Train in Vain? Part Four: the politics of failure takes the lead...

He is gonna make it to five. Very impressive.

"Italian-style self-reduction campaign" kinda sounds like a diet or something.

Political theorists like to come up with fuzzy headed ideas that by their very fuzzy headedness are not particularly practical. People like to say that the ideas are good in theory but dont make sense in practice and theorists like to think they have access to some fundamental truth the masses just cant or wont understand but politics is about psychology and convincing people of things so when it lacks a language that is understandable to the public it's also bad in theory(unless one has a vanguardist sort of view where you do the thinking and the public does the following). I guess political theory does border on theology and ideas of a fundmanetal truth outside of organizing people to change things in the physical world but if you really want to change the world it would make more sense to study marketing than political theory; ideas people dont buy into are bad in theory since politics is about people.

Wow. Do you do a lot of speed, "hehe?" You're "writing" sure does suck!

I think kevin goes into the stuff from Italy on his web site.

"In a larger sense, it is also a contribution to a critique of the consistent uselessness of the contemporary US anarchist scene in a fight for radical social change."

The Anarchist scene consists of a social scene that is only marginally political (Punk is to radical anarchist as hippie is to Earth First). Its not the fault of the scene that is isnt political as much as its the fault of anyone seeing a youth culture scene as inherently political rather than an opportunity for political recruitment.

From what I saw of the Fare Strike, many of those involved were not from the Anarchist scene and for all the good and bad aspects of the strike you cant really blame "the anarchist scene" any more than your could blame the club scene or the bondage scene for not participating (or not participating which I guess is the point of a fare strike).

Why did such a strike work in Italy and not here? Why is a Maoists uprising happening in Nepal and not here? There are some simple answers that dont involve snide dismissing of the seriousness of actvists or the tactics of organizers. The simplest answer would be to look at who rides MUNI, people's alternatives to using MUNI and the cost benefit by poorer riders between getting in trouble for not paying fares compared to paying slightly more. Did such factors also exist in Italy? Sure, but there were some extra motivating factors that related to how people see public services and changes in public subsidization of such services. Its easier to get people to be upset over a cut in public services when your country has many socialized public services and the increase is seen as part of a larger threat (hence riots in France over tution fees are only partly about the money and more about the politics behind the increase). Organizing over a cut in Medicare or Medicaid is thus easier here than organizing over a fare increase for buses since while people may not like the direction of Newsom the larger threats to public services by Arnold and George and on the job cuts in health insurance outweigh peoples sense of urgency over the fare issue.

I think the Fare Strike went well if the goal was public awareness nad perhaps enough oureach to get the public to not back future increases. If the goal was to turn a small increase in bus fares into a general strike that would shut the city down then it wasnt a success but did anyone aside from Kevin really expect that (The lack of a widespread uprising seems to have had such a lasting efect he's still writing these screeds denoucning people for saying pretty much the exact same thing he was saying before the fare strike). I dont think a general strike is impossible since one did happen here before but things like that require some serious motivation (like police opening fire and killing protesters) and the failures to organize a general strike definitely are not a fault of organizers since even provoked incidents never have the intended effects (Russia would have collapsed with or without Communists, the USSR collapsed without much internal organizing, Cuba's revolution wasnt really due to anything special about Castro, etc...). You can organize and make changes but people really have to be realistic and not get fatalistic that an organizing campaign doesnt have the same motivating effect on the public as mass starvation.

"Wow. Do you do a lot of speed, "hehe?" You're "writing" sure does suck!"

Your thoughtful response really made me realize how wrong I was. I'll leave politics to writers like you and just keep my head down from now on.... politics is too important to be left to the people after all....

You may not even realize it, but it's also a critique of your own organizing skills vs. your unrealistic expectations.

You expected Bay Area anarchists to organize the revolution? Or even an effective city-wide fair strike?

There's simply not enough anarchists to make any large move on a societal level. Facts is facts, and you need to get real and quit pointing fingers. You failed as much as anyone.

If you want to organize anarchists to achieve change, you have to understand first of all what their limited potential right now truely is, no matter how wonderful so many are. And, like it or not, they are not up to the challenge you set forth. Why is it that smaller-time organization does not interest you? Why couldn't you set your goals more realistically if you want anarchists to be the center of the action? Small successes could lead to bigger ones and draw people in over time, but that takes patience and offers little immediate gratification.

If you really want to organize a successful fair strike, you have to think bigger than the local anarchist community. There's lots of groups already in action in the Bay Area. There's labor unions. There's women's groups. There's Greens. And on and on and on. We're fortunate like that. Why pretend you alone have the capacity to re-invent the wheel in your own likeness? You want to do something big? Pull together all of these groups. It's not as pretty and neat as your dream of you and the "anarchists" leading the charge and everyone else just following. It would take more time to establish a larger coalition. It would involve more give and take, less preaching about the wonderful Italians as a historically-minded know-it-all (and Italians ain't all that, anyway). Maybe the unions would want to do it one way, the feminists another. You'd likely have to find a compromise to pull it off. Maybe this super-coalition of activist groups would decide on another target, other tactics, all together.

This "my way or the highway" crap of yours is bound to lead to disappointment. Get over yourself and get real. Or get nasty and burn-out as an activist - that's where you're headed now. Do you really want to work for change that works? Do you really want to work with others, as messy as that can be? I have my doubts about your sincere interest in either with your blatant inability to reconcile the two in your own mind and your whiny diatribes here.

Kevin is an extreme, but a lot of the things you bring up apply to many others in the radical activists community. Expecting more than can be achieved doesnt just burn out those who believe such things; it also alienates more realistic people who think the exagerated talk sounds crazy or at least counterproductive.

>Expecting more than can be achieved doesnt just burn out those who believe such things; it also alienates more realistic people who think the exagerated talk sounds crazy or at least counterproductive.

We get some of what we try for and none of what we don't try for. Ergo, it behooves us to eschew the onerous ignominy of gratuitous self restriction, and try for all we can. Be realistic, demand the impossible.

that's cute, but of little practical use. our choice here is not to chose between change and no change, it's to choose between different routes to different changes. our choice here is not to choose between the self-indulgent dream of a bitter activist and no change, it's to choose between our most realistic and effective paths to populist change or choosing a path to an isolated sense of (undeserved) self-satisfaction and becoming a self-fulfilling pathetic antithesis of an activist for change

"demand the impossible"

blingy bloing bloing! doesn't the german ah-di-dahs (Adidas) have an ad campaign now about "nothing is impossible" with the boxer Ali?

"demand the impossible"

or

"waste your time on things of no use dreaming of a perfect world!"

must feel really good to be so self-satisfied with one's own self-righteousness and sense of accomplishment in such a fucked up world

An ad hominem is not a rebuttal. It's a way to change the subject. Instead, let's talk about substance:

If your plan was working, you'd have room to criticize ours. It's not. Au contrair, our society is slipping backwards daily. Your efforts are futile because you are not even attempting to deal with the root of our problem. You're trying to put bandaids on tumors, and you can't even make them stick. Give it up. Try something new. Then we'll be willing to listen to your criticism. In the meantime, heed the immortal words of Einstein, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

All this discussion is a giant waste of time. Keating will go to the extreme of lying to support his dogma. Nessie will pipe in to stir the pot. The ONLY people supporting Keating's position "are" Keating himself.

Why do we even have to put up with the pseudo-analysis of someone who isn't even giving an honest account?

Maybe instead of crying into your beer, you could get specific about where Keating is supposedly lying.

Nobody's pointing a gun at your head to make you read this, or keep you from posting your own counter-(rev?) analysis.

I guess if this is harshin' your vibe bro' you could stick to watching re-runs of "Seinfeld."

As someone who was in SF Fare Strike and has known Keating for years, let me say this.

Keating's idea of organizing consists of wheat-pasting long-winded screeds about town enjoining "working class and poor people" (as if the two groups were discrete!) to take "collective direct action" against "the market economy"; when said workers don't heed his advice he denounces them as "cabbage heads" or some other canned line he's concocted and goes back to "writing his novel."

Keating's depiction is dishonest because he doesn't address the fact that 1) nobody wants to work with him; or 2) that the differences between SF Fare Strike and Social Strike were mainly tactical in nature. Keating thought that an "Italian-style fare strike" could be kicked off in SF in 2005 through the sheer force of postering alone. He disparaged SF Fare Strike for spending time and energy (lots of it, by the way) handing out leaflets (in four languages) at bus and train stops informing Muni riders of the impending attacks and calling for a fare strike as a way of fighting back. The sectarian that he is, he denounced us for meeting with people and organizations that aren't self-professedly radical. Keating loves the workers in the abstract but doesn't want to soil his hands or his theory through contact with them.

Having had many, many conversations with Muni riders last summer, and having seen how many were receptive to the idea of a fare strike, I believe that as we move forward--with $2 fares on the horizon--a fare strike of far bigger magnitude is a distinct possibility. But it won't happen because of clever turns of phrase or denunciatory internet screeds.

you exposed emperor kevin as having no clothes, so now we'll have to read post after post about all the character flaws you have.

too bad the emporer can't see beyond his own ego to actually be able to work with others. he hasn't had anything to contribute to anything collective for a least a couple decades.

I'm not crazy about lowering myself to Aaron Hackett's puerile and deceitful level by responding in detail to his screed, but, like a chump, here I go again:

1. As far as Hackett's charge that I have never been directly involved with working people, this is a stone lie. This is a standard-issue smear used in the 20th century by social democrats, Stalinists and Trots against people who are more radical than them. You don't have to believe me on the larger context here; check it out for yourself, in histories of the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, May '68 in France and so on. See for example what the French C.P. Stalinist chief Georges Marchais said about the 'enrages.' Aaron has clearly been picking up a few practical tips in political sleaze in his new-found role as a butler carrying the pipe and slippers for the General Secretary of a one-man Leninist party.

Notice that Aaron and others in Muni Fare Strike have never denied that their leader Marc Norton is a Leninist. So Aaron, what's gives? Is Marc a Leninist or not? If no, then what brand of pro-wage labor leftist is he?

And how come the man himself Norton never chimes in on this stuff? It's always the talentless underlings like Hackett and Gifford Hartman who pick up the cudgel.

I've been engaged in actions relating to working people in this society since the spring of 1979, when I was a 19 year old boy. At that time I organized a meeting for AFSCME among employees of the food service division of International House at UC Berkeley, where I had been working as a dishwasher. The meeting eventually led to an organized crime connected union, Local 2 of the Cooks and Bartenders Union AFL-CIO, being replaced by AFSCME at I-House, and a few microscopically minor improvements in the appaling conditions faced by the mostly African American, Latino and Pacific Islander people working there.

This was back when my political develoment was about where Aaron Hackett's is at now, and I had illusions about the role that could be played by unions in working people's resistance to exploitation. What can I say -- I was only 19 then.

At the end of 1980, the year I turned 20, at the end of a year that I had spent mostly living on the street, I organized a rent strike of tenants of a Berkeley landlord named Reza Valiyee. In terms of the number of units on strike (60-plus) it was by far the biggest rent strike in Berkeley from the end of 1980 to the spring of 1981.

These aren't the only things I've done; these are just the very earliest ones. This is all stuff I was involved in from the time that I was 19 until the time that I was 20. I am now 45. In the US military an enlisted person is called a "lifer" if they are in for 20 years. I've been involved in working-class oriented activity for 27 years. You can go check out where my political docs are archived at the Institute for Social Research in Amsterdam if you want to examine this in more exhaustive detail than I feel like going into here. This will no doubt incite more rancor and jealousy from guys like Aaron, whose communication skills are so piss-poor that they have to get a Trot to write their leaflets for them.


