“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, November 14, 2015

The Other N Word

Naricissist.

So many times at eco conferences, right at the end, where we all get insecure about the fact that our job is to talk. “How can we get over our narcissism and start doing something?”

Well, don't diss my favorite hobby, hahaha...

I'm with Derrida on this one. Narcissism is the condition of possibility for relation with any other entity whatsoever (one of which, technically, is oneself). If we destroyed it, the “relation to the other” (Derrida) would be destroyed “absolutely” and “in advance” (Derrida).

A spirited ecological politics must involve a spirited paradoxical defense of narcissism.

So there's a whole bit on it in Dark Ecology.

You also hear it in Buddhism, because of the assaults of Hegelians: “I'm not one of those awful Buddhists who actually likes themselves.” LOL

What people mean when they diss the N word is in fact wounded narcissism aka narcissistic personality disorder (for example). In other words, narcissism that isn't narcissistic enough...

I reckon this dissing of one's own inner loop (slash prana, slash subtle body concept) is a symptom of our agrilogistical aggression. We cut out spirit animals and we cut out most other lifeforms except for those designated as cattle. Including the nonhumans in us, the nonhumans that are us. And we suffer from that. And that is called civilization.

We have Stockholm syndrome resulting from deep, deep, narcissistic wounds that are 12 500 years old.

Discuss.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes! I am with Derrida on this one too. All those barbed side-swipes amid the big talk about care and reparation - you patiently reminded everyone that narcissism (maybe little-N?) is aka compassion starts with you. How else than thus to approach care? So beautiful.

Unknown said...

I'm still drowning/being saved in all this. But I would note that Narcissus dying because he was unable to look away from his reflection was not his failing or his "condition". It was the punishment of Nemesis. What annoyed Nemesis was that Narcissus despised the love of others.

While fully agreeing with the deep wounding it seems very modern to identify with only the punishment side?