I don’t remember who said it, but some theorists
and most, if not all social psychologists see society as an
organism. It’s an organism that functions like any other
organism. Instead of the parts of an individual being contained
in the “head” of the individual, creating, desiring,
avoiding, and a wide range of other reactions to stimuli and
what regard as “inherent” make up, the social
organism contains those parts throughout its body. First,
I think it’s important to discuss what the differences
and similarities between the two types in order to understand
how the individual narcissistic characteristics apply to the
social organism. This will be coming from me, mind you, not
a social psychology mind set.
The social organism is made up of many individuals, it is
not an organism in and of itself. To say that a society is
an organism is in reference to its acting as though it is
an organism. That having been said, I’m claiming that
because individuals have innate psychological traits, a social
organism will experience those characteristics as well. Before
incurring the wrath of social psychologists and even sociologists
somewhat like yourself by saying there are things non-socially
created going on the individual’s head, let me say that
I regard these things to be both broad and in a state of potentiality.
Potentiality enables the characteristic to bend and modify
itself to, yes, the social environment. Or even just a physical
environment if the individual by some chance exists in some
vacuum.
I think perhaps the greatest boon to the argument of the social
psychologist AND myself (as an “innatist”) is
the study of feral children. These children, found completely
or near completely devoid of human interaction, are utterly
screwed up to be sure. They don’t know the difference
between right and wrong in any way and behave very much like
animals, which we are, and which the social psychologists
would say we would be like were there to be no construction
of self through social means. I’ll give that. However,
I would also say that the feral child (as an example of a
person in a social vacuum) has innate drives for food, survival,
sexuality – if only gratification, fear of, and a drive
for power. Power over getting out of the rain or rooting for
a nipple, not a full blown Nietzchian model. These drives
become only MORE actualized through social interaction, regardless
of the nature of that interaction. It is that interaction
that may determine how these drives I’m calling innate,
manifest themselves. The drive for power, for instance, may
be given particular social circumstances, may be squelched
almost entirely or whipped into a frenzy.
Now, with all of THAT having been said, the inner-directed
narcissist is one who has an internalized “lone-ness.”
He has his own principles and notions about the way things
are supposed to be, derived from any number of sources or
methods. This individual comes to be this way through a lack
of emotional expression and the belief that its containment
is the correct thing. And of course that doing what one has
internalized as the correct thing, as being the correct thing
to do. Deviations are not in the inner directed manner. Although
deviations in setting may occur, the inner-directed individual
has his own pre-established methods of reaction. The inner-directed
society is one that shares these characteristics but on a
societal scale. This culture is not one of tradition but may
seem to have some traditional values. Such values, as with
behavior, are internalized by the individuals that make up
the societal organism such that an identity is formed. For
instance, the “Texas Identity” is one of inner-directed
narcissism. A person raised in this state, particularly in
a rural cultural environment that more fully exudes this identity,
is going to take on the identity of being what it is to be
“Texan.” This applies to the female as well as
the male. Perhaps the individual learned this identity of
inner-directedness from the parent, but the parent as an adult
learns it and it’s solidified by the culture (and this
goes on retroactively), and the child too, will continue to
have this identity solidified. Texas was a lone state. A state
whose inhabitants had to make do with what they had, fight
off those who endangered them, and struggle just to survive.
If you substitute emotional elements in the individual with
the physical ones of the state of Texas, you get the same
personality characteristics.
The other-directed narcissistic personality is one that evolves
from a lack of emotional fulfillment also, but the manner
in which the individual reacts is to draw emotionality to
him. Unlike the inner-directed person, who keeps it at a distance.
To draw emotional fulfillment to oneself is to act in such
a way that others will respond positively. In order to do
so the actor needs to first decide what action will be necessary
to elicit a positive response in a given situation and then
act in that manner. Unlike the inner-directedness, the other-directedness
gets fulfillment (or Platonic shadows of it) from outside
of himself. The acting is just that, an act. The script is
written by the actor as social situations arise in order to
fit the case in which the actor wishes to draw emotion. The
individual draws the response he wishes to feed himself from
others the empty calories of artificial emotional involvement.
Often on the part of the person drawn upon as well. These
artificial emotion drawing actions become internalized and
either replace the “real,” or never allow the
real to develop. The person is stuck in their own play, on
a stage they know no way off of. In fact, the world is their
stage they just don’t know they are a player.
When this personality type is one of an entire society, the
society becomes a player to itself. The social organism is
starving for real fulfillment, but instead is driven to draw
a sense of fulfillment by engaging itself in things from the
outstide. America is an other-directed narcissistic society.
The culture of America was not always, but it has become so,
I think naturally.
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