2. I don't get involved in stuff like this because I need a hobby to while away the empty hours of my life, like certain poorly-motivated slobster dudes, but because I have a very specific interpretation of the world around us I fight for that. Don't like it? Tough -- go play in traffic. Aaron Hackett has proven to be a congenital left-wing of capital guy; he cannot cognitively grasp the difference between an authentic antagonism to capitalist social relations, and his politics, the politics of marching to City Hall and calling for working people to vote.

In Aaron's most significant class struggle effort, a wildcat strike of bike messengers a few years back, Aaron himself told me that much of the effort was inspired by, in his exact words to me at that time, "the take-no-prisoners" perspective of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, and by the outside-of-and-against-the-unions perspective that animated our collective efforts around BART in the mid-1990's.

In the following link I document here some of the efforts I and others have been involved in, relating face-to-face with numerous working people over the course of many years; the BART actions involved Aaron as well:

http://www.infoshop.org/myep/love2.html

This brings me to the "nobody is willing to work with me" part of Hackett's effusions. As I am documenting in my critique of the recent MUNI effort, most of the people I was trying to function with in Muni Social Strike have proven to be impossible to take seriously, and any bond to them is a bond with exasperation and failure.

Then we come to Aaron and Gifford and company. I attempted to work collectively with Aaron and Gifford and their beer-drinking buddies in Muni Fare Strike exactly once; in the fall of 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks. I wanted at that point to do some kind of public agitation about how US foriegn policy had finally victimized large numbers of civilians in the US, the way it does everywhere else in the world. It was a unique historical moment, and no putative oppositional types were doing jack around it.

In this post-Sept. 11th group Aaron and Gifford and their fellow pedants wanted to sit around with their thumbs up their asses, playing the role of college "Marxist" policy wonks. I thought, well, maybe my undeniably abrasive personaltiy is keeping these guys from acting; maybe if I leave the group their latent potential for effective action will rise to the surface. So I left their group. Their group subsequently fell apart.

The adolescent jabs that Hackett makes at my first novel, completed last year, an ultra-left noir titled, 'Hit the Walls,' highlights the real problem between me on the one hand and Aaron Hackett, Gifford Hartman and their fellow beerhall philosophers who were associated with Muni Fare Strike. These guys are slacker-dudes on the cusp of middle age who have been treading water their whole lives, and if you decline to join them in the shallow end of the pool you get to be a lightning rod for their vindictiveness, their sour grapes and their richly-merited sense of inadequacy and failure. The idea that I am somehow being excluded from life's feast by not associating with them, or for that matter with individuals like elite university grad student Chris Cantor, is too fucking funny. I think I'll write it down somewhere and keep it handy for when I am desperate for a cheap laugh.

PS: Hmmmmm. Gosh, I wonder what "malatesta" has actually been involved in? Let's here the details.

Kevin Keating

1. I was actually 18 when I organized the union meeting for AFSCME at I-House. It was about three weeks shy of my birthday.

2. One of the languages that the political-content-poor, effective-communication-poorer leaflet given out by Muni Fare Strike was in was Korean. That would have been very useful in LA -- too bad that the number of Korean-language speakers who aren't also conversant in English is mighty small in SF. I guess next time you can also generate them in Manx, Twi and Yanomamo, just to cover all the bases.

The Korean-language version was mostly a predictable ham-fisted attempt by Gifford Hartman to upstage Muni Social Strike. Some of the naive rich kid anarchists in our group were oblivious to this. Cosseted by their own lives of class priviledge, they floated through the effort blissfully unaware that eveyone who involves themselves in efforts like this isn't necessarily motivated by the noblest of intentions.

2. Hey "malatesta" -- still waiting, buddy. Let's here about all the stuff you've done -- that you are not too embarrased to go into -- if you can interrupt your busy schedule of scuba-diving at the bottom of a forty-ouncer.

The word "anarchy" was universally used in the sense of disorder and confusion; and it is to this day used in that sense by the uninformed as well as by political opponents with an interest in distorting the truth.

We will not enter into a philological discussion, since the question is historical and not philological. The common interpretation of the word recognises its true and etymological meaning; but it is a derivative of that meaning due to the prejudiced view that government was a necessary organ of social life, and that consequently a society without government would be at the mercy of disorder, and fluctuate between the unbridled arrogance of some, and the blind vengeance of others.

The existence of this prejudice and its influence on the public's definition of the word "anarchy" is easily explained. Man, like all living beings, adapts and accustoms himself to the conditions
under which he lives and passes on acquired habits. Thus, having been born and bred in bondage, when the descendants
of a long line of slaves started to think, they believed that slavery was an essential condition of life and freedom seemed impossible to them. Similarly, workers who for centuries were obliged, and therefore accustomed, to depend for work, that is bread, on the goodwill of the master, and to see their lives always at the mercy of the owners of the land and of capital, ended by believing that it is the master who feeds them, and ingenuously ask one how would it be possible to live if there were no masters.

So, since it was thought that government was necessary and that without government there could only be disorder and confusion, it was natural and logical that anarchy, which means absence of government, should sound like absence of order. Nor is the phenomenon without parallel in the history of words. In times and in countries where the people believed in the need for government by one man (monarchy) the word republic, which is government by many, was in fact used in the sense of disorder and confusion - and this meaning is still to be found in the popular language of almost all countries.

Change opinion, convince the public that govemment is not only unnecessary but extremely harmful, and then the word anarchy, just because it means absence of government, will come to mean for everybody: natural order, unity of human needs and the interests of alI, complete freedom within complete solidarity.

Those who say, therefore, that the anarchists have badly chosen their name because it is wrongly interpreted by the masses and lends itself to wrong interpretations, are mistaken. The error does not come from the word but from the thing; and the difficulties anarchists face in their propaganda do not depend on the name they have taken, but on the fact that their concept clashes with all the public's long established prejudices on the function of government, or the State as it is also called.

errico

The definition above reads well but it seems to be more of a definition of what anarchy is not.

The only part that got to an actual definition was this.

"natural order, unity of human needs and the interests of alI, complete freedom within complete solidarity"

No offense, but it seems vague and dreamy. Utopian even (which actually means "no place"). I just don't hear any practicality in there.

How can transgenders, for instance, feel that anarchy will offer them more safety than they feel in San Francisco today, worldwide? How are violent homophobes to be dealt with? No need to re-iterate the many negative issues with police and the current injustice system answering this one -- it's more about what anarchy has to offer that is superior in real and practical terms. How will people defend themselves on a neighborhood, regional and international level? How will people deal with large groups of others that organize into armies and acquire jet bombers? No need to re-iterate the many existing negative issues with militaries and nations answering this one. There are actually some crazy murderers and child molesters out there with no hope of redemption. What is to become of them? How to deal with greedy and well-armed bandits or gangs of bandits? How will justice or rehabilitation go? Will everyone pack heat in this "natural order"? Is that the natural state of things to be prepared to kill another person at any moment? How much heat is acceptable? Personal tanks? Will anything go? How will people organize and find consensus in groups very much larger than the collectives you see today? "Complete freedom" and "complete solidarity" seem like contradictions. Will there be no limits on freedom, even if the people collectively agree they want them? What happens when not everyone feels the kum ba ya of complete solidarity and chooses to strike out on their own in opposition to collective agreements, in opposition to collective and individual good?

I don't bring these things up to be difficult, but to give you a chance to better promote anarchism in real world terms that might possibly interest those not already running in anarchist circles here in the Bay Area.

The meaning of the New York City transit strike

A common tactic in the capitalist onslaught against pensions and medical benefits is the attempt to create “multi-tier” systems, in which new employees receive lower benefits or pensions, whether this takes the form of decreasing the value of benefits received by new employees or requiring them to pay in higher contributions to medical insurance or pension funds. Veteran workers are bribed with the promise that the cuts won’t affect them, but only the unknown persons who will be hired in the future. The unions traditionally help ram through these “deals,” hailing their efforts at having saved the benefits of the currently employed workers as “victories”. This tactic divides the workers against themselves, pitting the interests of longer employed workers against newer workers, the older generation against the younger – a recipe for disaster for working class unity – allowing management to divide and conquer.

It was precisely this attempt to divide the workers that was at the heart of the recent struggle in NYC transit. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, controlled by the governor, and to a lesser extent by the mayor, sought to increase the age of retirement for new hires, from the current 55 to 62 and to require that new hires would have to pay 6 percent of their wages into the pension fund. The 55-year-old retirement age (after 25 years service) had long been in place out of recognition of the extremely harsh working conditions under which transit workers toil in the 100 year-old subway tunnels, with foul air and fumes, rat infestation, and general lack of sanitary facilities. The government proposal would not have effected the retirement age of any currently employed workers.

But the transit workers were definitely NOT buying this bit of divide and conquer flimflam. On behalf of a working class that has been enduring a full scale attack on its pensions, transit workers essentially drew a line in the sand and refused to accept any change whatsoever in the pension. They struck to protect the retirement pension of workers who are not yet on the job, what they called “our unborn” – their future, unknown colleagues. As such, this struggle became the clearest embodiment of the movement to reaffirm working class self-identity and solidarity to date. It not only had a profound impact on the workers who participated in the struggle, but upon the working class in other sectors as well. The transit workers struck out of a sense of class solidarity with the future generation, those who were not even hired yet. It resonated with many workers in many industries, who can see that someone had finally stood up and said, “Don’t mess with pensions!”

The Significance of the Transit Struggle

The strike by 33,700 transit workers that paralyzed New York City for three days during the week before Christmas was the most significant workers’ struggle in the U.S. in 15 years. It was important for a number of interrelated reasons: 1) the international context in which it occurred; 2) the development of class consciousness amongst the strikers themselves; and 3) the potential impact of the strike on other workers. The significance of this strike should not be exaggerated; it cannot be compared to strikes in the 1980s which challenged the authority of the capitalist trade union apparatus that serves to control and derail workers struggles and posed the question of extension of the struggle to other workers. However, in the context of the difficult conditions in which the working class struggles today, it’s significance must be clearly understood.

Though it remained firmly under control by a local union leadership dominated by leftists and base unionists, the transit strike reflected not only rising working class combativeness, but also more importantly significant strides in the development of a renewed sense of working class self-identity and self-confidence, and understanding of class solidarity, uniting workers across the boundaries of generations and workplaces. The transit workers undertook this struggle even though they knew it was in violation of New York State’s Taylor Law, which prohibits publicly sector strikes and automatically penalizes strikers two-day’s wages for every day on strike, which means they would lose 3-days salary for each day on strike (one day for the day not worked and two-days penality). The city further threatened to seek a civil fine of $25,000 against each worker for going on strike, doubling each day -- $25,000 for the first day, $50,000 for second day, $100,000 for the third day. With such stiff penalties threatened by the bourgeoisie, the decision to strike was not taken lightly by the workers but represented a courageous act of militant defiance.

The International Context of the Struggle

The New York transit strike occurred in a context of an international tendency for the working class to return to open combat in defense of its class interests after a reflux in class struggle that has lasted nearly a decade and a half, since the collapse of the two imperialist blocs that had been in place since the end of World War II. In 1989, the collapse of the Stalinist bloc led by Russian imperialism, which was followed by disintegration of the rival western imperialist bloc, led by the U.S. and increasingly chaotic events on the international stage, opened up a period of disorientation for the working class on an international level. The changed historic conditions, the unrelenting propaganda barrage by the bourgeois state, including its mass media, proclaiming the death of communism, the triumph of capitalist democracy and the end of classes, took its toll on the proletariat. The process of clarification that had been going since the late 1960s became disrupted and gains in class consciousness had receded. This was particularly problematic in regard to the understanding that the trade unions which had once been organizations for working class self defense had long since been integrated into the state apparatus of decadent capitalism and now served as the shopfloor cops for capitalism, and in regard to the search for new forms of struggle that would enable workers to take the class struggle into their own hands. So deep was this reflux in class struggle and so thorough was the ideological attack of the ruling class, the working class showed signs of a loss of self confidence in itself as a class and a difficulty in even recognizing its own identity as a class.

