"This is what the truth feels like"

There is a new album out by that name. Says Wikipedia,

Inspired by the end of her marriage and the roller coaster of emotions she experienced during the time, which also included a new romantic relationship, Stefani returned to feel inspired and started writing new and meaningful songs.

You can get the picture. Her marriage broke up, she felt hurt and now she has started a new relationship and she wants to feel vindicated. Well, who hasn't felt that.

I was feeling that myself today. Someone who once caused me pain caused other people pain this morning. When I found out about it, I felt good. It's odd that when you believe that someone is a nasty little shit, they can actually make you feel better by confirming your belief. But would anyone say that feeling is "what truth feels like"?

Only if you thought vindication and truth were identical.

There is no particular feeling that goes with truth.

It says something, and nothing good, about our culture that truth and feeling have become linked.

Daddy's girl 2

Eleven years ago this month, Ayelet Waldman published an essay in which she said she loved her husband more than her children. She went on to suggest that it was the sexual intensity in her marriage that caused this to happen. It caused quite a sensation. The hatred flowed like Niagara Falls. Some people threatened to turn her in to social services for abusing her children.

A decade later, she stands by the essay and good for her. But she didn't go far enough. Loving your spouse more than your children not only doesn't do them any harm, it helps them. Loving your spouse gives you the strength to love your children better.

The love between a parent and child is not equal. As a parent, you have to to love your child. You have to forgive your child. You have to give your child more than they give you. You need a source of strength to do that. You need to love someone in a truly reciprocal relationship between adults to achieve that and the best way to do that is a loving sexual relationship.

When you don't have that, you will make unfair demands on your child. You will ask them to support you in matters they shouldn't have to worry about. You will share with them things they shouldn't have to think about. Neither of you will notice it happening but you will be denying her the chance to become a fully-developed, independent adult.

Many of us have to deal with the negative effects of having a mother who is too focused on her children (and I may say something about some day but the subject has been thoroughly covered elsewhere). Though that is far and away the more common problem, some fathers deal with a cold and distant wife by bonding with their daughters. This bond typically starts as early as age five but becomes particularly intense when their daughters, as many children tend to do, switch allegiance from their mother to their father in their teens. That shift in allegiance is a powerful source of good if it is a shift from one role model to another. Not because there is something wrong with mothers as role models but because there is something wrong with only having one kind of primary role model and your mother is a giant influence on your early life. But something else, and decidedly not good, happens when a daughter switches from one love object to another instead of from one kind of example to another.

I dated two daddy's girls in my younger years. It has a lot to say for it in some ways.

1. A Daddy's girl gets really close to her father. They had little secrets, in-jokes and a private language that only they and their fathers shared. That's also a natural thing for any couple to do. When you date such a woman, she easily creates an intimate, private world with you because she's been practicing since she was a child. 
2. She picks up on guy activities really quickly. You can go sailing, fishing, drinking with her just like one of the guys.
3. She and her father united against Mummy because he wasn't getting what he needed from Mummy and, his daughter will conclude, Mummy wasn't good enough for Daddy. Mummy was cold and unavailable and a Daddy's girl is determined never to be that. 
4. Unlike Momma's boys who tend, as Robert Glover puts it, to remain monogamous to their mothers, Daddy's girls are very sexual. To become like her mother would be to betray Daddy. She thinks that Mummy let herself go. She thinks that because she judged her mother from the perspective of a woman in her teens looking at Mummy in her forties. She sees this cold and dowdy woman and vows to be forever hot. 

And that all sounds pretty good. But there's a fatal flaw in it. For, no matter how good it seems, this woman will always relate to you as a child to an adult. She will never accept full responsibility for the relationship. Her only responsibility is to keep on being the woman she thinks is true to her father. She will not only not care about your emotional needs and vulnerabilities, she'll get angry at you for even having any. And she'll betray you and get angry at you for even daring to be hurt. Daddy always remembered his little princess, the reverse was not the case. And when she did do something for him, she did it on the expectation that his gratitude was automatic and extravagant. She didn't do it for him but for the reward it gave her. And that worked for them. It won't work for you.

