Narcissism is the struggle of the self towards an idealization of itself beyond real possibilities. It is the idealism of a deficient ego. And one must not forget that the distance between idealism and psychic pathology is invisible.
Religion, philosophy, and ideologies know much about idealism. The history of religion, philosophy, and ideologies is often the history of idealism in its multiple facets. Not in vain have each of these human activities, so pathologically seductive, invested much of their emotional capital in legitimizing the solid ground of their idealism. A solid ground, often nebulous, always in an inaccessible and redeeming beyond. Plato boasted of knowing the ideal and metaphysical world of pure, utterly pure ideas—as if he had ever been there like a registrar to the property—Thomas Aquinas addressed God informally, Hegel did the same with the absolute spirit, and Marx announced in his visionary communist utopia the itinerary that led to the promised land. Nietzsche discovered absolute nothingness—no doubt before Lucretius justified it for the first time centuries earlier—Freud engaged in direct dialogue with the unconscious of all his patients, and Heidegger—possessed by ecstasy—saw Dasein, more clearly (and more rhetorically) than Snow White saw the seven dwarfs. Amen. Philosophy, religion, and politics, in all their ideological wrappings and imperatives, have left us a magnificent anthology of Narcissuses. It is difficult to know which has been the most sinister and promising.
The more idealistic a person is, the weaker they are in everything they do, think, and feel, despite any alexithymia they may suffer from: their weakness permeates personal, social, and professional relationships, love and sexuality, work and career goals, leisure and management of free time... Idealism always leads to failure, so, to avoid it, the idealist surrounds themselves with all possible means to preserve collective and personal self-deception. At this point, it is crucial to live surrounded by other idealists—who serve as escorts and shields—so that all, together, assume living in a concerted manner in an idealized and false world. A fabulous and happy coliving. By emotional decree. At this point, it is essential to impose on the "realists" the obligation to assume the idealism demanded by the idealists. It is not redundancy, it is a requirement that, sooner rather than later, can be imperatively set forth in the Civil Code of a postmodern democracy. Democracy itself is unquestionably political idealism as such.
The power of idealism in the Contemporary Age has always been that of a triple negation: the negation of reality (I am the truth—the external reality is wrong, not me), the negation of objectivity (everything is subjective—except what I say), and the negation of science when the latter demonstrates the fallacies of the ideals demanded (reason cannot explain the complexity of life—my feelings can). Idealism is a formalism incompatible with reality that idealism itself, paradoxically, demands to assume. It is a theory capable of affirming that if something fails, it is the fault of reality, not the idealist. The idealist, like the narcissist, is incapable of assuming any responsibility. The fault always lies with others.
The power of idealism is the power of number, it is a quantum, not qualitative, force, whose destiny is collective, massive, and global failure. Naturally, it is an invisible failure. Only the weak need idealism. The strong can emotionally and cognitively assume failure, through personal disillusionment and through a capacity to react to rebuild themselves, in conditions compatible with the demands of reality. Pedants call this resilience. Idealism greatly weakens any type of human society, while making it believe—falsely and delusively—that it is stronger than others. Nazi Germany is at this point an example of historical and universal reference. The same goes for individuals: the emotional strength of the idealist is based on fanaticism. It is an extremely high and powerful force. As powerful as it is blinding. And that blindness is what, faced with reality that it does not see, leads to complete failure. Because reality does not tolerate those who are not compatible with it. The outcome of all idealism is the most absolute failure. But it is a failure that is not visible, very deferred, and that our society avoids declaring publicly, as it is devoted to the promotion and staunch defense of all idealisms.
In fact, idealism has a tragic end, because, like any tragedy, its causes are invisible and its consequences irreversible. If it were visible, that is, intelligibly proleptic, failure, like tragedy, would be avoided. An excess of sensitivity often deprives us of a minimum of intelligibility. The minimum necessary to avoid failure. Oedipus is blinded by passion; Narcissus, by the idealism of his own ego. Idealists have tragedy before them, but they do not see it. They live in the most absolute defenselessness, but they do not know it. And they can give their lives for a cause that—they consider supreme, sublime, and morally imperative and necessary—in the name of the self or in the name of a collectivity in which they obsessively integrate themselves. The idealist is never alone. Never. The idealist is a servile member of a unanimous and blind army. There is always a narcissistic Führer shepherding herds of Narcissuses. They claim to give meaning to their lives, when in reality what they do is give them a pseudo-idealistic and radical meaning, which can only lead to violent failure. The Contemporary Age, hand in hand with German idealism, undoubtedly heir to Lutheran fideistic idealism, has engendered and promoted forms of being absolutely obsessed with idealistic imperatives of life. It has built a human prototype that believes it can live in a personalized reality, tailored to its own hedonistic scale, where its egomaniacal ego is the ultimate unit of measurement and demand for all things. To such an extent that others are imperatively obliged to satisfy—and obey—its personal and egotistical, self-centered ideals. This is narcissism, in any of its facets, genders, and impulses. All of them pathological.