However, the seriousness of the global economic crisis and the consequent escalation of attacks by the ruling class on the workers’ standard of living made it inevitable that this terrible period of proletarian disorientation could not last forever. In 2002 we began to see a turn in the international class struggle, which was characterized not by dramatic outbreaks of militant struggles, but rather by the beginning of a difficult, hesitating attempt to return to the historical center stage. The primary task posed by these nascent struggles in many countries was not the extension of struggles across geographic and industrial sector lines, but the reacquisition of consciousness at the most basic levels, of class self-identity and solidarity.

This process has been well underway in the U.S., as the examples of the grocery workers struggle in California, the struggles at Boeing and Northwest airlines, the transit strike in Philadelphia, and the graduate assistants strike at New York University demonstrate. What makes the New York transit strike so significant in this process is not simply that it is the biggest, most impactful strike in the sense that it paralyzed the largest city in America for 3 days, but on the level of progress in the development of class consciousness that it reflects.

As we have said, the main issue in the strike was the defense of workers’ pensions, which are under incredible attack by the bourgeoisie everywhere in the world but especially in the U.S. In the U.S. government social security pensions are minimal and workers rely upon their company or job-related pension funds to maintain their standard of living in retirement. Both types of pensions are in danger in the current situation, the former through the Bush administration’s efforts to “reform” social security, and the latter through outright financial default and efforts to reduce pensions payments. Since the collapse of the Enron corporation, in which thousands of employees lost their entire pensions, countless American corporations have reneged on their pension obligations. Most recently, in the face of corporate bankruptcy, major players in the airline industry defaulted on their pension funds. The federal government agency that assumes responsibility for these failed corporate pension funds can guarantee workers only 50% of what they would have normally been entitled to receive. So many pension funds have gone under, this agency is operating with an anticipated $24 billion deficit.

The automobile industry, with bankruptcies threatening at General Motors and Ford, has also put pension funds in jeopardy.

The Development of Class Consciousness Amongst the Strikers

The reaffirmation of the working class’s ability to see and comprehend itself as a class could be seen on many levels and in many manifestations in the transit struggle. Clearly the central issue itself – protection of the pensions for future workers – embodied this aspect. This was not just on an abstract level, but could be seen and heard on a very concrete level as well. For example, at a picketline at a bus depot in Brooklyn, dozens of workers gathered in small groups to discuss the strike. One worker said he didn’t think it was right to strike over the pensions for future workers, for people we don’t even know. His co-workers countered by arguing that the future workers affected by accepting the cuts in the pensions, “could be our kids.” Another said it was important to maintain the unity of different generations in the workforce. He pointed out that in the future, it would be likely that the government would try to cut the medical benefits or pension payments to “us when we retire. And it will be important for the guys working then to remember that we stood up for them, so they will stand up for us and keep them from cutting our benefits.” Similar discussions occurred elsewhere around the city, clearly and concretely reflecting the tendency for workers to see themselves as a class, to look beyond the barriers of generation that capitalism seeks to use to divide them against themselves.

Other workers driving by the picket lines honked their horns in solidarity and yelled cheers of support. In Brooklyn, a group of teachers at a nearby elementary school expressed their solidarity by discussing the strike with their students and brought their classes of students ranging in age from 9-12 years old to visit the picket line. The kids brought Christmas cards to the strikers with messages like, “We support you. You are fighting for respect.”

The children were assigned by their teachers to interview the strikers, and the kids asked the workers what kind of jobs they did and why they were striking.

The day after the strike was over, one of our comrades boarded a city bus and had a conversation with the driver that illustrated the strides made in this struggle. After he paid his fair he told the driver, a 35-year old Latino worker, “You guys did the right thing.”
The driver responded, “But we didn’t win. We went to back to work without a contract.”

“But what really matters is what you did. You said don’t fuck with pensions, workers need to stick together, no matter what. It’s an important example for other workers,” said our comrade.

To this the driver replied, “Yeah, it’s true. It was important that we stood up for the working class.”

Impact of the Struggle on Other Workers

The transit strike became a point of reference for workers in other industries. Despite the displays of support and solidarity mentioned above, there were countless other examples. Non-transit workers were welcomed at the picket lines. In one instance, a group of striking NYU graduate assistants visited the picket line in Brooklyn, introduced themselves and discussed strike issues and strategies with the workers. In countless workplaces around the city, other workers in other industries talked about the importance of the solidarity being exemplified on the defense of pensions. Among municipal workers, many of whom had gone for 3 or more years without a new contract, the transit workers adherence to the slogan of “no contract, no work” showed the importance of struggle.

So strong was the sympathy for the strikers that the capitalist media’s own surveys showed that Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers union, scored a higher approval rating than the mayor of the governor on the first day of the strike. The existence of $1.02 billion Metropolitan Transit Authority surplus made management’s hard line appear particularly harsh and ruthless to other workers. The bourgeoisie countered with an all out campaign on day two of the strike to demonize the strikers. The tabloids, like the Post and the Daily News, called the strikers “rats” and “cowards.” Even the liberal New York Times denounced the strike as “irresponsible” and “illegal.”

The theme of “illegality” was picked up by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki. Pataki declared that the strike was criminal and that no negotiations would occur until the strikers returned to their jobs. Bloomberg echoed this stance, denouncing strikers as “thugs” and “criminals.” The billionaire mayor suddenly championed the cause of poorer workers who were being inconvenienced by the strike, supposedly suffering at the hands of the striking, comparatively well paid transit workers. For his part, Toussaint denounced the mayor and governor for their outrageous accusations, and championed the transit workers against the “insults.”

Television news reports focused on the hardships inflicted by the strike on people trying to carpool to work or walking over the city’s East River bridges to get to work in Manhattan. But even after this media barrage, the city’s rulers knew working class solidarity with the strike remained strong. A local judge threatened to jail union leaders and fine individual strikers for defying a court injunction to stop the strike and return to work, but Mayor Bloomberg urged that the court should increase the fines, and not jail the union leaders, which would make Toussaint “a martyr” and risk provoking sympathy strikes by other public sector employees.

The illegality of the strike itself triggered considerable discussion within the working class throughout the city, and around the country as well. How could it be illegal for workers to protest by withdrawing their labor? asked many workers. As one worker said in a discussion at a school in Manhattan, “It almost seems like you’re only allowed to go on strike, if you won’t have any effect.”

The Role of Union in Sabotaging the Struggle

Many workers were painfully aware that the union’s new, militant leadership had capitulated three years ago to a contract that gave 0% raise the first year, and 3% in the second and third years. The union was thus pressured by the rising militancy and anger of the workers to act more militantly in the current situation. While the base unionist/leftist led Transit Workers Union Local 100 clearly controlled the strike, employed militant rhetoric and adapted the language of solidarity to maintain firm control of the strike, the role of the union was nonetheless to undermine the struggle and minimize the impact of this important strike. Early in the strike the unions abandoned the demand for 8% annual wage increases for three years, and focused entirely on the pension. The union meeting that voted on the strike authorization permitted no discussion or debate but was conducted as a union rally, featuring a demagogic address by Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The collusion between union and management was revealed in a post-strike report in the New York Times. All the vicious name-calling between the union and government officials was a sham. While the mayor and the governor were stridently screaming that a return to work was a precondition for the resumption of negotiations, secret negotiations were in fact underway at the Helmsley Hotel, and the mayor secretly accepted a proposal by Toussaint to have management withdraw the pension demands in exchange for an increase in worker contributions to their medical care coverage to compensate the government for the cost of maintaining the pensions for future workers.

This union-government orchestrated end to the struggle is of course not surprising, but simply a confirmation of the anti-working class nature of the trade union apparatus, and in no way undercuts the significance of the important gains made in the development of class consciousness. It reminds us of the important tasks that remain ahead for the working class in breaking free of the union straight jacket and taking control of the struggle into their own hands.

This analysis of the NYC transit strike is excatly the reason I post stuff here; to elicit intelligent and useful analysis of working class resistance to the dictatorship of capital.

AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITIES

The authoritarian personality becomes anxious and insecure when events or circumstances upset their previously existing world view. They are very intolerant of any divergence from what they consider to be the correct way (which is usually conceptualized in terms of their history, culture, language, etc.) They tend to be very superstitious and lend credence to folktales or interpretations of history that fit their preexisting definitions of reality (thus the vanguards of the past are seen as the only ideas worth emulating.) They think in extremely stereotyped ways about minorities, women, homosexuals, etc. They are thus very dualistic- the world is conceived in terms of absolute right (their way) vs. absolute wrong (the "other" whether liberal, intellectual, Leninist, feminist, etc.)

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) : How to Recognize a Narcissist

We all have to deal with difficult people. Some days we can be pretty difficult ourselves. Recognizing the difference between normal difficulties and personality disorders can be crucial to decisions about entering new relationships and continuing existing relationships.

The material on Narcissistic Personality Disorder that is published for lay readers is not very informative, even though most people have had to cope with a narcissist at one time or another. If you were raised by a narcissistic parent, then you've been taught that the narcissist is always right and you're the one who's wrong. A lifetime of such mistreatment typically instills lack of confidence in your own judgment, along with habitual shame at never getting it right or being good enough to deserve the air that you breathe. The children of narcissists may not have realized that the quirks and oddities of their impossible-to-please parents are not in any way unique or special but are in fact the symptoms of a personality disorder.

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Narcissistic Personality Disorder

While grandiosity is the diagnostic hallmark of pathological narcissism, there is research evidence that pathological narcissism occurs in two forms, (a) a grandiose state of mind in young adults that can be corrected by life experiences, and (b) the stable disorder described in DSM-IV, which is defined less by grandiosity than by severely disturbed interpersonal relations.
The preferred theory seems to be that narcissism is caused by very early affective deprivation, yet the clinical material tends to describe narcissists as unwilling rather than unable, thus treating narcissistic behaviors as volitional -- that is, narcissism is termed a personality disorder, but it tends to be discussed as a character disorder. This distinction is important to prognosis and treatment possibilities. If NPD is caused by infantile damage and consequent developmental short-circuits, it probably represents an irremediable condition. On the other hand, if narcissism is a behavior pattern that's learned, then there is some hope, however tenuous, that it's a behavior pattern that can be unlearned. The clinical literature on NPD is highly theoretical, abstract, and general, with sparse case material, suggesting that clinical writers have little experience with narcissism in the flesh. There are several reasons for this to be so:
-- The incidence of NPD is estimated at 1% in the general population, though I haven't been able to discover the basis of this estimate.
-- Narcissists rarely enter treatment and, once in treatment, progress very slowly. We're talking about two or more years of frequent sessions before the narcissist can acknowledge even that the therapist is sometimes helpful. It's difficult to keep narcissists in treatment long enough for improvement to be made -- and few people, narcissists or not, have the motivation or the money to pursue treatment that produces so little so late.
-- Because of the influence of third-party payers (insurance companies), there has been a strong trend towards short-term therapy that concentrates on ameliorating acute troubles, such as depression, rather than delving into underlying chronic problems. Narcissists are very reluctant to open up and trust, so it's possible that their NPD is not even recognized by therapists in short-term treatment. Purely anecdotal evidence from correspondents and from observations of people I know indicates that selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors, such as Prozac, aggravate narcissists' grandiosity and lack of social inhibition. It has also been suggested that self-help literature about bolstering self-esteem and getting what you want out of life or that encourages the feeling of victimization has aggravating effects on NPD thinking and behavior.
-- Most clinical writers seem unaware that narcissists' self-reports are unreliable. This is troubling, considering that lying is the most common complaint about narcissists and that, in many instances, defects of empathy lead narcissists to wildly inaccurate misinterpretations of other people's speech and actions, so that they may believe that they are liked and respected despite a history of callous and exploitative personal interactions.