Again, the sexual side sounds great except that she isn't doing it for you. She isn't even doing it for herself. She's doing it out of fear of failure and long before she actually reaches the age her mother was when she first judged her so harshly she will begin to see that she has set an impossible standard for herself. Only she won't see it as a standard she set for herself. She'll see it as something the world, and that includes you, is imposing on her. And you really don't want to be around when that happens; the massive cognitive dissonance and narcissistic rage will redefine personal cruelty for you. It may be directed at others (like you, for example) or it may be directed at herself; either way, it will be horrible.

Daddy's girl and the most subversive moment in children's literature

Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson wrote adventure stories for adolescents. Most famously, she created the character of Nancy Drew. Nancy was later softened up considerably but the original character was quite a break from the usual mode of young heroines; she even carries a gun in the fourth volume of the series. She is rightly seen as a key figure in the development of a new kind of role model for girls, something not quite feminist but definitely liberating.

Benson created not only Nancy Drew but also Penny Parker, Penny Nichols, Connie Carl, Madge Sterling and Ruth Darrow. The girls are all variations on a type. Here, for example, is how Penny Nichols is introduced to us in The Mystery of the Lost Key,

Mr. Nichols had no real hobbies and only two absorbing interests in life—his work and his daughter. Penny had been left motherless at an early age. Because there had been only a slight feminine influence in her life her outlook upon the world was somewhat different from that of the average high school girl. She thought clearly and frankly spoke her mind. Yet if she enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom for one so young, she never abused the trust which her father placed in her.

They all had doting fathers and dead mothers. Madge Sterling and Connie Carl's fathers are also dead at the outset of their adventure stories but both fathers are remembered with love. The mothers? Not so much. They don't even register.

Now, that in itself is not necessarily surprising. One of the most dependable moves in children's literature is to get mom, dad or both parents off stage as quickly as possible. In real life parents are a source of comfort and protection but it is precisely that which makes them a little restricting in fiction so along comes Peter Pan or the kidnappers to whisk us a way to adventure. But Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson is rather single minded about removing mother while keeping a loving and indulging father around.

And you ain't seen nothing until you've read the introduction of Penny Parker in the fourth of the series devoted to her with the wonderful title of Behind the Green Door. These introductions appeared in every volume of series books, just in case a young reader started the series in the middle and had no idea who the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew or Penny Parker was. Benson must have been feeling a little feisty when she wrote this one:

A red-billed cap pulled at a jaunty angle over her blond curls, Penny made a striking figure in the well tailored suit of dark wool. Her eyes sparkled with the joy of youth and it was easy for her to smile. She was an only child, the daughter of Anthony Parker, editor and publisher of the Riverview Star, and her mother had died when she was very young.

Thousands of teenage girls read that and briefly considered how much easier it might be for them also to smile if only mom had died when they were very young.

The "very young" part is important. Get her off stage before you really get to know her; that way you don't have to feel bad because she was someone you never knew. But don't kid yourself, these books were anti-mother in a way that had not been seen before.

The title of this book went on to have a life of its own. It comes back first as a slightly risqué pop song from 1956 and then as a, if you'll pardon the expression, seminal porn movie. Here's the song:

Neutrality is always cruel and never really neutral

Cruel neutrality! I stole that phrase from a blogger named Ann Althouse. I think it's useful because it acknowledges that neutrality is cruel. We pretend otherwise because we think of neutrality as a good thing. And it can be but the same can be said of amputation. It is cruel to have a limb amputated even if it is the best choice. The same is true of neutrality: even when appropriate, it is cruel and when it isn't appropriate, and it usually isn't, it is cruel and damaging.

To understand why neutrality is cruel even when appropriate, think of it from the point of view of the rape victim: she (or he) faces a court that takes a neutral stance about a horrible thing that has happened to her. Ultimately, we think that neutrality is justified because it gives us a better chance of achieving a fair result but we delude ourselves if we think it feels good for people who have been victims of crimes.

And you can arrive at the same conclusion coming at it from the other end. Think about the person falsely accused of rape. He's been wronged but the court will, at most, find him "not guilty" leaving his reputation damaged for life. It's only in really rare cases where a real victim of rape or false accusation gets anything that even vaguely resembles justice. (And neutrality is justified here because that's the best you can hope for.)