The postmodern respect for 21st-century narcissism explains why human failure is not advertised. Few know firsthand that more than half of the people involved in "business" end up ruined. No writer today wants—or can—admit that their supposed editorial success is not due to literary talent or their own poetic intelligence (which they lack), but to the commercial and business efforts of financial groups that profit from their books in today's book supermarkets, commercial establishments that cannot in any way be called bookstores. If a writer today is "brilliant," it is not because of what they write, but because the geniuses are those who have designed and promoted the advertising campaign for their work, which will expire in less than 90 days. The carrot expires in three months. Almost no one knows that the life of a university professor is institutional self-deception promoted by quality agencies and the evaluation of academic paperwork, the great garbage truck of higher education. Some teachers have spoken on social networks about how current education is a deception for all students, and have clearly told them—in a very Anglo-Saxon continuous present tense—"dear student: we are deceiving you." Yes, students are deceived, it is true: as much as teachers deceive each other. It is important not to forget the beam in one's own eye. And evidence that everyone knows and knew something like this—the deception of students—is that, after announcing it publicly and loudly, absolutely everything remains exactly the same as before: intact. People love to be deceived—mundus vult decipi (the public wants to be deceived), goes the Latin adage—and the university student, far from being an exception, is the most youthful, cheerful, and sophisticated example of Narcissus. There is no better deception than one that persists beyond its discovery and publication. Nothing happens: its revelation does not alter the success of the fraud, which continues without alterations. Narcissus is the god of the 21st century. An interesting chapter will be the vision of his divine collapse: the decline of Narcissus. A good title—which I give you—for a self-help novel. Narcissism is the chronicle of an announced failure. The impossible decline of Narcissus is assured in our time.
However, the failure that is vulgarly exhibited on social networks is not really a failure but a narcissistic way of seeking emotional complicity. It is one of the multiple aesthetic genres of narcissistic self-help. The narcissism of modesty, humility, or defeat. Even the narcissism of ignorance, boasted by some intellectuals who claim not to know how to use email, for example. Cavafy dedicated an entire poem to that literary motif, admired essentially by defeatist narcissists: "Ithaca." All the lyric poetry of the 20th century is a chant to the narcissism of defeat and the aesthetic placidity of failure. It is an excellent seductive narcotic for narcissists. It is narcissism, not genius, that explains the success of the inexplicably called "poetry of experience." Experience? Of what? Of idleness.
Narcissism is the struggle that an idealist maintains against the reality of their own self, denying it. The narcissist knows that they truly do not fit, that they are not worth it, to become compatible with reality, and therefore invents an alternative, virtual, and idealized reality. And surrounds themselves with the dramatis personae that suit them best. The current postmodern world not only allows it but promotes, encourages, and rewards it. The 21st century rewards narcissism in all its genres, including—especially—the most extremely malignant and Luciferian.
All this festive deception allows the narcissist to forget that they are not compatible with reality. But reality, like death, never misses any of its appointments. If someone divorces excessively from reality, it corrects that deviation itself, charging a high bill. But for a narcissist, like almost all idealists, the real signs—the signs of reality—are unreadable. Theirs is not the semiotics of the real. Failure is the distance that separates idealists from reality. And narcissism is the denial of the failure that is before them. Failure manifests itself in multiple forms: war, crime, divorce, unpayable and increasing debt, suicide, political revolution, ideologies, utopia, deceit, religions, the gallows, philosophies of all nations, national and supranational democratic elections—how many failures have democratic elections failed to disguise? Narcissism is a—pathological—form of idealism. And its destiny is failure. Healing is truly difficult. Furthermore, the market performance of narcissism is very high. It is one of the main sources of financial energy of our time. Narcissism is one of the economic engines of the 21st century.
Power allows the exercise of narcissism. And preserving—the diurnal—exercise of narcissism, delaying failure as long as possible. But not avoiding it in the long run. Because delaying failure is to prolong agony. A narcissist without power is not a true narcissist, they are a fool. A nobody, a raw victim of their own diminished ego. Narcissus likes power. It is their safe conduct and delicacy, their stronghold and armor, their image and mirror. Their home and also their own jaws. It preserves them from failure, which comes—immediately—when they lose power. But power, any form of power, is a temporary illusion, although it works as best as possible for a lysergic and enchanting time. Power is a time bomb whose timer you do not know.
A basic and massive example of a narcissist without power is the user of social networks. They call them users, when in reality they are consumers, victims of Narcissus and Arachne, that is, of their own limitations and at the mercy of the tyranny administered by those who have woven the network, that is, the spider's web, in which their anxiety and time bleed emotionally. The psychological erosion of the narcissist is brutal. Consumer and producer of content for public networks, they live this emotional, despairing, and dramatized attrition. These unhappy narcissuses—internet commentators who can barely read or write (they do not know that they do not know)—feed the network to facilitate the flow of money and the commercial activities of others. That is their basic function. They are internet transmitters of other people's money. They are also powerful free advertisers of the achievements of other people, whom they promote believing they are discussing or censoring them. But in any case, they always promote them. They always generate the opposite of what they propose because—as idealists and narcissists—they always ignore the real consequences of their actions. They are the necessary plankton for the mercenaries of global commerce. Market transmitters, advertising media, and unconscious consumers, promoted by making them believe in a concept as vague as it is vacuous: content creators. Once again, the carrot. The only value of that content is to contribute to the global transmission of money generated by the internet and its social networks, and of which, in the best case scenario, they receive a ridiculous share, because the highest percentage goes to the oversight of the State—and, above all, the spider that weaves the network (the spider that weaves the network does not work for free)—, a State now subordinate to the interests of the friends of global commerce, who have in fact arachnically designed the "creativity" of social networks and their seductive and addictive pathologies. Today, Narcissus is no longer the son of Cephissus and Liriope. There are no longer river gods or laughing nymphs in the networks—social—of your life. Today, Narcissus is an internet-spawned arachnid creature. Today, Narcissus is you.
Jesús G. Maestro