[from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, 1994, commonly referred to as DSM-IV, of the American Psychiatric Association. European countries use the diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization.] A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.[jma: NPD first appeared in DSM-III in 1980; before that time there had been no formal diagnostic description. Additionally, there is considerable overlap between personality disorders and clinicians tend to diagnose mixes of two or more. Grandiosity is a special case, but lack of empathy and exploitative interpersonal relations are not unique to NPD, nor is the need to be seen as special or unique. The differential diagnosis of NPD is made on the absence of specific gross behaviors. Borderline Personality Disorder has several conspicuous similarities to NPD, but BPD is characterized by self-injury and threatened or attempted suicide, whereas narcissists are rarely self-harming in this way. BPD may include psychotic breaks, and these are uncharacteristic of NPD but not unknown. The need for constant attention is also found in Histrionic Personality Disorder, but HPD and BPD are both strongly oriented towards relationships, whereas NPD is characterized by aloofness and avoidance of intimacy. Grandiosity is unique to NPD among personality disorders, but it is found in other psychiatric illnesses. Psychopaths display pathological narcissism, including grandiosity, but psychopathy is differentiated from NPD by psychopaths' willingness to use physical violence to get what they want, whereas narcissists rarely commit crimes; the narcissists I've known personally are, in fact, averse to physical contact with others, though they will occasionally strike out in an impulse of rage. It has been found that court-ordered psychotherapy for psychopaths actually increases their recidivism rate; apparently treatment teaches psychopaths new ways to exploit other people. Bipolar illness also contains strong elements of grandiosity. See more on grandiosity and empathy and its lack below.]The disorder begins by early adulthood and is indicated by at least five of the following:

Translation: Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a pattern of self-centered or egotistical behavior that shows up in thinking and behavior in a lot of different situations and activities. People with NPD won't (or can't) change their behavior even when it causes problems at work or when other people complain about the way they act, or when their behavior causes a lot of emotional distress to others (or themselves? none of my narcissists ever admit to being distressed by their own behavior -- they always blame other people for any problems). This pattern of self-centered or egotistical behavior is not caused by current drug or alcohol use, head injury, acute psychotic episodes, or any other illness, but has been going on steadily at least since adolescence or early adulthood.
NPD interferes with people's functioning in their occupations and in their relationships:
Mild impairment when self-centered or egotistical behavior results in occasional minor problems, but the person is generally doing pretty well.
Moderate impairment when self-centered or egotistical behavior results in: (a) missing days from work, household duties, or school, (b) significant performance problems as a wage-earner, homemaker, or student, (c) frequently avoiding or alienating friends, (d) significant risk of harming self or others (frequent suicidal preoccupation; often neglecting family, or frequently abusing others or committing criminal acts).
Severe impairment when self-centered or egotistical behavior results in: (a) staying in bed all day, (b) totally alienating all friends and family, (c) severe risk of harming self or others (failing to maintain personal hygiene; persistent danger of suicide, abuse, or crime).

1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

Translation: Grandiosity is the hallmark of narcissism. So what is grandiose?

The simplest everyday way that narcissists show their exaggerated sense of self-importance is by talking about family, work, life in general as if there is nobody else in the picture. Whatever they may be doing, in their own view, they are the star, and they give the impression that they are bearing heroic responsibility for their family or department or company, that they have to take care of everything because their spouses or co-workers are undependable, uncooperative, or otherwise unfit. They ignore or denigrate the abilities and contributions of others and complain that they receive no help at all; they may inspire your sympathy or admiration for their stoicism in the face of hardship or unstinting self-sacrifice for the good of (undeserving) others. But this everyday grandiosity is an aspect of narcissism that you may never catch on to unless you visit the narcissist's home or workplace and see for yourself that others are involved and are pulling their share of the load and, more often than not, are also pulling the narcissist's share as well. An example is the older woman who told me with a sigh that she knew she hadn't been a perfect mother but she just never had any help at all -- and she said this despite knowing that I knew that she had worn out and discarded two devoted husbands and had lived in her parents' pocket (and pocketbook) as long as they lived, quickly blowing her substantial inheritance on flaky business schemes. Another example is claiming unusual benefits or spectacular results from ordinary effort and investment, giving the impression that somehow the narcissist's time and money are worth more than other people's. [Here is an article about recognizing and coping with narcissism in the workplace; it is rather heavy on management jargon and psychobabble, but worth reading. "The Impact of Narcissism on Leadership and Sustainability" by Bruce Gregory, Ph.D. "When the narcissistic defense is operating in an interpersonal or group setting, the grandiose part does not show its face in public. In public it presents a front of patience, congeniality, and confident reasonableness."]

In popular usage, the terms narcissism, narcissist, and narcissistic denote absurd vanity and are applied to people whose ambitions and aspirations are much grander than their evident talents. Sometimes these terms are applied to people who are simply full of themselves -- even when their real achievements are spectacular. Outstanding performers are not always modest, but they aren't grandiose if their self-assessments are realistic; e.g., Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, was notorious for boasting "I am the greatest!" and also pointing out that he was the prettiest, but he was the greatest and the prettiest for a number of years, so his self-assessments weren't grandiose. Some narcissists are flamboyantly boastful and self-aggrandizing, but many are inconspicuous in public, saving their conceit and autocratic opinions for their nearest and dearest. Common conspicuous grandiose behaviors include expecting special treatment or admiration on the basis of claiming (a) to know important, powerful or famous people or (b) to be extraordinarily intelligent or talented. As a real-life example, I used to have a neighbor who told his wife that he was the youngest person since Sir Isaac Newton to take a doctorate at Oxford. The neighbor gave no evidence of a world-class education, so I looked up Newton and found out that Newton had completed his baccalaureate at the age of twenty-two (like most people) and spent his entire academic career at Cambridge. The grandiose claims of narcissists are superficially plausible fabrications, readily punctured by a little critical consideration. The test is performance: do they deliver the goods? (There's also the special situation of a genius who's also strongly narcissistic, as perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright. Just remind yourself that the odds are that you'll meet at least 1000 narcissists for every genius you come across.) [More on grandiosity.]

2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

Translation: Narcissists cultivate solipsistic or "autistic" fantasies, which is to say that they live in their own little worlds (and react with affront when reality dares to intrude).

3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

Translation: Narcissists think that everyone who is not special and superior is worthless. By definition, normal, ordinary, and average aren't special and superior, and so, to narcissists, they are worthless.

4. Requires excessive admiration

Translation: Excessive in two ways: they want praise, compliments, deference, and expressions of envy all the time, and they want to be told that everything they do is better than what others can do. Sincerity is not an issue here; all that matter are frequency and volume.

5. Has a sense of entitlement

Translation: They expect automatic compliance with their wishes or especially favorable treatment, such as thinking that they should always be able to go first and that other people should stop whatever they're doing to do what the narcissists want, and may react with hurt or rage when these expectations are frustrated.

6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends

Translation: Narcissists use other people to get what they want without caring about the cost to the other people.

7. Lacks empathy

Translation: They are unwilling to recognize or sympathize with other people's feelings and needs. They "tune out" when other people want to talk about their own problems.
In clinical terms, empathy is the ability to recognize and interpret other people's emotions. Lack of empathy may take two different directions: (a) accurate interpretation of others' emotions with no concern for others' distress, which is characteristic of psychopaths; and (b) the inability to recognize and accurately interpret other people's emotions, which is the NPD style. This second form of defective empathy may (rarely) go so far as alexithymia, or no words for emotions, and is found with psychosomatic illnesses, i.e., medical conditions in which emotion is experienced somatically rather than psychically. People with personality disorders don't have the normal body-ego identification and regard their bodies only instrumentally, i.e., as tools to use to get what they want, or, in bad states, as torture chambers that inflict on them meaningless suffering. Self-described narcissists who've written to me say that they are aware that their feelings are different from other people's, mostly that they feel less, both in strength and variety (and which the narcissists interpret as evidence of their own superiority); some narcissists report "numbness" and the inability to perceive meaning in other people's emotions.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him

Translation: No translation needed.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes

Translation: They treat other people like dirt.

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How to recognize a narcissist :
Never love anything that can't love you back

Life being the way it is, a couple of weeks after I'd drafted this page, but before showing it for comments, I received the following joke in my email. It reminds me of something a wise old woman said: "I don't think the devil looks ugly and frightening. If he did, people wouldn't find him so attractive. The devil must be a handsome man." And the devil's sister is a pretty woman, as often as not.

One bright, beautiful Sunday morning, everyone in tiny Anytown got up early and went to the local church. Before the service started, the townspeople were sitting in their pews and talking about their lives, their families, and so on. Suddenly, Satan appeared at the front of the church. Everyone started screaming and running for the front entrance, trampling each other in a frantic effort to get away from evil incarnate. Soon everyone had left the church except for an elderly gentleman who sat calmly in his pew, not moving, seemingly oblivious to the fact that God's ultimate enemy was in his presence. Now, this confused Satan a bit, so he walked up to the man and said, "Hey! Don't you know who I am?" The man replied, "Yep, sure do." Satan asked, "Aren't you afraid of me?" "Nope, sure ain't," said the man. Satan was a little perturbed at this and queried, "Why aren't you afraid of me?" The man calmly replied, "I've been married to your sister for 25 years."

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"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...."
To my knowledge, none of the narcissistic individuals I've known personally have had official diagnoses of Narcissistic Personality Disorder; they have not sought help and so haven't been assessed clinically. On the other hand, members of their families have sought help to cope with them -- and I have sought help in understanding every one of them! Thus these pages.

These are field notes -- that is, descriptions and observations to assist in identifying narcissists and also, I hope, to give aid and comfort to others who live and work with narcissists. I'm sorry that I cannot also give hope, but, since a prime characteristic of narcissists is believing that they are always right no matter what, narcissists are extremely resistant to change and, unfortunately, tend to get worse as they get older.

I have also never had to cope with a physically aggressive or sadistic narcissist. The narcissists I've known have pretty much stuck to neglect and verbal and emotional abuse. But lots of people have not been so lucky, and their narcissist parents or partners have been relentlessly interfering and cruel in efforts to reform and re-form their "beloveds," including but not limited to plastic surgery or bleaching and perming little babies' hair to make them more perfectly beautiful blondes. [If you had a narcissist for a parent, you may find some of these books helpful.]

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Nearly everyone has some narcissistic traits. It's possible to be arrogant, selfish, conceited, or out of touch without being a narcissist. The practical test, so far as I know, is that with normal people, no matter how difficult, you can get some improvements, at least temporarily, by saying, essentially, "Please have a heart." This doesn't work with narcissists; in fact, it usually makes things worse. [See discussion of the relationship between normal personality traits and personality disorders.]