It's worth noting that neutrality isn't really neutral either.  This is obviously true in the courts where the system is loaded in favour of the accused. It's also true in real life. To be neutral is to force yourself to take a stance you know isn't true. You know someone is to blame but act as if you didn't. To put it another way, neutrality doesn't just mean refusing to take sides, it means refusing to believe there are sides to be taken.

So what are the consequences of someone applying this sort of standard elsewhere in their life? Neutrality forces others to justify all their claims all the time. Perhaps that sounds like a good idea? Try it sometime.

And neutrality always favours the aggressor. It has to. The aggressor always starts off equal with their victim in the eyes of the person determined to be neutral.

Nowhere are the results more devastating that when a parent tries to be neutral towards their children. There is always an aggressor and you can see it for yourself simply by watching any group of kids in action. The job of the adult in the room is to protect the other kids from the aggressor and the aggressor from themselves. Both need the protection.

The non-aggressors are the most obvious case. If they aren't protected, the message they take is that they aren't worth protecting. For a child that is a devastating position because this is their parent, not another child or some random adult, who isn't protecting them. They cannot conclude that the parent simply doesn't love them. That could, quite literally, mean death. A child cannot survive without their parents. The only option available to is to conclude that they are worthless.

The child who is raised this way is put at a disadvantage all their life. In every relationship she feels that she has to reach out and prove her bona fides. She sells herself out, agreeing to love and career relationships where she always put in more than she gets out. She will always underachieve because she never feels she is worth it.

As awful as that may sound, it's nothing compared to what happens to the aggressive child. She starts life off three-quarters the way to narcissism. She never learns that other people's feelings matter. At the same time, she never receives any real affection but only fear. When she gets outside of the family circle, she has no way of understanding what love is. All she can see is what she understands as respect and that "respect' will never include criticism or dissension. For her a friend is someone who enables her goals, whether they are legitimate or delusional. Confronted with a real friend who occasionally stands up to her, she can only rage because she's never learned how to have an honest discussion. In fact, she will tend to get out of an impasse not by pulling back but by escalating because bringing everything to a screaming climax where everyone hates everyone is something like the "neutrality" she's used to from her parents. Her understanding of "compromise" is other people agreeing to give in to her.

Yes, she's awful to deal with but that is its own punishment. No one wants to deal with her so no one gets close to her. She may succeed in building up a large social network but she will have no one really close to her. Her life will be hell and, this is the worst part, she won't be able to do anything about it because she will never be able to admit that she isn't happy even to herself.

The narcissistic parent 2

Okay, so what do we do about it?

For starters, we don't want to get into the business of diagnosing people. Or, to put it another way, there is psychological narcissism and there is moral narcissism. Psychological narcissism is more properly called Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Only a professional can properly determine whether someone has these problems. And only a professional can do anything about it; assuming something can be done and it may not be the case that anything can.

It might be moral narcissism. What's that? It's what happens to anybody who acquires mental habits that lead them to react in narcissistic ways. In our culture, that's most of us. Which brings the first of two problems into focus: Who am I to be pointing out the speck in someone else's eye? And the second problem is like unto it: It's not going to do any good at all to point a finger at someone else and accuse them of narcissism.

It might, might!, help to occasionally suggest that some behaviours that someone else does are unfair. On the other hand, the sort of person capable of accepting that sort of criticism should also be morally mature enough to figure it out for themselves.

But we don't see that as lay people just trying to get by. We only see someone who just keeps doing stupid, destructive things to others and themselves. If we care, and we should, our first temptation will be to try to get them to see the problem. That's tricky because "just trying to get someone to see something" is the way manipulative people describe their attempts at manipulation. It seems so obvious to us that the other person "just doesn't get it" and, therefore, it starts to feel justified that we should hold their views on the matter in low regard and to start using "whatever it takes" to get them "to see reason'.

And, somewhere along the line, this other person has been reduced to a thing that needs to be fixed and not a proper person anymore.

The most, it seems to me, that we can do is make the person aware of what we don't like and then leave it up to them to determine whether they should change.

From that there follows a second question: How many chances do you want to give them? What we need to do is draw a line. Don't tell anyone else about it but draw it for yourself. And if they cross it, you want to distance yourself from them. You probably don't need to cut them out of your life but you will need some distance for your own happiness.

