When I first met my wife one morning in a hospital stairway, I managed to have lunch with her and a few other nurses at noon in the cafeteria. In the course of the conversation that developed between the two of us, I commented that she was wearing a lot of makeup! (Yes I did, my very own clueless self.) She looked me straight in the eyes and asked, “What’s wrong with wanting to look your best?” We got engaged five weeks later and have been married now for 44 years.
Indeed, there are at least three times in life when it is especially natural to want to look your best: When you are applying or auditioning for a job you want, when you’ve met a single person that thrills you, and when you’re running for national political office.
Intentionally making a good impression follows all of us all our lives, even in the 55-years-and-older place Nancy and I now live. At “happy hour”, Fridays at 3:00 PM, several dozen of us get two free drinks and a chance to chat socially. Most of us dress a cut above how we look on ordinary days. Dressing up just a bit makes most everyone feel better for a while.
We’re talking here about pride, dignity, and in another perspective, a bit of healthy narcissism in us all. We humans want positive attention. We need it. It helps us feel good about ourselves. Most of us come slowly, over years to the place in which we treasure ourselves, if we ever do. We all grow up little when the world is run by people who are big. Depending on how they comment on us, listen to us, relate to us, validate us, and scare or criticize us, we sort of fight our way to liking who we are.
But some of us, by whatever personal and interpersonal dynamics and life experiences of success and failure, meet the world with excessive self-importance. Those few look at themselves as more special than others. Their self-appreciation goes nearly off the rails. The healthy self-pride that drives all of us to sometimes cast ourselves in the best possible light, becomes preoccupation with needing and fostering attention and gratification for themselves. It basically isn’t their fault. They become incapable of accurately describing their surroundings, needing almost frantically to garner compliments, to get not only approval but adulation. It becomes their life.
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome young man, who was loved secretly by Echo, a lovely young woman. One time, as it happened, Narcissus saw his own image reflected in quiet pools of water (No good mirrors then!) and liked it, a lot. In fact he became so entranced with his own image that he couldn’t connect with Echo, hard as she would try to catch his eye. There was no room in his life for anyone but himself. She gradually wasted away in sadness until all that was left of her was her voice in the echoes of the world.
Narcissism is named after that young man whose self-preoccupation ruined his life (and hers). Coming to treasure ourselves remains a primary accomplishment of life. And coping with the results of our excessive narcissism, or that of somebody personally near us, can be one of the worst.
We humans live with two sides of our pride. One spurs us to succeed, gives us confidence to try, to thrive, and to brave the challenge of intimately loving who loves us, to an nth degree. The other side of pride, however, pulls us to betray our integrity, to fake our worth as superior. We may promise and claim what we only dream about being and doing. Pride has long been known as the primary sin of men. (At least one feminine theorist has argued the primary sin for women is hiding!)
Indeed, healthy pride in oneself includes a solid measure of confidence in one’s strengths of character. Put another way, a measure of self-love is necessary for us to find our enjoyment, our calling, and orgasmic intimate love. But when overgrowing like cancer, it can destroy our efforts to be our best person.
Excessive pride also takes on God (also called love, in all of its many beautiful forms), not necessarily philosophically, but personally and relationally. It renders love difficult, sometimes impossible, just as Echo could not catch Narcissus’s love eye no matter how much she loved him.
How can we voters know a candidate has excessive narcissism? That would not mean they have narcissistic personality disorders (NPDs), and thus qualify as a “narcissist”. Such is for a psychiatric diagnostician to determine in careful assessment. People with way too much narcissism don’t generally avail themselves of such professional appraisal. If they do initiate it for some practical reason, they usually don’t return for a second session. They see themselves as smarter than any therapist.
Many of the world’s top democratic country leaders seem to have the markings of highly narcissistic people. They become kings or top executives who rule even where they were chosen by the people, some in legitimate elections. After being elected they show a different kind of bloated pride, a specialness beyond everyone else. They are more likely to contribute to the development of “kleptocracies”, mostly exploiting the people who elected them. (Sarah Chayes, 2015, Thieves of State, Norton, New York).
But Narcissism in politics can be very difficult to notice in campaigns. Those with a lot of it can look very good.
We now have two presidential candidates campaigning for the top office in the U.S. government. They are compelled to look as good as they can for as long as it takes to get elected. The temptation to exaggerate their strong side, their capabilities, their virtue, and their wisdom must be overwhelming. And it tempts them to make promises and talk about plans that exceed their power to implement and the reach of the office of the U.S. president. Politicians promising what citizens want to hear is legendary.
If we citizens ever have two candidates for the U.S. presidency, both with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, it will be our duty to look carefully at their character before we elect one of them. Those two would do well to examine their promises to the American people and get help doing so if necessary. How realistic are those promises in scope and achievability? How could they be worded with less drama, actual knowledge, and planning that require words of achievability in human, economic, and political terms? Some may show themselves unable to do that for the public — a public who seems now to demand assurance that is comforting but unrealistic.
We as voters may need to require all candidates for national political office to show their true selves in small group assessment before being admitted to candidacy.
Picture for a moment, a small group (five or six) of character-savvy Americans from many walks of life. They have no standing offices or roles in government. They are temps, assembled for one purpose: to interview as a group, for, say, four hours total, each individual separately, all who are would-be candidates for top national political office from their state.
They would have a profound influence on the quality of our Congress and presidency, and even the Supreme Court.
Granted there would be immense problems in working out a system like that. But the National Football League has something equivalent, sets of coaches who look very closely at the specifics of each candidate and are swiftly decisive in deciding which ones are allowed to continue. So do the cheerleaders who perform at NFL games. And PhD departments of universities, and state physician and nurse certification entities. How do the leaders of a country of 333 million diverse residents not get assessed as rigorously as other professionals, even athletes? And indeed, their character is not scrutinized and then recorded at all.
Seem impossible? Too much would have to be believed in and accomplished to get us there from here. But remember, the American Revolution started with a few rascals carousing and discussing in a Boston bar. The feminist movement began as four women began talking over coffee. And Christianity started with a dozen ordinary citizens mourning a recently assassinated troublemaker they loved. This is more possible than we tend think, of as a long-term goal. Evolution is slow, painful, and long – until it isn’t. Then things can happen quite quickly when that hundredth monkey is born.
Meanwhile, until that works, here are some questions to ask ourselves when pondering the level of narcissism that seems to be operant in a given candidate:
– Does this candidate seem to act as if nobody is as important as themself? Do they brush away criticism as if it weren’t there?
– Do they, overtly or secretly, ridicule people they see as lesser than themself?
– Do they exhibit a strong thirst for attention, positive feedback, and even adulation?
– Do they seem to lack empathy for others, even those struggling with life?
– Do they seem grandiose, exaggerating their positive traits, denying their negative ones, even those that people may see?
– Do they have a history of exploitative relationships?
– Do they have a history of difficulty with lasting intimate relationships?
Gordon J Hilsman is a retired clinical educator now living in the Pacific Northwest with his wife of 45 years. He is the author of the book Assessing the CHARACTER of Candidates for National Political Office: In Search of a Collaborative Spirit. He can be reached at ghilsman@gmail.com or at www.spiritualclinician.com .
