Very well put. We can find the origins of this back in the nineteenth century. Dickens' Mrs Jellyby, in *Bleak House*, is focused on helping poor Africans while ignoring her own children, who are always doing dangerous stuff like falling down the stairs, and Jo the child crossing-sweep who is starving to death outside. It's a lot easier to believe you're saving the world from a distance than to make a difference to one person you actually know.
A take I don’t see often. I think you could stand to explore gender here because according to pretty consistent findings across cultures, women tend to be more concerned with the oppressed and more easily disgusted by moral breaches. Weaponized empathy is a female coded aggressive response, and we are particularly susceptible to guilt not least because we’ve evolved to please everyone. And so, the internet inflames this long standing tendency and turns it into narcissistic guilt. This is my conjecture, anyway.
With women there's also a more sensitive response to and awareness of shame. I haven't thought this through technically, in part because I need more insights from women to better understand it.
Narcissistic guilt, unlike shame, can be an entirely private affair. The goal is to free the self from responsibility for one's choices through the externalization of blame.
Shame, on the other hand, seems to me to be about enforced compliance, consensus policing and so forth.
The intersection between the two that I can think of right now off the top of my head would be that narcissistic guilt would make it psychologically easier to be shamed into things, as one would feel free from culpability for joining in with a toxic mass movement, like for example the Chinese Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.
Btw if you really want to see some toxic female behavior look at what some of the young Chinese women got up to during that time.
Excellent. I instinctively realized that our society’s recent collective reactions to the incidents you describe came from feeling “guilt,” but this essay
offers a very cogent and believable explanation of the differences from previous generations.
Thanks! Yes, this concept of "narcissistic guilt" is something that I think has a lot of explanatory power. I hope it catches on, because we need an effective means of countering this relentless social manipulation.
I've never approached this issue in the manner you have.
If I pass by a beggar, wave them off, and say, "Not my problem." Another person might assume that I have no empathy. But that's not the case. As you pointed out, the beggar is there -- not by my doing. Therefore the beggar is not *my* responsibility. After all, I have a wife and kids, I have to look out for my family first and foremost.
Having a guilt response to actions that you didn't participate in, or couldn't have participated (historical and the like) in is NOT good. That's bad on an existential level. That opens one up to serious manipulation.
It's almost like those with "narcissistic guilt" are missing the instinct of self preservation.
Another way to look at it; who's going to manipulate someone toward good outcomes?
Oddly, despite growing up in a Christian church, I have always had an instinctive, visceral, negative reaction to the emotional manipulation that tries to force me into doing something just because someone else has met with misfortune. I really despise the people who pull that sort of thing.
I actually went to Catholic school (Minor clarifying point: my parents had different religious denominations, so the Catholic church was not my actual church, but the parochial school was way more advanced than the public school back then). One of my first memories of this was when they took us to the gym and played a "starving kids in Haiti" video. I was no more than 7 at the time, and then they gave us those UNICEF jars to collect coins. Well, the other kids grew up in huge houses while I lived in a mobile home (on privately owned land, at least, not that any of those jerkwad lefty brat pricks cared to note the difference between that and a trailer park, even when I was handily crushing them academically), and I remember being shamed for not having collected enough coins compared to them. While my dad was scouring the (printed newspaper, to date myself) classified ads at the kitchen table after being laid off.
But even BEFORE all that, that video just didn't register with me in a way that exploited my empathy. It registered with me as: why are they even showing this to us when it's just total strangers in some far away place? I can see the problems here where we live, and sure, Christianity is all about helping people, but that's usually the people around you, right? It's not like the Apostles were sending a bunch of shekels to random unfortunate souls 1000 miles away from their ministries.
I'm kind of wired weird in that I seem to be largely immune to both empathetic exploitation and most advertising. Maybe it's just my overly logical disposition where if someone cannot VERY clearly demonstrate to me what advantage or profit I gain through a particular course of action, without any corresponding losses that I would consider unacceptable, it's going to be an uphill struggle for them. But not just that, I recoil from people pushing forced empathy on me, especially for strangers. I care about my friends and family a great deal. But you literally can't physically care about 8 billion people. That would be insane. You can care about the general course of things; I care about stopping globalist totalitarianism, which is a threat to those 8 billion people. It's probably more of a survival instinct than anything. But guess what? If we don't fix THAT problem, well then, giving someone a handout - deserving or not - is completely and utterly meaningless and pointless in the grand scheme of things.
Very few people see themselves as flawless, but I think there's a strong urge to balance our ledgers, so to speak. Where we have done wrong, we try to do good elsewhere, and we think it sums up to being a good person, on the whole.