Okay, that's the person with narcissistic tendencies but what about the parent with such tendencies. That's not a problem I currently have to deal with but I think the first step is still the same. The next step is to subject yourself to serious scrutiny. Why? Because this parent has influenced you all your life. All the tendencies I described in the last post will be well internalized in you too. And you need to fix yourself, quite possibly with professional help. The way forward is going to require that you reject pretty much all the values this parent has taught you. That will be like amputating your own arm without anesthetic.

Still well worth the effort though.

The narcissistic parent

I've been doing some research for a writing project and decided to share what I have found here.

1. First and foremost, a narcissistic parent sees their children as markers for themselves. A child's success validates the parent and a child's failure shames them. 
2. The narcissistic parent is relentlessly competitive. They keep a mental ledger of their status vis-a-vis others (especially their siblings) and are always ready to reward or punish their children for adding or subtracting from their perceived status.
3. They will value their children for what they do instead of who they are.
4. They will value physical appearance and effortless grace above real achievement and hard work.
5. They will manipulate their children to achieve desired results. A failure to persuade will rapidly be followed by shaming and mocking of activities and attitudes that the parent does not desire. Ultimately, rage and threats will be used. They will sometimes explode into rage when a child says or does something that embarrasses  them even if the child could not possibly have known better. In such moods, they will think nothing of trashing their own children in the eyes of others, including other family members. That this might hurt the child will not occur to the parent. 
6. Because the narcissist needs to deflect shame, the credit flows upward to the parent and blame flows down to the child. If a child succeeds it is proof of the parent is a good parent but if the child fails it is proof that the child has let the parent down. ("How could you do this to me?!")
7. They are incapable of self criticism. As above, credit (here in the form of moral authority) flows upwards to the parent and blame for any perceived moral failure flows downwards to the child.
8. As a consequence, they are phonies. This will seem so natural to them that they will not feel any need to hide or justify their double standards to their children. They are, for example, capable of saying things like, "I don't know where I went wrong" but they never actually believe they are to blame for anything. Their children quickly learn to read these questions as rhetorical; to make the mistake of taking the question literally will produce a scathing attack on the child that they will not soon forget.
9. Nowhere will this phoniness be displayed more clearly than in their morality which only directs outward. They use morals primarily to manipulate or to diminish others and the same parent who insists on seemingly "high moral standards" to get children to behave in desired ways will cheerfully overlook them in other cases. People within and outside the family who appear beautiful and/or successful in ways that are useful to the parent will not be held to account on moral matters the parent claims to hold dear. On the other hand, they will say spectacularly cruel and unfeeling things about people of whom they do not approve. 
10. As children get older, they will discover that they have been praised to others outside the family in ways that bear little relation what they were told of themselves in private. Again, it will never occur to the narcissistic parent that there is anything wrong with this. If a child confronts them with lies and exaggerations that have told about them to others, the parent will only see this as proof of how much they love their child. Likewise, tearing them down in private will be taken as love since it was "only done to improve them". 
11. They will not recognize reasonable boundaries as their children get older and will think nothing of spying on their children or intruding on their privacy. Likewise, they will think nothing of betraying their children's privacy in an attempt to recruit others into efforts to influence and manipulate their children.
12. The narcissistic parent will exclude the other parent as far as possible from the raising of their children. This will include discrediting and criticizing the other parent when speaking to their children. It will not occur to them that speaking at length to their children of the other parent's perceived weaknesses is an inappropriate thing to do.
13. This failure to grasp what is inappropriate when interacting with children coupled with an inability to build close ties with other adults (including their spouse) will lead the narcissistic parent to sometimes share things with their children that they really should only share with another adult.
14. Their first reaction upon learning of a child's struggles and setbacks will be to wonder how this reflects on them. (Often, "the family" will be used as a stand in. The child will be told to think about how this will reflect on "the family" but that will be indistinguishable for the narcissistic parent's own interests.)
15. They will have poor understanding of their own feelings and will not be very good at controlling their own feelings. (One manifestation of this will be the tendency to project their own feelings into the child: "I don't know why you are so unhappy.")
16. They will not recognize their children's feelings as valid unless they coincide with their own. (They will often use cheap "psychoanalysis" to justify this: "You're only saying this because you're insecure" or "you don't want me to be happy".)
17. Their feelings will always trump their children's needs. (The narcissistic parent can always say they love their children with perfect sincerity because "love" always means their own craving for validation.)
18. They will unhesitatingly tell their children that their status in the family is conditional on their behaving in certain ways.
19. They will play the martyr.
20. They will not encourage their children to become independent but will instead continue to control their children's choices as they grow older.