It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of narcissists' lack of empathy. It colors everything about them. I have observed very closely some narcissists I've loved, and their inability to pay attention when someone else is talking is so striking that it has often seemed to me that they have neurological problems that affect their cognitive functioning. These are educated people with high IQs, who've had ordinary middle-class backgrounds and schooling, and their thinking is not only illogical but weird: with narcissists, you have to know them pretty well to understand their behavior. For instance, they always fill in their gaps (which make up just about the entirety of their visible life) with bits of behavior, ideas, tastes, opinions, etc., borrowed from someone else whom they regard as an authority. Their authoritative sources, as far as I know, are always people they've actually known, not something from a book, for instance, and narcissists' opinions may actually come from someone you know, too, but who is not to you obviously an authority on the matter at hand, so narcissists can seem totally arbitrary, virtually random in their motivations and reasoning. They are evidently transfixed by a static fantasy image of themselves, like Narcissus gazing at his reflection, and this produces an odd kind of stillness and passivity. Because their inner life is so restricted and essentially dead, it doesn't contain images of how to live a full life -- these things are not important to them, they expect others to look after day-to-day chores, they resent wasting their specialness on common things, they don't put their heart into their work (though they'll tell you how many hours they put into it), they borrow their opinions and preferences and tastes from whomever strikes them as authoritative at the moment.

From my personal experience, and from what I've seen in the clinical literature, narcissists don't talk about their inner life -- memories, dreams, reflections -- much at all. They rarely recount dreams. They seem not to make typical memory associations -- i.e., in the way one thing leads to another, "That reminds me of something that happened when I was...of something I read...of something somebody said...." They don't tell how they learned something about themselves or the world. They don't share their thoughts or feelings or dreams. They don't say, "I have an idea and need some help," or "There's something I've always wanted to do...did you ever want to do that?" They do not discuss how they've overcome difficulties they've encountered or continuing problems that they're trying to solve (beyond trying to get someone else to do what they want). They often say that they don't remember things from the past, such as childhood events, their schooldays or old friends, and it seems to me that they really don't most of the time. Anyhow, for all these reasons, I've tried to refrain from speculating about (i.e., novelizing) what goes on in their heads. Writer John Cheever (who recorded having been diagnosed as a narcissist when he went to marriage counseling at his wife's insistence) describes some of his persistent fantasy images -- and, with Cheever, they're very striking, as you'll know if you've read any of his fiction; his characters and plots tend to be narcissistic (i.e., self-obsessed tunnel vision spiraling into nihilism), but his stories often contain memorably glorious set pieces or tableaux, such as the the hunt for the golden Easter egg in one of the Wapshot novels. Cheever also gives unself-conscious expression to the ways in which his obsessive preoccupation with himself (and his penis -- sort of a magic wand in his mind) obstructed his ability to relate to his wife and children, obstructed even his ability to perceive them: to see what they looked like, to pay attention to what they said and did, though with Cheever everything is also soaked with the sorrows of gin. Alice Adams's novel, Almost Perfect, also gives things from a narcissistic point of view in a way that I found convincing and credible, based on my personal experience of narcissistic individuals. A striking thing about narcissists that you'll notice if you know them for a long time is that their ideas of themselves and the world don't change with experience; the ones I've known have been stalled at a vision that came to them by the age of sixteen.

There are different theories of how narcissists are made. Some psychologists trace NPD to early infantile neglect or abuse, and some blame over-indulgence and indiscriminate praise by parents who don't set limits on what's acceptable from their children. Others say that NPD shows up in adolescence. Some say narcissists tend to peak around middle age and then mellow out. Others say that narcissists stay pretty much the same except they tend to depression as they get older and their grandiose fantasies are not supported, plus they're not as good-looking as they used to be. The narcissists I've known have apparently always been "that way" and they get worse as they get older, with dramatic regression of their personas after the deaths of their parents and other personal authority figures who have previously exerted some control over the narcissists' bad behavior. And, yes, chronic depression gets to be obvious at least by their forties but may have always been present. Depressed narcissists blame the world, of course, and not themselves for their personal disappointments.
Essentially, narcissists are unable or unwilling to trust either the world or other people to meet their needs. Perhaps they were born to parents unable to connect emotionally and, thus, as infants learned not to let another person be essential to them in any way. Perhaps NPD starts later, when intrusive or abusive parents make it dangerous for the child to accept other people's opinions and valuations. Maybe it comes from a childhood environment of being treated like royalty or little gods. Whatever the case, narcissists have made the terrible choice not to love. In their imaginations, they are complete unto themselves, perfect and not in need of anything anyone else can give them. (NB: Narcissists do not count their real lives -- i.e., what they do every day and the people they do it with -- as worth anything.) Their lives are impoverished and sterile; the price they pay for their golden fantasies is high: they'll never share a dream for two.

Now, it is possible to have a relatively smooth relationship with a narcissist, and it's possible to maintain it for a long time. The first requirement for this, though, is distance: this simply cannot be done with a narcissist you live with. Given distance, or only transient and intermittent contact, you can get along with narcissists by treating them as infants: you give them whatever they want or need whenever they ask and do not expect any reciprocation at all, do not expect them to show the slightest interest in you or your life (or even in why you're bothering with them at all), do not expect them to be able to do anything that you need or want, do not expect them to apologize or make amends or show any consideration for your feelings, do not expect them to take ordinary responsibility in any way. But note: they are not infants; infants develop and mature and require this kind of care for only a brief period, after which they are on the road to autonomy and looking after themselves, whereas narcissists never outgrow their demands for dedicated attention to their infantile needs 168 hours a week. Adult narcissists can be as demanding of your time and energy as little babies but without the gratification of their growing or learning anything from what they suck from you. Babies love you back, but adult narcissists are like vampires: they will take all you can give while giving nothing back, then curse you for running dry and discard you as a waste of their precious time.
It is also essential that you keep emotional distance from narcissists. They're pretty good at maintaining a conventional persona in superficial associations with people who mean absolutely nothing to them, and they'll flatter the hell out of you if you have something they can use or if, for some reason, they perceive you as an authority figure. That is, as long as they think you don't count or they're afraid of you, they'll treat you well enough that you may mistake it for love. But, as soon as you try to get close to them, they'll say that you are too demanding -- and, if you ever say "I love you," they'll presume that you belong to them as a possession or an appendage, and treat you very very badly right away. The abrupt change from decent treatment to outright abuse is very shocking and bewildering, and it's so contrary to normal experience that I was plenty old before I realized that it was actually my expression of affection that triggered the narcissists' nasty reactions. Once they know you are emotionally attached to them, they expect to be able to use you like an appliance and shove you around like a piece of furniture. If you object, then they'll say that obviously you don't really love them or else you'd let them do whatever they want with you. If you should be so uppity as to express a mind and heart of your own, then they will cut you off -- just like that, sometimes trashing you and all your friends on the way out the door. The narcissist will treat you just like a broken toy or tool or an unruly body part: "If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off" [Matt. 18:8]. This means you.
So, yes, it's possible to get along with narcissists, but it's probably not worth bothering with. If family members are narcissists, you have my deep sympathy. If people you work with are narcissists, you will be wise to keep an eye on them, if just for your own protection, because they don't think very well, no matter what their IQs, they feel that the rules (of anything) don't apply to them, and they will always cut corners and cheat wherever they think they can get away with it, not to mention alienating co-workers, clients, and customers by their arrogance, lies, malice, and off-the-wall griping. Narcissists are threatened and enraged by trivial disagreements, mistakes, and misunderstandings, plus they have evil mouths and will say ANYTHING, so if you continue to live or work with narcissists, expect to have to clean up after them, expect to lose friends over them, expect big trouble sooner or later.

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If you're reading this because of problems with someone you know now, the chances are excellent that one or both of your parents was a narcissist. Narcissists are so much trouble that only people with special prior training (i.e., who were raised by narcissists) get seriously involved with them. Sometimes narcissists' children become narcissists, too, but this is by no means inevitable, provided stable love was given by someone, such as the non-narcissist parent or grandparents. Beyond that, a happy marriage will heal many old wounds for the narcissist's child. But, even though children of narcissists don't automatically become narcissists themselves and can survive with enough intact psychically to lead happy and productive lives away from their narcissistic parents, because we all love our parents whether they can love us back or not, children of narcissists are kind of bent -- "You can't get blood out of a stone," but children of narcissists keep trying, as if by bonding with new narcissists we could somehow cure our narcissistic parents by finding the key to their heart. Thus, we've been trained to keep loving people who can't love us back, and we will often tolerate or actively work to maintain connections with narcissistic individuals whom others, lacking our special training, find alienating and repellent from first contact, setting ourselves up to be hurt yet again in the same old way. Once narcissists know that you care for them, they'll suck you dry -- demand all your time, be more work than a newborn babe -- and they'll test your love by outrageous demands and power moves. In their world, love is a weakness and saying "I love you" is asking to be hurt, so be careful: they'll hurt you out of a sort of sacred duty. They can't or won't trust, so they will test your total devotion. If you won't submit to their tyranny, then you will be discarded as "no good," "a waste of time," "you don't really love me or you'd do whatever I ask," "I give up on you." (Note: In many instances, narcissists' demands are not only outrageous but also impossible to fulfill even if you want to please them. Plus if you actually want to do what they want you to do, that would be too much like sharing, so they won't want it anymore.)
If you've had a narcissist for a parent, you are probably not afraid of dying and going to hell -- you have lived hell on Earth. Narcissists cannot be satisfied and do a tremendous amount of damage to their children and partners in their relentless demand for a perfect outer appearance to reflect the perfect inner image that obsesses them. Kyrie eleison.

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Here follows a discussion of traits I've observed in the half-dozen or so narcissists of both sexes that I've known well over many years. Remember that narcissism is a personality disorder and narcissists' personalities are disordered: they don't make sense! They are not concerned with making sense and they are also impulsive, so you will waste your time trying to understand the details of every little thing they do.

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Almost everyone has some narcissistic traits, but being conceited, argumentative, or selfish sometimes (or even all the time) doesn't amount to a personality disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a long-term pattern of abnormal thinking, feeling, and behavior in many different situations. The traits on this page will seem peculiar or disturbing when someone acts this way -- i.e., you will know that something is not right, and contact with narcissists may make you feel bad about yourself. It's not unusual for narcissists to be outstanding in their field of work. But these are the successful people who have a history of alienating colleagues, co-workers, employees, students, clients, and customers -- people go away mad or sad after close contact with narcissists.

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This is a compilation of observations I've made from various people I've known well for many years. Most of these traits apply to all of the narcissists I've known, but that doesn't mean that they'll all apply to the narcissists you know. My narcissists are all high-functioning -- that is, they've maintained gainful employment, marriages and family life -- and there may certainly be narcissistic traits that I haven't observed among the narcissists I've known. You can go directly to my full commentary on narcissists' traits or you can select what you're most interested in from the pink box below. Narcissicism is a personality disorder and that means that narcissists' personalities aren't organized in a way that makes sense to most people, so the notes below do not necessarily go in the order I've listed them or in any order at all. Interaction with narcissists is confusing, even bewildering -- their reasons for what they do are not the same as normal reasons. In fact, treating them like normal people (e.g., appealing to their better nature, as in "Please have a heart," or giving them the chance to apologize and make amends) will make matters worse with a narcissist.

[For general discussion of cognition, affectivity, interpersonal functioning, and impulse control in personality disorders and NPD. It's also interesting to compare these traits below with characteristics of normal six-year-olds.]