There's some freedom to be had in simply recognizing oneself as inherently less than good--to pass the beggar and not give them anything, not because you're making up for it elsewhere, not because you aren't expected to be charitable, but simply because you've accepted that you're not so much of a saint as to give them anything. Hopefully this comes with the recognition that others aren't saints, either, and you judge not, lest ye be judged. It also helps if you believe in a higher power that loves you despite your unworthiness.
Not that we shouldn't try to do good, but believing it's within our power to end up on the positive side of the ledger mostly just leads people to be self-righteous and judgmental. That a reasonable level of humility also protects against exploitation by organized beggars is certainly a perk, though.
Very true. By the time I was in my forties, I had steeled myself against this kind of manipulation. I have no guilt, nor will I apologize, for anything I did not personally do.
Man... this was superb. It dovetails with so many things I've been considering, and has taught me and helped me to organize my thoughts.
I also dove into the curious phenomenon of 'guilt' or empathy (which doesn't seem to affect behavior) in the context of the immigration debate. I'm sorry to keep posting links in your comments but I really think this is relevant:
You can detect these changes everywhere: in the culture, in academia (especially), in therapy and journalism... A society without guilt and shame is presumed to be better and more fair, somehow.
Spot-on article full of valuable insight. I learned things today. Victimhood privilege exists because narcissistic pretentious guilt exists. I call it self-righteous guilt but now I prefer your narcissistic guilt.
I’ve had the same experiences having lived in regions where organized begging employed amputations and drugging of children. I too made the mistake of helping a child beggar in a gypsy area in Bulgaria and was instantly surrounded by swarms of other children and adults begging furiously.
I wrote a whole book on manipulation tactics including victimhood and guilt.
Interestingly, this trend has been going on since before WW1 already. I’ve seen several different news articles, caricatures and quotes where this propensity for self-damaging “social justice” behavior in Europeans gets called out.
Yes it's been building since the 17th century, but only really caught on with the masses with the advent of mass media in the 20th century. Before that it was a bourgeois/intellectual thing. I'm just old enough to have known people who were culturally immune to it -- my working-class grandparents for example.
Very well put. We can find the origins of this back in the nineteenth century. Dickens' Mrs Jellyby, in *Bleak House*, is focused on helping poor Africans while ignoring her own children, who are always doing dangerous stuff like falling down the stairs, and Jo the child crossing-sweep who is starving to death outside. It's a lot easier to believe you're saving the world from a distance than to make a difference to one person you actually know.
Dickens would be astonished by how common it is now.
Mrs. Jellyby is an excellent example of ‘narcissistic guilt.’
This was such an aha moment for me:
“If you feel guilty for what you did not do, but not for what you did, it's easy to behave in a sociopathic manner.”
A take I don’t see often. I think you could stand to explore gender here because according to pretty consistent findings across cultures, women tend to be more concerned with the oppressed and more easily disgusted by moral breaches. Weaponized empathy is a female coded aggressive response, and we are particularly susceptible to guilt not least because we’ve evolved to please everyone. And so, the internet inflames this long standing tendency and turns it into narcissistic guilt. This is my conjecture, anyway.
With women there's also a more sensitive response to and awareness of shame. I haven't thought this through technically, in part because I need more insights from women to better understand it.
Narcissistic guilt, unlike shame, can be an entirely private affair. The goal is to free the self from responsibility for one's choices through the externalization of blame.
Shame, on the other hand, seems to me to be about enforced compliance, consensus policing and so forth.
The intersection between the two that I can think of right now off the top of my head would be that narcissistic guilt would make it psychologically easier to be shamed into things, as one would feel free from culpability for joining in with a toxic mass movement, like for example the Chinese Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.
Btw if you really want to see some toxic female behavior look at what some of the young Chinese women got up to during that time.
Excellent. I instinctively realized that our society’s recent collective reactions to the incidents you describe came from feeling “guilt,” but this essay
offers a very cogent and believable explanation of the differences from previous generations.
Thanks! Yes, this concept of "narcissistic guilt" is something that I think has a lot of explanatory power. I hope it catches on, because we need an effective means of countering this relentless social manipulation.
This is pretty hard hitting!
I've never approached this issue in the manner you have.
If I pass by a beggar, wave them off, and say, "Not my problem." Another person might assume that I have no empathy. But that's not the case. As you pointed out, the beggar is there -- not by my doing. Therefore the beggar is not *my* responsibility. After all, I have a wife and kids, I have to look out for my family first and foremost.
Having a guilt response to actions that you didn't participate in, or couldn't have participated (historical and the like) in is NOT good. That's bad on an existential level. That opens one up to serious manipulation.
It's almost like those with "narcissistic guilt" are missing the instinct of self preservation.
Another way to look at it; who's going to manipulate someone toward good outcomes?
A wonderful article. Thanks Bill!
This in combination with collective guilt is the trick.