Notice who doesn't get mentioned?

The answer to the question is "other people". They don't get mentioned because they aren't part of the consideration. You know, "other people" like your children. I don't think you could find a clearer example of moral narcissism than that.

We talk a lot about narcissism but seem curiously uninterested in our own narcissistic traits. And we all have some.

The Populist

His appeal is largely emotional and not intellectual. At first, this is refreshing. The people have heard a lot of theory but they're fed up and frustrated with the very slow rate at which problems actually get fixed. Meanwhile, they've noticed that corruption and incompetence forge ahead. The Populist inspires them because  he has a simplistic sense of right and wrong. Unfortunately, he doesn't bother thinking about the deeper implications or unintended consequences of his thoughts and actions.  

The Populist believes that the only real barrier to solving our problems is a lack of good will. As a consequence, he believes that problems that have baffled generations of leaders have simple and straightforward solutions. Everything he says creates a sense of immediacy and hope. This has the unfortunate effect of creating unrealistic expectations. A lot of people believe him and start to believe that problems that are deeply rooted in human nature and have been impossible to root out of any society in human history can be easily made to disappear. 

Worse, The Populist's desire to be loved by the crowd is so intense that he is willing to sacrifice honesty in order to get approval. He makes what at first appear to be spontaneous gestures of solidarity with the poor and marginalized but these later turn out to have been planned media events. He says things that appear to promise much but, when carefully parsed, actually say nothing at all. Sometimes, carried away by the adulation of crowds or, much worse, journalists, he will say things that are just irresponsible. He never goes back and cleans up these messes he makes but leaves that work for others to do.

As time goes on, his need for adulation and the media's willingness to play along with it continue but many people notice that he doesn't actually accomplish much. The Populist's supporters begin to wonder how deeply he holds the beliefs he speaks of with such passion. Others begin to worry if he is likely to launch off in some completely new direction should the winds suddenly appear favourable. Others just stop trusting him. 

Some people go even further and become conspiracy theorists. They see a seemingly unintended loss of faith in key institutions and begin to worry that this all part of a deliberate attempt on the part of The Populist to destabilize institutions in order to bring about some sort of undeclared revolutionary goals. They're wrong about the goals—there is nothing deliberate about this—but they're right about the effects. Governance has become increasingly unstable and principles that have been in place for many, many years suddenly appear negotiable. Even those who sought to reform these institutions begin to worry that what has been produced is not a new bedrock of principles to direct future governance but a vacuum. 

In the face of this, many start to withdraw. They remain nominally part of the larger group and take part to a degree sufficient to maintain membership but, privately, they have shifted their faith, hope and love elsewhere. Perhaps they secretly long for the day the Populist is no longer in office so that things can be made right again. Perhaps they have given up and are focused only on their little corner of the larger institution. They may be shoring it up so that it can survive by itself should the centre not hold. They may be more cynical, having written the centre off as doomed already and are merely being pragmatic in not leaving until they feel their local group is strong enough to survive on it's own. They may have already left in spirit and all that is lacking is a final declaration.

That could be a story about any number of populist secular leaders who have just taken or might take power in the near future. The person I was thinking of, however, is Pope Francis.

I do this not to condemn him or even to single him out. What I want to call attention to is that Francis is not a leader but a follower. He is a man who is very swept up in the spirit of our times.

There is no point in railing against this or imagining that he can be changed.

Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years
or eighty for those who are strong. 

And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.

Almost every human generation has had to live with the sort of uncertainty we currently struggle with. Some had to live with constant chaos and destruction all their lives. Things sometimes get better and they sometimes get worse. One day they will get much worse and that might be about to happen now. Or not.

In the meantime, I will die and so will you. Our only hope is in the name of the LORD who made heaven and earth.