would have been better off not having smartphone but not dying you know there is an argument there we we mismanaged as elites as members of the elites we mismanage a lot we mismanage world peace we mismanage technology we mismanage science we did a bad job women today have every right to get rid of men because men miss mishandled and mismanage history for long enough I think it is not not an accident that not a coincidence that feminism started to its ascendance after the kramian war the war in kremia which was a botched horrible war for florist nightingale and so on and of course exploded after the first and second world war when it was evident how stupid men are and how they can't do anything right you know so women said the hell with it we are taking over and of course they are taking over men just men are fighting back but they don't really they lost the war we are headed to a matriarchy so common average people they say we don't trust anymore doctors scientists and so on because the same people who gave us smartphones gave us nuclear weapons and the same people who gave us vaccines gave us a little bit or other medication that killed killed people I mean we can't trust anymore anyone also there is a presumption just not far from the truth that money corrupted everything irrevocably and inextricably I know it from the dsm the dsm is utterly corrupted by money utterly corrupted by it I don't trust the dsm I don't trust the dsm I now resort to the icd which is the alternative to the dsm in the rest of the world the dsm in the united states is product of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries it's heavily corrupted by money so there is this corruption that you can buy anything and that you can't trust anything because you know who paid for it behind the scenes or directly even most tobacco studies were financed by tobacco industry the tobacco industry so should we believe other studies about other issues I don't know even I don't know in otherwise we have entered the age of distrust it's the age of distrust in this environment it's very easy for con artists anyone who claims to be an expert on narcissism and publish nothing about narcissism and did not participate in any international conference on narcissism is a con artist and I don't care how many phd's he or she has it's a con artist it's a crook so there is open space for for crooks and con artists and crazy people reptilians and I don't know what it is so it's getting worse worse and worse because people as an act of rebellion even they say in your face I'm going to believe that reptiles came from another planet and became Queen Elizabeth I'm going to believe that not because I believe that but because it's my way of showing um kind of resistance defiance defiance resistance that's my way of showing this so people are adopting irrational positions or count positions conspiracy theories not always because they truly believe but because this is the last stand this is the last the only remaining way to fight the encroaching establishment the state a typical nation state a hundred years ago consumed three percent of gross domestic product in the early 20th century typical state consumed three percent today a typical state consumes 60 percent of gross domestic product a typical tax code in Bismarck's time Bismarck was first to introduce a tax code and and social pension social welfare and pension system a typical code at that time was about a hundred pages the IRS code is 87 000 pages there is a cancerous growth of the nanny state of establishments of institutions and people resent this and reject this and don't want this they want to have some space you know so what can you do to fight off this encroachment this gradual you know infestation you you're not a physicist you're not a scientist you're not so you say I believe in reptilians it's my my but then this is also a form of individuation yes it's it's part of malignant individualism individualism became an ideology not individuation individuation is healthy individualism okay it's a malignant ideology which is attendant on individuation it's like when you become an individual you suddenly acquire entitlement and rights at the expense of others let's individuals so yes it's part of malignant individuals I'm going to inflict damage on my neighbor I'm going to infect my neighbor with COVID just to prove that I'm independent I'm autonomous I have agency I'm going to kill 10 people in the process but I'm going to do that because I'm an individual and no one will tell me what to do it's an example and similarly people think that if they spread wrong information about narcissism it's not really damaging something like you know infecting someone with COVID no it's much worse much worse than infecting someone with COVID statistically speaking and if they spread a conspiracy theory about reptilians okay it's half joke half not joke but it wouldn't have real life repercussions until someone kills someone so there was the in-cell community the involuntary celibate community these are men who claim that they have a right to sex and if women refuse to give them sex they should be raped and you can say okay you know losers until several of them uh raped and killed women there are consequences to every utterance every speech act as consequences nothing is stronger than words not nuclear weapons nothing is stronger than words words should be used very responsibly and sparingly and every word should be measured even though my videos are strong and I seem to actually every word is measured and I invest hours of research before I say anything and I never say anything I'm not sure and haven't checked cross check from a dozen angles you have a responsibility the minute you open your mouth and so but people regard speech acts as inconsequential people even regard facts as inconsequential I was on the form I've been on the form and someone said the battle of Hastings was in 1066 correct by the way and then another guy says no I think you're wrong I think it was I don't know 1039 that was the first guy says no no no it was 1066 here is a reference from the británica okay so and the second guy who said that's your truth that's your fact doesn't have to be mine facts or pick facts or opinions facts are a subspecies of opinion this post-truth or truth is more this is so catastrophically dangerous and so this luxury that is threatening to the species even in gender studies even in gender studies even in race studies self-censorship in academia and so on is such that it borders on deception so if I went to introduce a study for example what is the distribution of IQ among self-identified people in different races I self-identify as african-american so okay you will be included in the study and now I want to check what's the distribution of IQ it's a legitimate research question end of story but you will never be allowed to do this and those who tried and they wrote the bell curve they were penalized severely similarly I want to check whether the brains of women are substantially different to the brains of men hint yes but this is not you will never be allowed to start with this I want to check whether women really really kind of involve emotions in sex I want to see if it's true this myth or this assumption that women become more emotional in sex even in one night's tent even in order to test this I will not be allowed I will not be allowed self-censorship is so tremendous in academia that is and on the other hand totally unfounded nonsense like race theory or totally unfounded counterfactual nonsense you know I read a study with this old French um I read a study about slavery and and so on so forth and the study said that the white man projected an image of the black man and all kinds of nonsense and then the study said that this was a specifically white phenomenon white race phenomenon now listen they love to be a racist or supremacist or this these people are nuts and many of them should be in prison not on the streets I also am a member of a minority in my own country I'm a safari de june for a very long time we were the blacks of israel no one can accuse me of being a racist in any way shape or form but I want to tell you this this was not a white phenomenon the minute slaves were freed many of them became slaveholders when slaves were sent to Liberia Liberia was a country which supposedly was a new country for freed slaves that's why it's called Liberia liberation the minute they went to Liberia the overwhelming vast majority 80% of freed slaves sent to Liberia started to raid the locals and to ship to ship them to slavery that was actually the main economic activity of freed slaves in Liberia 100,000 100,000 of them were sent 87,000 were slave engaged in slavery ships kidnapping everything it was not a white phenomenon because most of slave traders were Arab they were not white technically they're not English they were not England was the first to abolish slavery it was the white race that actually stopped slavery slavery I lived in Africa slavery was the predominant trade in Africa for centuries before any white men set foot on the continent of course white men enslaved people not saying they didn't not an idiot not of course they enslaved you of course they did horrible things but it was not an exclusive white phenomenon but if you dare to say this you will lose your job your tenure your pension you'll be penalized ostracized you will be subject to death threats and there is a good a fair chance that you'll be assassinated this is the word we live in famous last words famous last words it's been a pleasure to know you in Budapest thank you so much bearing me in the next of the magazine thank you so much for this wonderful interview thank you my pleasure thank you for having me and suffering tolerating it says here stop taking video I swear to you my my my computer it's a jeez it's humiliating me stop taking video stop taking video oh god no it wasn't good that's my computer