Oddly, despite growing up in a Christian church, I have always had an instinctive, visceral, negative reaction to the emotional manipulation that tries to force me into doing something just because someone else has met with misfortune. I really despise the people who pull that sort of thing.
I actually went to Catholic school (Minor clarifying point: my parents had different religious denominations, so the Catholic church was not my actual church, but the parochial school was way more advanced than the public school back then). One of my first memories of this was when they took us to the gym and played a "starving kids in Haiti" video. I was no more than 7 at the time, and then they gave us those UNICEF jars to collect coins. Well, the other kids grew up in huge houses while I lived in a mobile home (on privately owned land, at least, not that any of those jerkwad lefty brat pricks cared to note the difference between that and a trailer park, even when I was handily crushing them academically), and I remember being shamed for not having collected enough coins compared to them. While my dad was scouring the (printed newspaper, to date myself) classified ads at the kitchen table after being laid off.
But even BEFORE all that, that video just didn't register with me in a way that exploited my empathy. It registered with me as: why are they even showing this to us when it's just total strangers in some far away place? I can see the problems here where we live, and sure, Christianity is all about helping people, but that's usually the people around you, right? It's not like the Apostles were sending a bunch of shekels to random unfortunate souls 1000 miles away from their ministries.
I'm kind of wired weird in that I seem to be largely immune to both empathetic exploitation and most advertising. Maybe it's just my overly logical disposition where if someone cannot VERY clearly demonstrate to me what advantage or profit I gain through a particular course of action, without any corresponding losses that I would consider unacceptable, it's going to be an uphill struggle for them. But not just that, I recoil from people pushing forced empathy on me, especially for strangers. I care about my friends and family a great deal. But you literally can't physically care about 8 billion people. That would be insane. You can care about the general course of things; I care about stopping globalist totalitarianism, which is a threat to those 8 billion people. It's probably more of a survival instinct than anything. But guess what? If we don't fix THAT problem, well then, giving someone a handout - deserving or not - is completely and utterly meaningless and pointless in the grand scheme of things.
Very few people see themselves as flawless, but I think there's a strong urge to balance our ledgers, so to speak. Where we have done wrong, we try to do good elsewhere, and we think it sums up to being a good person, on the whole.
There's some freedom to be had in simply recognizing oneself as inherently less than good--to pass the beggar and not give them anything, not because you're making up for it elsewhere, not because you aren't expected to be charitable, but simply because you've accepted that you're not so much of a saint as to give them anything. Hopefully this comes with the recognition that others aren't saints, either, and you judge not, lest ye be judged. It also helps if you believe in a higher power that loves you despite your unworthiness.
Not that we shouldn't try to do good, but believing it's within our power to end up on the positive side of the ledger mostly just leads people to be self-righteous and judgmental. That a reasonable level of humility also protects against exploitation by organized beggars is certainly a perk, though.
The picture that destroyed Western Europe
Even before reading your article…your title says it so perfectly it may be all we need! But I AM going to read it now.
Very true. By the time I was in my forties, I had steeled myself against this kind of manipulation. I have no guilt, nor will I apologize, for anything I did not personally do.
Man... this was superb. It dovetails with so many things I've been considering, and has taught me and helped me to organize my thoughts.
I also dove into the curious phenomenon of 'guilt' or empathy (which doesn't seem to affect behavior) in the context of the immigration debate. I'm sorry to keep posting links in your comments but I really think this is relevant:
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/ordo-amoris-inverted
You can detect these changes everywhere: in the culture, in academia (especially), in therapy and journalism... A society without guilt and shame is presumed to be better and more fair, somehow.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/rule-1-you-are-responsible
Spot-on article full of valuable insight. I learned things today. Victimhood privilege exists because narcissistic pretentious guilt exists. I call it self-righteous guilt but now I prefer your narcissistic guilt.
I’ve had the same experiences having lived in regions where organized begging employed amputations and drugging of children. I too made the mistake of helping a child beggar in a gypsy area in Bulgaria and was instantly surrounded by swarms of other children and adults begging furiously.
I wrote a whole book on manipulation tactics including victimhood and guilt.
I also wrote something similar to your article: https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-ngmi-part-2
Kind of shocking to see the depravity of that stuff, isn't it?
Indeed it merits further examination of the psychopathy of the guilt-ridden narcissist
Interestingly, this trend has been going on since before WW1 already. I’ve seen several different news articles, caricatures and quotes where this propensity for self-damaging “social justice” behavior in Europeans gets called out.
Yes it's been building since the 17th century, but only really caught on with the masses with the advent of mass media in the 20th century. Before that it was a bourgeois/intellectual thing. I'm just old enough to have known people who were culturally immune to it -- my working-class grandparents for example.