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amoral/conscienceless authoritarian care only about appearances contemptuous critical of others cruel disappointing gift-givers don't recognize own feelings envious and competitive feel entitled flirtatious or seductive grandiose hard to have a good time with hate to live alone

hyper-sensitive to criticism impulsive lack sense of humor naive passive pessimistic religious secretive self-contradictory stingy strange work habits unusual eating habits weird sense of time

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The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves. They will do this virtually in the same sentence, without even stopping to take a breath. It can be trivial (e.g., about what they want for lunch) or it can be serious (e.g., about whether or not they love you). When you ask them which one they mean, they'll deny ever saying the first one, though it may literally have been only seconds since they said it -- really, how could you think they'd ever have said that? You need to have your head examined! They will contradict FACTS. They will lie to you about things that you did together. They will misquote you to yourself. If you disagree with them, they'll say you're lying, making stuff up, or are crazy. [At this point, if you're like me, you sort of panic and want to talk to anyone who will listen about what is going on: this is a healthy reaction; it's a reality check ("who's the crazy one here?"); that you're confused by the narcissist's contrariness, that you turn to another person to help you keep your bearings, that you know something is seriously wrong and worry that it might be you are all signs that you are not a narcissist]. NOTE: Normal people can behave irrationally under emotional stress -- be confused, deny things they know, get sort of paranoid, want to be babied when they're in pain. But normal people recover pretty much within an hour or two or a day or two, and, with normal people, your expressions of love and concern for their welfare will be taken to heart. They will be stabilized by your emotional and moral support. Not so with narcissists -- the surest way I know of to get a crushing blow to your heart is to tell a narcissist you love her or him. They will respond with a nasty power move, such as telling you to do things entirely their way or else be banished from them for ever. ^

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If you're like me, you get into disputes with narcissists over their casual dishonesty and cruelty to other people. Trying to reform narcissists by reasoning with them or by appealing to their better nature is about as effective as spitting in the ocean. What you see is what you get: they have no better nature. The fundamental problem here is that narcissists lack empathy.
Lacking empathy is a profound disturbance to the narcissist's thinking (cognition) and feeling (affectivity). Even when very intelligent, narcissists can't reason well. One I've worked with closely does something I characterize as "analysis by eggbeater." They don't understand the meaning of what people say and they don't grasp the meaning of the written word either -- because so much of the meaning of anything we say depends on context and affect, narcissists (lacking empathy and thus lacking both context and affect) hear only the words. (Discussions with narcissists can be really weird and disconcerting; they seem to think that using some of the same words means that they are following a line of conversation or reasoning. Thus, they will go off on tangents and irrelevancies, apparently in the blithe delusion that they understand what others are talking about.) And, frankly, they don't hear all the words, either. They can pay attention only to stuff that has them in it. This is not merely a bad habit -- it's a cognitive deficiency. Narcissists pay attention only to themselves and stuff that affects them personally. However, since they don't know what other people are doing, narcissists can't judge what will affect them personally and seem never to learn that when they cause trouble they will get trouble back. They won't take other people's feelings into consideration and so they overlook the fact that other people will react with feeling when abused or exploited and that most people get really pissed off by being lied to or lied about. ^

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Narcissists lack a mature conscience and seem to be restrained only by fear of being punished or of damaging their reputations -- though, again, this can be obscure to casual observation if you don't know what they think their reputations are, and what they believe others think of them may be way out of touch with reality [see remarks on John Cheever elsewhere on this page]. Their moral intelligence is about at the level of a bright five- or six-year-old; the only rules they recognize are things that have been specifically required, permitted, prohibited, or disapproved of by authority figures they know personally. Anyhow, narcissists can't be counted on not to do something just because it's wrong, illegal, or will hurt someone, as long as they think that they can get away with it or that you can't stop them or punish them (i.e., they don't care what you think unless they're afraid of you). ^

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Narcissists are envious and competitive in ways that are hard to understand. For instance, one I knew once became incensed over an article published in a national magazine -- not for its content exactly, but because she could have written something just as good. Maybe she could have -- she hadn't, but that little lapse on her part was beside the point to her. They are constantly comparing themselves (and whatever they feel belongs to them, such as their children and furniture) to other people. Narcissists feel that, unless they are better than anyone else, they are worse than everybody in the whole world. ^

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Narcissists are generally contemptuous of others. This seems to spring, at base, from their general lack of empathy, and it comes out as (at best) a dismissive attitude towards other people's feelings, wishes, needs, concerns, standards, property, work, etc. It is also connected to their overall negative outlook on life. ^

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Narcissists are (a) extremely sensitive to personal criticism and (b) extremely critical of other people. They think that they must be seen as perfect or superior or infallible, next to god-like (if not actually divine, then sitting on the right hand of God) -- or else they are worthless. There's no middle ground of ordinary normal humanity for narcissists. They can't tolerate the least disagreement. In fact, if you say, "Please don't do that again -- it hurts," narcissists will turn around and do it again harder to prove that they were right the first time; their reasoning seems to be something like "I am a good person and can do no wrong; therefore, I didn't hurt you and you are lying about it now..." -- sorry, folks, I get lost after that. Anyhow, narcissists are habitually cruel in little ways, as well as big ones, because they're paying attention to their fantasy and not to you, but the bruises on you are REAL, not in your imagination. Thus, no matter how gently you suggest that they might do better to change their ways or get some help, they will react in one of two equally horrible ways: they will attack or they will withdraw. Be wary of wandering into this dragon's cave -- narcissists will say ANYTHING, they will trash anyone in their own self-justification, and then they will expect the immediate restoration of the status quo. They will attack you (sometimes physically) and spew a load of bile, insult, abuse, contempt, threats, etc., and then -- well, it's kind of like they had indigestion and the vicious tirade worked like a burp: "There. Now I feel better. Where were we?" They feel better, so they expect you to feel better, too. They will say you are nothing, worthless, and turn around immediately and say that they love you. When you object to this kind of treatment, they will say, "You just have to accept me the way I am. (God made me this way, so God loves me even if you are too stupid to understand how special I am.)" Accepting them as they are (and staying away from them entirely) is excellent advice. The other "punishment" narcissists mete out is banishing you from their glorious presence -- this can turn into a farce, since by this point you are probably praying to be rescued, "Dear God! How do I get out of this?" The narcissist expects that you will be devastated by the withdrawal of her/his divine attention, so that after a while -- a few weeks or months (i.e., the next time the narcissist needs to use you for something) -- the narcissist will expect you to have learned your lesson and be eager to return to the fold. If you have learned your lesson, you won't answer that call. They can't see that they have a problem; it's always somebody else who has the problem and needs to change. Therapies work at all only when the individual wants to change and, though narcissists hate their real selves, they don't want to change -- they want the world to change. And they criticize, gripe, and complain about almost everything and almost everyone almost all the time. There are usually a favored few whom narcissists regard as absolutely above reproach, even for egregious misconduct or actual crime, and about whom they won't brook the slightest criticism. These are people the narcissists are terrified of, though they'll tell you that what they feel is love and respect; apparently they don't know the difference between fear and love. Narcissists just get worse and worse as they grow older; their parents and other authority figures that they've feared die off, and there's less and less outside influence to keep them in check. ^

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Narcissists are hostile and ferocious in reaction, but they are generally passive and lacking in initiative. They don't start stuff -- they don't reach out. Remember this when they turn and rend you! They will complain about the same things for years on end, but only rarely do anything to change what dissatisfies them so badly. ^

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Narcissists are naive and vulnerable, pathetic really, no matter how arrogant and forceful their words or demeanor. They have pretty good reasons for their paranoia and cynicism, their sneakiness, evasiveness, prevarications. This is the one I get suckered on. They are so out of touch with other people and what goes on around them that they are very susceptible to exploitation. On the other hand, they're so inattentive, and so disconnected from what other people are up to, that they don't recognize when someone is taking advantage of them. ^

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Narcissists are grandiose. They live in an artificial self invented from fantasies of absolute or perfect power, genius, beauty, etc. Normal people's fantasies of themselves, their wishful thinking, take the form of stories -- these stories often come from movies or TV, or from things they've read or that were read to them as children. They involve a plot, heroic activity or great accomplishments or adventure: normal people see themselves in action, however preposterous or even impossible that action may be -- they see themselves doing things that earn them honor, glory, love, riches, fame, and they see these fantasy selves as personal potentials, however tenuous, something they'd do if they didn't have to go to school or go to work, if they had the time and the money.
As Freud said of narcissists, these people act like they're in love with themselves. And they are in love with an ideal image of themselves -- or they want you to be in love with their pretend self, it's hard to tell just what's going on. Like anyone in love, their attention and energy are drawn to the beloved and away from everyday practicalities. Narcissists' fantasies are static -- they've fallen in love with an image in a mirror or, more accurately, in a pool of water, so that movement causes the image to dissolve into ripples; to see the adored reflection they must remain perfectly still. Narcissists' fantasies are tableaux or scenes, stage sets; narcissists are hung up on a particular picture that they think reflects their true selves (as opposed to the real self -- warts and all). Narcissists don't see themselves doing anything except being adored, and they don't see anyone else doing anything except adoring them. Moreover, they don't see these images as potentials that they may some day be able to live out, if they get lucky or everything goes right: they see these pictures as the real way they want to be seen right now (which is not the same as saying they think these pictures are the way they really are right now, but that is another story to be discussed elsewhere). Sometimes narcissistic fantasies are spectacularly grandiose -- imagining themselves as Jesus or a saint or hero or deity depicted in art -- but just as often the fantasies of narcissists are mediocre and vulgar, concocted from illustrations in popular magazines, sensational novels, comic books even. These artificial self fantasies are also static in time, going back unchanged to early adolescence or even to childhood; the narcissists' self-images don't change with time, so that you will find, for instance, female narcissists clinging to retro styles, still living the picture of the perfect woman of 1945 or 1965 as depicted in The Ladies' Home Journal or Seventeen or Vogue of that era, and male narcissists still hung up on images of comic-book or ripping adventure heroes from their youth. Though narcissists like pictures rather than stories, they like still pictures, not moving ones, so they don't base their fantasies on movies or TV.
Grandiosity can take various forms -- a narcissistic woman may believe herself to be the very model of perfect womanhood, the standard by which all others are measured, and she will try to force her daughters to be just like her, she will not be able to cope with daughters who are taller or shorter than she is, fatter or thinner, who have bigger or smaller feet, breasts, teeth, who have different favorite colors than hers, etc. Narcissistic men can be infatuated with their own looks, too, (witness John Cheever, for instance; Almost Perfect) but are more likely than women to get hung up on their intelligence or the importance of their work -- doesn't matter what the work is, if he's doing it, by definition it's more important than anything you could possibly do. Narcissists I've known also have odd religious ideas, in particular believing that they are God's special favorites somehow; God loves them, so they are exempted from ordinary rules and obligations: God loves them and wants them to be the way they are, so they can do anything they feel like -- though, note, the narcissist's God has much harsher rules for everyone else, including you. [Many readers have questions about narcissism and religion. Here is an interesting article on the Web: "Narcissism Goes to Church: Encountering Evangelical Worship" by Monte Wilson. "Modern American Christianity is filled with the spirit of narcissism. We are in love with ourselves and evaluate churches, ministers and truth-claims based upon how they make us feel about ourselves. If the church makes me feel wanted, it is a good church. If the minister makes me feel good about myself, he is a terrific guy. If the proffered truth supports my self-esteem, it is, thereby, verified."] [More on grandiosity.] ^

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Narcissists have little sense of humor. They don't get jokes, not even the funny papers or simple riddles, and they don't make jokes, except for sarcastic cracks and the lamest puns. This is because, lacking empathy, they don't get the context and affect of words or actions, and jokes, humor, comedy depend entirely on context and affect. They specialize in sarcasm about others and mistake it for wit, but, in my experience, narcissists are entirely incapable of irony -- thus, I've been chagrinned more than once to discover that something I'd taken as an intentional pose or humorous put-on was, in fact, something the narcissist was totally serious about. Which is to say that they come mighty close to parody in their pretensions and pretending, so that they can be very funny without knowing it, but you'd better not let on that you think so. [Interestingly, this is the only trait on this list about which there seems to be any controversy. Maybe I've just been unlucky! I've known narcissists who'll make fun of others, repeat jokes they've heard others laugh at, and laugh at jokes when others laugh, but knowing how to make people laugh is not necessarily the same as having a sense of humor.] ^

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Well -- we certainly have some verbose nuts on this thread!

