Mastodawn

Jason Lefkowitz 2d ago

This is not just a European problem. Here in US civic tech, whenever I saw "actually good software made from the grassroots" go up against "crappy software with a bunch of well-connected people attached to it," the crappy software won every time

@jalefkowit no, yeah, sigh. it's a bit of a recurring problem

part of it is because they're playing two different games. power and popularity is a very different goal from helping people do things

thinking that way has helped us accept it, over the years..... but maybe the stakes are high enough that we should not accept it. hm.

@ireneista @jalefkowit "power and popularity is a very different goal from helping people do things".

It seems to me that even though we have technology all around us, from a psychological point of view, we still live in a very medieval world. In medieval times, your reputation and chivalrous, manly strength - as in ability to dominate and control - meant everything. It was "might makes right", and appearances and aggro displays were everything. Men would duel to the death over slight transgressions, if only to make a name for themselves, and defend their "honour".

Fast forward to today: all this narcissism didn't go anywhere.

It's still the same: power and popularity still rule at the end of the day, while those with pro-social, community-oriented values appear as "weaklings" to the average commoner who has no sense of the inner workings and dynamics of these competing software ecosystems (who then unquestioningly bumble into their next iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, etc purchase - taking the path of least resistance).

@d1 @jalefkowit yes, well put. this is closely aligned with our own model of the situation, and is the thing we were trying to hint at. we're grateful you elaborated on it.

@d1 @jalefkowit fundamentally for the dynamic you describe to change, the manner in which stories flow through society needs to change. once hierarchy as an organizing principle takes root in people's thinking, power as a goal in itself grows from that. stories need to flow in ways which do not reinforce the power of people over other people.

Owl Eyes

@ireneista @jalefkowit well, the roots of narcissism are when babies either get spoiled badly, or neglected badly. Once a narcissist is fully-formed by the age of 6 to 9, they are about 95% likely to never change their unflagging and unpredictable toxicity until their dying breath. IMHO, The story can't really change until there are wholesale improvements in parenting to avoid those spoiling or neglecting initial conditions which create the narcissists in the first place

@d1 @jalefkowit we do agree with that. it's perhaps in some sense fortunate that parenting is part of one of the high-stakes political wedges at this moment in history, because things that are part of the public consciousness can be discussed in ways that lead to real change.

@d1 @jalefkowit with that said, we think that you have identified a root cause but not the root cause. there are several, each individually sufficient to re-create the whole pattern. another is ideologies which provide explicit rationalizations for spreading might-makes-right in the world.

@d1 @jalefkowit we also feel as a mental health activist that it's our duty to push back on the use of a diagnostic term for naming the thing you're talking about. diagnostic criteria are not the point, and anyone who claims to be able to clinically diagnose a public figure on the basis of their public actions is mistaken. meanwhile, the use of this terminology does materially harm people who genuinely struggle with the various conditions that are popularly misused like this.

@d1 @jalefkowit we're not disagreeing with you about the general shape of things, but we urge you to recognize narcissistic behavior as a choice, not an innate characteristic. brain chemistry and emotional habits can be adjusted, if the people who have them want to do that.

@ireneista @jalefkowit Yes you're right, they're culpable for any and every intentional toxic act they commit. Although they usually get away with their evil for about 2 or 3 decades - being grand master con artists - until it eventually catches up to them. They usually have bad endings to their lives, once everyone figures out to run the hell away from them, as they are *virtually always* beyond reasoning with, or saving or redeeming somehow. That "95%" statistic is a tough one to swallow, I know.

@ireneista @jalefkowit I'm not a psychologist, and you're right in that I can't formally diagnose anyone with NPD. But none the less, the studies show about 1 in 20 people have a "dark triad personality type", and the world of technology - focusing moreso on gadgets and services, not so much people - is extremely unaware of this reality, it seems. About 50% of these "dark triad personality types" are men, and about 50% are women, the point being that gender or sex is not relevant to this 1 in 20 statistic. They also come from any and every race. Not just the race who is in a majority in any given country.

@d1 @jalefkowit we agree with this, but stigma and social structures built around stigma do not harm those who already wield power, they harm those without it

@ireneista @jalefkowit Labelling other people in a malicious way (or even groups of people) is certainly blameworthy, so I agree with you there. But having said this, **we all** have some variable degree of "narcissistic personality trait". Some of us have more of it, some of us have less of it.

Actually, having too little narcissistic personality trait is unideal and unhealthy, because without any of it, we become too impoverished of agency and self-esteem, being unable to imagine and envision a brighter and more ideal future for ourselves.

So it's fair game, and not a derogatory term, to speak in terms of "narcissistic personality _trait_". It's not a formal diagnosis, not a formal Disorder in and of itself, and not for psychologists alone to speak of. **We just have to stop short of claiming to diagnose specific people with NPD, when we have no Masters or Doctorate degree in psychology.** (and even then, they need to do many tests, and need lots of data to decide)

@d1 @jalefkowit since you agree that your goal is to refer to a general personality trait and not to the diagnostic criteria in particular, why do you need to use the diagnostic label? use... any other word

@d1 @jalefkowit the challenge with attempting to maintain the nuance you describe is that political rhetoric, to get traction, necessarily gets repeated in ever-narrower, less-thoughtful ways. you do not have the ability to use the word "narcissistic" in persuasive speech and have everyone who echoes you understand the precise sense in which you are using it.

(edit: "ever" not "every", sorry, typo)

@d1 @jalefkowit you haven't said this, but if your thought process in wanting to use that word i particular is that it feels as if it has more "bite" to it, feels like a harsher criticism, than "greedy" or "self-centered" or "disregarding the lives of other people" do....... that's because of stigma. you are drawing on stigma to do that, and reinforcing it as you do.

@d1 @jalefkowit you're reinforcing it because people who hear you say it, take it as permission to say it in turn, and don't understand the line you're holding yourself to about when and how you say it.

@ireneista @jalefkowit I feel blame is thrown around way too quickly and unscrupulously. Ideologies are angrily bandied about, and don't really make the world a better place - they're almost always one form of toxicity in opposition to another form of toxicity. A bunch of people who think that two "wrongs" make a "right".

I see blame for the problems of the world getting laid at the feet of this or that demographic all too quickly, when it's far more accurately to be laid at the feet of the dark triad personality types instead; the well-studied, well-labelled, well-understood patterns of behavior being a far more exact and fitting match.

@d1 @jalefkowit are you suggesting that there is no such thing as a coherent concept of "good" that can be written down? or merely that no existing book claiming to do so gets everything right? we certainly agree with the latter

@d1 @jalefkowit we don't really understand where you're coming from here.... that is, we have very much felt the thing you describe of feeling like big ideas are fighting each other without regard for the lives of the humans they are made out of... but we don't understand how that's a response to our request that you not harm marginalized people