By the way, this is not intended to be read and utilized by NPD people, who are resistent to change and unlikely to find anything of use here. This is intended for those who come into contact with people with NPD. It is to help those people better understand what they are up against.

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Narcissists have a weird sense of time. It's more or less like they are not aware that the passage of time changes things, or maybe they just aren't aware of time's passing at all. Years can pass without touching narcissists. Narcissists often look, or think they look, significantly younger than they are; this youthful appearance is a point of pride to them, and some will emphasize it by either preserving the styles of their golden youth or following the styles of people the age they feel they "really" are. That their faces don't show their chronological age is a good sign that they haven't been living real lives with real life's wear and tear on the looks of normal people. The narcissists' years have passed without touching them. Bear in mind that narcissistic adults have had decades of not being in synch with the times or with other people, so that by now they are really out of it. Sometimes it just seems like they have a highly selective memory -- which, of course, they do, sort of; they pay attention only to what has their name in it in the first place, so after 30 or 40 years, you shouldn't be surprised to hear a narcissist say something like, "Didn't the Beatles have a couple of hit songs while we were in high school?" or to suddenly discover that the narcissist doesn't know that M&M's have little m's on them or that smallpox was eradicated over 20 years ago. They are not being ironic: they really don't know. They were off in their own little world of fantastic perfection. On the other hand, as far as I've seen, all that stuff really is in there, but is accessible only intermittently or unpredictably. Narcissists ordinarily have spotty memories, with huge and odd gaps in their recollections; they may say that they don't remember their childhoods, etc., and apparently most of the time they don't. But they will have sudden accesses of memory, triggered by God knows what, when they remember details, everybody's names, what people were wearing, why the people in that picture from 1950 are standing the way they are, what the weather was like, etc. -- in other words, every once in a while, their memories will be normal. But don't count on it. ^

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Narcissists are totally and inflexibly authoritarian. In other words, they are suck-ups. They want to be authority figures and, short of that, they want to be associated with authority figures. In their hearts, they know they can't think well, have no judgment about what matters, are not connected with the world they inhabit, so they cling fanatically to the opinions of people they regard as authority figures -- such as their parents, teachers, doctors, ministers. Where relevant, this may include scientists or professors or artists, but narcissists stick to people they know personally, since they aren't engaged enough with the world to get their authoritative opinions from TV, movies, books or dead geniuses/saints/heroes. If they get in trouble over some or another opinion they've put forth, they'll blame the source -- "It was okay with Dr. Somebody," "My father taught me that," etc. If you're still thinking of the narcissist as odd-but-normal, this shirking of responsibility will seem dishonest and craven -- well, it is but it's really an admission of weakness: they really mean it: they said what they said because someone they admire or fear said it and they're trying to borrow that person's strength. ^

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Narcissists have strange work habits. Normal people work for a goal or a product, even if the goal is only a paycheck. Normal people measure things by how much they have to spend (in time, work, energy) to get the desired results. Normal people desire idleness from time to time, usually wanting as much free time as they can get to pursue their own thoughts and pleasures and interests. Narcissists work for a goal, too, but it's a different goal: they want power, authority, adulation. Lacking empathy, and lacking also context and affect, narcissists don't understand how people achieve glory and high standing; they think it's all arbitrary, it's all appearances, it's all who you know. So they try to attach themselves to people who already have what they want, meanwhile making a great show of working hard. Narcissists can put in a shocking amount of time to very little effect. This is partly because they have so little empathy that they don't know why some work is valued more highly than other work, why some people's opinions carry more weight than others'. They do know that you're supposed to work and not be lazy, so they keep themselves occupied. But they are not invested in the work they do -- whatever they may produce is just something they have to do to get the admiration and power they crave. Since this is so, they really don't pay attention to what they're doing, preferring the easiest thing at every turn, even though they may be constantly occupied, so that narcissists manage to be workaholics and extremely lazy at the same time. Narcissists measure the worth of their work only by how much time they spend on it, not by what they produce. They want to get an A for Effort. Narcissists lack empathy, so they don't know what others value or why. Narcissists tend to value things in quantitative ways and in odd quantities at that -- they'll tell you how many inches of letters they received, but not how many letters or from how many correspondents; they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
A narcissist may, in fact, hold himself to a grinding work schedule that gives him something like an addictive high so that, when wrought up, he can be sort of dazed, giddy, and groggy, making you wonder if he's drunk or otherwise intoxicated -- now, that's a real workaholic. Usually, this excessive busyness appears to be -- and some will even tell you this -- an attempt to distract themselves from unpleasant or inconvenient feelings (i.e., it's a manic defense against depression -- and, note, with narcissists it's inaccurate to use "happy" or "unhappy" because their feelings are just not that differentiated; "euphoria" or "dysphoria" are as close as they get to ordinary pleasure or distress) or to make themselves unavailable to others' emotional needs. ^

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Narcissists feel entitled to whatever they can take. They expect privileges and indulgences, and they also feel entitled to exploit other people without any trace of reciprocation. ^

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Some narcissists spend extravagantly in order to impress people, keep up grandiose pretentions, or buy favorable treatment, and some narcissists overspend, bankrupt themselves, and lose everything. My personal experience is that narcissists are stingy, mean, frugal, niggardly to the point of eccentricity. This is a person who won't spend $1.50 on a greeting card but will instead send you an advertising flyer that came with the newspaper. This is a person who will be very conscious of her appearance but will dress herself and her children in used clothes and other people's cast-offs. [Note: Thrift is not in itself a narcissistic trait; neither is a fondness for old clothes. The important element here is that the narcissist buys clothes that other people she admires and wishes to emulate have already picked out, since she has no individual tastes or preferences.] These are people who need labels or trademarks (or other signs of authority) to distinguish between the real thing and a cheap knock-off or imitation, and so will substitute something easy and cheap for something precious and dear and expect nobody else to know the difference, since they can't. These are people who can tell you how many miles but not how many smiles.
Narcissists are not only selfish and ungiving -- they seem to have to make a point of not giving what they know someone else wants. Thus, for instance, in a "romantic" relationship, they will want you to do what they want because they want it and not because you want it -- and, in fact, if you actually want to do what they want, then that's too much like sharing and you wreck their fun and they don't want it anymore. They want to get what they want from you without giving you what you want from them. Period. If you should happen to want to give what they want to get, then they'll lose interest in you. ^

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Something I had not connected with narcissism until I read about Reactive Attachment Disorder is that narcissists I've known have had unusual eating habits or appetites, including eating match heads, dry cake mix, chicken bones, raw meat, dog kibble, egg mash, bits of paper, wood pencils; some binge or gorge on ordinary foods, others seem always to be on one or another self-imposed, self-invented eccentric dietary regime. This behavior does not seem to have much in the way of affective component compared to, say, "normal" eating disorders. ^

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Narcissists are very disappointing as gift-givers. This is not a trivial consideration in personal relationships. I've seen narcissistic people sweetly solicit someone's preferences ("Go ahead -- tell me what you really want"), make a show of paying attention to the answer ("Don't you think I'm nice?"), and then deliver something other than what was asked for -- and feel abused and unappreciated when someone else gets gratitude for fulfilling the very request that the narcissist evoked in the first place. I've seen this happen often, where narcissists will go out of their way to stir up other people's expectations and then go out of their way to disappoint those expectations. It seems like a lot of pointless work to me.
First, narcissists lack empathy, so they don't know what you want or like and, evidently, they don't care either; second, they think their opinions are better and more important than anyone else's, so they'll give you what they think you ought to want, regardless of what you may have said when asked what you wanted for your birthday; third, they're stingy and will give as gifts stuff that's just lying around their house, such as possessions that they no longer have any use for, or -- in really choice instances -- return to you something that was yours in the first place. In fact, as a practical matter, the surest way NOT to get what you want from a narcissist is to ask for it; your chances are better if you just keep quiet, because every now and then the narcissist will hit on the right thing by random accident. ^

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It's very hard to have a simple, uncomplicated good time with a narcissist. Except for odd spells of heady euphoria unrelated to anything you can see, their affective range is mediocre-fake-normal to hell-on-Earth. They will sometimes lie low and be quiet, actually passive and dependent -- this is as good as it gets with narcissists. They are incapable of loving conduct towards anyone or anything, so they do not have the capacity for simple pleasure, beyond the satisfaction of bodily needs. There is only one way to please a narcissist (and it won't please you): that is to indulge their every whim, cater to their tiniest impulses, bend to their views on every little thing. There's only one way to get decent treatment from narcissists: keep your distance. They can be pretty nice, even charming, flirtatious, and seductive, to strangers, and will flatter you shamelessly if they want something from you. When you attempt to get close to them in a normal way, they feel you are putting emotional pressure on them and they withdraw because you're too demanding. They can be positively fawning and solicitous as long as they're afraid of you, which is not most people's idea of a real fun relationship.
I always have the problem that I get fed up and stay away from THEM long enough to forget exactly what the trouble was, then they come around again, and every narcissist I've known actually was quite lovable about half the time so I try it again. A clue: Run for cover when they start acting normal, maybe expressing a becoming self-doubt or even acknowledging some little fault of their own, such as saying they now realize that they haven't treated you right or that they took advantage of you before. They're just softening you up for something really nasty. These people are geniuses of "Come closer so I can slap you." Except that's not the way they think about it, if they think about it -- no, they're thinking, "Well, maybe you do really care about me, and, if you really care about me, then maybe you'll help me with this," only by "help" they mean do the whole thing, take total responsibility for it, including protecting and defending them and cleaning up the mess they've already made of it (which they will neglect to fill you in on because they haven't really been paying attention, have they, so how would they know??). They will not have considered for one second how much of your time it will take, how much trouble it may get you into in their behalf, that they will owe you BIG for this -- no, you're just going to do it all out of the goodness of your heart, which they are delighted to exploit yet again, and your virtue will be its own reward: it's supposed to just tickle you pink to be offered this generous opportunity of showing how much you love them and/or how lucky you are to be the servant of such a luminous personage. No lie -- they think other people do stuff for the same reason they do: to show off, to perform for an audience. That's one of the reasons they make outrageous demands, put you on the spot and create scenes in public: they're being generous -- they're trying to share the spotlight with you by giving you the chance to show off how absolutely stunningly devoted-to-them you are. It means that they love you; that's why they're hurt and bewildered when you angrily reject this invitation. ^

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Appearances are all there is with narcissists -- and their self-hatred knows no bounds. The most dramatic example I can think of is from John Cheever's journals. Throughout his life he had pursued surreptitious homosexual activities, being transiently infatuated with young men who reminded him of himself in his youth, while also living in a superficially settled way as a married family man, a respected writer with an enviable suburban life, breeding pedigreed dogs and serving on the vestry of the Episcopal church. When his secret life (going to New York City for a few days every now and then to pick up sailors and other beautiful boys for brief flings) came to scandalous light, his family sought to reassure him by telling him that they'd known about his homosexual activities for years. Now, a normal person would be ashamed and embarrassed but also relieved and grateful that scandal, not to mention chronic emotional and marital infidelity, had not caused his wife and children to reject and abandon him -- but not the narcissist! Oh, no, Cheever was enraged that they would ever have thought such a thing of him -- if they really loved him, they'd have bought his artificial "country squire" persona: they would have seen him as he wished to be seen: they would have believed his lies without question or doubt. ^

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Narcissists don't volunteer the usual personal information about themselves, so they may seem secretive or perhaps unusually reserved or very jealous of their privacy. All these things are true, but with the special narcissistic twist that, first, their real life isn't interesting to them so it doesn't occur to them that it would be interesting to anyone else and, second, since they have not yet been transfigured into the Star of the Universe, they're ashamed of their real life. They feel that their jobs, their friends and families, their homes and possessions aren't good enough for them, they deserve better. ^

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Narcissists not only don't recognize the feelings and autonomy of others, they don't recognize their own feelings as their own. Their feelings are sort of like the weather, atmospheric, acts of God. The narcissistic think that everyone's having the same feeling as they are. This means that usually their own pain means nothing to them beyond the physical discomfort -- it has no affective component. When they do get some painful affect, they think that God is punishing them -- they think that their trivial errors are worth God's specific attention to their punishment. If you try to straighten them out, by telling them that your feelings are different, beware: their idea of sharing their feelings is to do or say something that makes you feel the way they're feeling and, as they make a point of not sharing anything desirable, you can expect something really nasty. The sad fact seems to be that narcissists feel just as bad about themselves as they make others feel about them. ^

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Narcissists are noted for their negative, pessimistic, cynical, or gloomy outlook on life. Sarcasm seems to be a narcissistic specialty, not to mention spite. Lacking love and pleasure, they don't have a good reason for anything they do and they think everyone else is just like them, except they're honest and the rest of us are hypocrites. Nothing real is ever perfect enough to satisfy them, so are they are constantly complaining and criticizing -- to the point of verbal abuse and insult. ^

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Narcissists are impulsive. They undo themselves by behavior that seems oddly stupid for people as intelligent as they are. Somehow, they don't consider the probable consequences of their actions. It's not clear to me whether they just expect to get away with doing anything they feel like at the moment or whether this impulsiveness is essentially a cognitive shortcoming deriving from the static psychic state with its distorted perception of time. ^

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Narcissists hate to live alone. Their inner resources are skimpy, static, and sterile, nothing interesting or attractive going on in their hearts and minds, so they don't want to be stuck with themselves. All they have inside is the image of perfection that, being mere mortals like the rest of us, they will inevitably fall short of attaining. ^

1. So, let me get this straight; if you are against liberalism and leninism, you are "mentally ill?"

Which psychiatric institute in Stalinist Russia did you say you were a graduate of, again?

2. I wasn't aware -- until now -- that being able to write well is a sign of mental illness. Does your diagnostic manual have also have a section on "severe sour grapes personality disorder:"It appear to have spread in epidemic form among certain middle aged slobsters formerly associated with Muni Fare Strike;


3. Do you really, really want to make an issue of mental illness when one of the stumblebums who helped pilot the fare strike effort into the ground was Gifford Hartman???

4. And congratulations on throwing sand in the eyes of readers so that you don't have to address the substance of anything I've said. You'd probably be intellectually out of your league if you had to write a grocery shopping list, so I don't doubt your inability to take on what I write in an honest manner here.

singed, non-anonymously,
Kevin Keating

An ad hominem is not a rebuttal. It's a way to change the subject.

You're totally right on this point; these devious characters just can't deal with the substance of what I'm saying.

They've proved your case by demonstrating a lack of rebuttal. Every time they attack you as a person, they dig the hole they're in deeper.

You certainly have heard it before in all likelihood because the diagnosis fits you just as neatly. Check the criteria. To avoid any confusion, it certainly has nothing to do with what sect you align with.

As was stated in the second part, it was not intended for the benefit (or the attack necessarily) of either of you, so it is not the ad hominem your typically rigid knee-jerk reaction would lead people to believe.

It was "intended for those who come into contact with people with NPD" and not for those who actually fit the criteria.

You'd have known that if you had actually read it. It's not rocket science to understand the fundamentals of NPD, unless you are effected by it. Just gotta match at least 5 of 9 criterium.

It is amusing that one person with NPD would rush to the assistance of another (see criterium #3 above about "high-status" people).

It would be expected as per NPD that the initial response would be to claim an ability "to write well" and to assert that the commenter was "intellectually out of (his/her) league". For bonus flair, an accusation about "devious characters" is thrown in. "Evil-doers" would have probably been too much.

Yet the comment was not an effort to reach the original NPD poster, so you both can relax on the defensive posturing. And it's only changing the subject if one accepts your authoritarian definition of the discussion.

The previous comment about "Authoritarian Personalities" is exactly what called out for a higher level of specificity, and hence the NPD comments.

Please, continue with the mutual masterbation and blaming of others for your own interpersonal failures and increasing isolation. Just keep telling yourselves that if anyone dares say anything about your unusual behavior, it is a bad mark on them.

Meanwhile, those who care to can more thoroughly read the explanation of NPD and its social implications. It's not encouraging.

There, (s)he did it again, just as if (s)he actually believe our readers are too stupid to realize that the personalities of the people involved are not the issue. (S)he avoids the substance of the thesis and attacks the messenger(s), because (s)he has nothing to say that is relevant. If (s)he did, (s)he would say that instead. But (s)he didn't.

What does this tell us?

Failure to address substance is a defining symptom of inability to rebut. As my old debate coach back in high school put it, "when they resort to ad hominem, they are either out of ammo, out of brains, or more likely, out of both."

But what the heck, just to be sporting, let's give this person one more chance to address the substance of Kevin's thesis. If, instead, (s)he attacks Kevin again, we can be relatively certain that the thesis is sound and *absolutely* certain that this particular person has no rebuttal.

This thread is dead, I know, but I'll respond quickly nonetheless.

Keating points to a few small actions he was involved in twenty years ago to refute my claim that he likes the workers in the abstract but doesn't want actual contact with them. It's notable that he doesn't address my argument and instead cites his ultra-left resume.

Keating says I'm in favor of voting and gung-ho about unions. That's a bald-face lie. Unlike Keating, I (with Natasha Dedrick) have actually organized a successful wildcat strike at the point of production. Keating's "I'm smarter than you"/rich-boy-cum-commie persona is detested by working class people. If he'd been a messenger at the company in the months leading up to the strike I am CERTAIN it wouldn't have occured. His association with the effort would have repelled the very people Natasha and I were trying to galvanize.

Keating says I'm Marc Norton's follower. Anyone who knows anything about SF Fare Strike knows this is complete and utter horseshit.

Keating says I'm a slacker. In fact, I work 60+ hours a week and--with my wife--support my daughter, whom I live with. Keating lives with his ex-girlfriend whom he mooches off of.

Keating derides the fact that SF Fare Strike put out flyers in Korean, but fails to remind the reader that we also put out thousands and thousands of flyers as well in Chinese, Spanish, and English. But who expects fair criticism from Kevin Katechism Keating?

One last thing: It's notable that Nessie is the only person piping in to defend KKK.

The stuff we did around BART and MUNI was back in the 1990's. Anyone can check out the doc I posted the link to above and read about it for themselves.

Aaron Hackett was involved in the stuff around BART in 1995. He has either conveniently erased his memory tapes on this score, or he did a header over the handlebars one too many times in his glory days as a bike messenger. And again, he told me back in the day that the stuff we'd done together had a big influence on his role in the bike messengers wildcat.

This guy knows nothing about my personal life. Much of what he writes here can simply be read as bad fiction.
Okay, Hackett, you can go ahead and have the last word. I've said what I need to say about the politics of failure for now...

You're done until you feel like people aren't paying you enough attention, and then you'll pipe up again and issue another "installment". I'm surprised you mange to sober up enough to get this far with your screeding, but you are a tenacious bastard with lots of time on his hands.

The latest characterizations of an individual (Aaron) are abusive and inappropriate. I suggest that all flamewars and any mention of anyone's personality or character be deleted. That person (Kevin) should be banned from the website until they can act in a respectful manner to the other people using this site. It says as much in the San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia (Indybay) Points of Unity [http://indybay.org/news/2003/12/1664397.php].

>any mention of anyone's personality or character be deleted.

Actually, it has been Kevin and his supporters who have been subjected to an endless stream of ad hominems.

Ban all flamewars! -- except when I'm involved, bravely hiding behind my numerous fake names.

Glug-glug-glug-glug-glug-glug....

We can safely take this to mean that the author has nothing to say about the *substance* of what Kevin is telling us.

How sad.

it's not fair to comment on your own post

That wasn't nessie. It was someone else, trying to make you think it was nessie.

that was clearly one person commenting on their own comment

I know because I'm the one who posted it.

Now can we *please* get back to the substance of the topic?

you mean how everyone sucks but kevin?

wasn't that the topic?

nessie also doesn't suck. he even said so himself

No, it was not, as anyone who knows how a scroll bar works can easily see for themselves. To claim otherwise discredits you. It also indicates that you are unable and/or unwilling to address the substance of the topic. This tells us everything we need to know about you, and a lot of what we need to know about topic.

Do it like Ecuador:

http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/69187/index.php

"...you mean how everyone sucks but kevin?

wasn't that the topic?"

Haw Haw Haw! Dat's rich!
I'm in the market for a new white plastic helmet -- where do you buy yours?

Spudsters of the world, untie!!!!!!

I wrote that I'm done playing volleyball with you on this thread, not that I'm not going to continue posting drafts of my critique of the MUNI effort. The longer, more polished version of 'Muni Social Strikeout' will be up on the internet in time for the anarcho-bookfare in mid-March.

The next part will be the larger theoretical background that inspired my trying to get something going around MUNI in the first place. After that I'll write about what I saw of how MUNI drivers responded to our efforts. Then it's back to the future; the event itself, and the sheep-crawl to City Hall that marked on several different levels the clear failure of the MUNI fare strike itself and the inadequacity of the politics that emerged here.

Down's Syndrome Sufferers March to City Hall -- Nov. 10th
by Xxxx Xxxxxx Saturday, Nov. 05, 2005 at 8:34 PM
xxxxxxxf [at] ix.netcom.com

A petition for moderate reform within the bounds of the law, pertaining to the recent austerity measures around SF's MUNI

Hi there! In a capitalist society, there are politicians who win most of the time, there are politicians who lose most of the time -- and then there's us -- the Down's Syndrome guys!

We are a progressive coalition of people with Down's Syndrome, and our cognitive burden has led us to get together a big march to San Francisco's City Hall. We like voting, we like to be nice to the people that are nice to us -- and we like to go for big walks! Walk, to a nice, pretty building like the big French-looking one, near the wino plaza.

By putting our debility on parade, we hope that we can get the people who hold all the power in our society to be nice to us -- and for this, we say an very nice, enthusiastic please! A big, Dumbo-the-Elephant Jumbo Sized Please! In the immortal words of the Bartles and James wine cooler ad guys, back in the 1980's -- thank you very much!

Your friend, Xxxx, at
xxxxxxx [at] ix.netcom.com

Don't they drunk-test these guys anymore?

The mentally retarded thing here really struck a sore nerve with a certain forty-something (ouncer?) underacheiver, didn't it?

where is the longer and more polished version? at the bottom of an empty bottle fo beer somewhere?