The Narcississtic personality

 I don't usually get pulled into discussions of psychology in my travels around You tube but recently a number of videos started coming up on the subject of the narcissistic personality, quite a few psychologists discussion this particular psychological phenomenon, a cetegory or collection of categories in the Diagnositc and tatistical Manusal, and thanks to a n enounter with a difficult personality in my own life I found myself interested in paying more attention to these discussions.  then I got hooked and have been gobbling them up, at least the videos of one particular psychologicat, a Dr. Ramani.  She lays out the characteristics of different versions of this personality type in great detail and I find myself fascinated.  

While I was in rehab after a medical condition landed me in the hospital back in April, I had one roommate who total threw me.  I'd neve r encountered such a personality before.  I asked her to please turn deown the TV as it was too loud for me and she said one flat ":no."  Just No.  Nothing more than that, just No.  I'd already had two other roommates and both had wuite qillingly tried to turn it down for me.  then after one horrible night of loud tv blaring incessangly I complained loudly to the urse about it and the roommate actually lectured me as if it were my own fault, that for heavens sake the world is full of noise, what is the matter with me that I can't stnad her tv being on?  I was flummosedc.  I'd enever enountered such a self justifying silly attitude beofre in my life.  I could mention other qualities of this woman that fit the narcissistic profiles I'm hearing about but those two attitudes ought to get it across.  i didn't have the concept of the narcissitic personality at the time to apply to her but I find it helfpful to have it how.  I think she must be a textbook case.

Funinally by the way a friend intervened for me by calling the front sdesk and the head nurse showed up late at night to find the tv blaring and told my roommate she had to shurt if off, that's the rules.  Blessed relief.

So I've been thinking a lot about psychological things that I don't usually think about these days.  Oh I hear Jordan Peterson from time to time but he's kind of an oddball, and my main reaction to him is that he's way off the rails the wsay he talks about the Bible, about which I've wanted to do a blog post for omsome time and may yet.  but that's about it for psycholgoicaly in my world until this narcissistic personality thing came along.  It's quite a big fad these days.  ther are at ledas six peop[le talking about it in great deptgh on You tube that I have run across, and Dr. ramani does a vidoeo on it every day.  The purpose is to help people who are the victims of such personalities get free of their damaging influences.  

But it's made me think how the culture itself seems to have been going in the direction of the characteristics ascribed to these personaltieis.  Self entitlement,k disregard for the rights of others, lack of empathy for others, a gradiosse way of talking and thinking, proneness to rages against anyone who thwarts their wishes, justification of all kind of sabuse to others and projection onto them of all the blame for awhatever happens.   It's kind of a picture of the Fallen World shorn of any correctives from , well, from Christianity in particular, or any moral system.  As I was desdribing our situation in the previous post.

People are justifying criminals, the Left in particular is justifying criminality.  They have no esympathy for those who are their victims, but plenty for the criminals who they think of as tuthe underdog opporessed by the normal people or something like that.  they dcriminalize the normal people, vilify anyone who has succeeded by ahard work in acquiring some measure of comfort or wealth.  envy is a characteristic of the narcissist.  And so on.

Again I think of the loss of the ten Commandements in the culture.  If they are taught and taken seriously at all they work to put a restraint on self serving abuses.  If the truth that sin leads to death and ultimately to Hell is taken seriously such moral restraints are strongly internaliized and if widespread in the population make up a people who can live with others in a harmonious civilized way.  Without those retstraints we get the chaos ahd criminalitiey run amok we are seeing today.  

I guess I'm also sucggesting that although ramani thinks you can't change personaltiy, if such a moral restraint were still in force in our culture we woudl have a lot fewer of such personaltiies who seem to be proliferating these days.  they could internalizie these restraints like anyone else its seems to me.

Later.  It also occurred to me that Marxism, and in fact Marx himself, are strong purveyors othe of the narxissitic mentlaity in the cutlure.    this is a theme I wanted to devlop in the above post but I'll have to come back to it some other time.

More about the devovling culture, the rejection of the moral law

 Yes I know that if we are as close to the very last days as it seems we are, very strongly seems we are, then a revival is not to be expected.  Descriptions of the days leading up to the end picture a worsening moral climate along with various disasters that speak of god's judgments, no mention of any glorious renewals as the time craws nearer.  But we don't know how close we are.  It certainly feels very very close, as if things just couldn't get any worse so we must be just about there, but we don't know how bad it could sill et before the end, we don't know anytbhing until it happens.  We know it's coming but we have no way ofknowing long long it will be in the arrival.  that being the case I still hope for a revival before it all comes down.  A revival would pull people into the Church and save them from the last days horror show.  they can still be saved then but I wouldn't wish that way of being saved on anywone.

Some huge percentage of houng people , like forty percent. think murdering the CEO of United Health Care was ustified, altho8ugh they know tnothing at all about the man or his work or any hnint at all that he ever did anything to deserve any kihnd of retribution.  Being the CEO of  health and incsurance company is enough to justify murder in the minds of an awful lot of people.  If that doesn't set your teeth on edge you aren't educated in the things we need to be educated in to run a civilization'

That statistic anolone is enough to suggest the last days are upon us it seems to me.   And it also makes me think of how it couldn't happen if we'd remained at least superficially a Christian nation, or a Christian West, as we truly were up until, oh I don't know, half a century ago?   If you throw out the Bible, tear down the ten Caommandments monuments, actually challenege the state that wants to install them in classrooms, you are denying the culture exacly the anticite to t all this murderous evil , this uncivilizing of the world that we are seeing.   Murder is a shall not in the ten commandments, but they are making it a positive value in today's world for people who are merely annoyed at the though t of someone running an inusurance company that doesn't do what they think the company should do deserves to be jmurdered.  Not given a fair trial even, just murdered in cold blood by any random person who feels annoyed at him.   think wehere this sort of thinking is going.  think of all the school shootinbgs.  Nobody is teaching the truth about violations of God's law that they lead to death and hell.   Scripture teaches that over and over and over but we've thrown out the bible and forbidden it from being taught in schools or spoken in public.  We can't even sing true Christmas carols that celebrate the true meaning of Christmas in public any more.   it's all winter type songs, celebration songs that scelebrate nothing at all except eating a lot of pumbpkin pie and so on.

So nobody hears that God has commanded us not to murder, or ven harbor hatred in our hearts toward others, to love our neighbor as ourselves, not to lie to our neighbor or about our neighbor, not to steal from our neighbor , not to be disrespectful to our parents and other legitimate authorities, not to commit adultery, not to covet or envy others what they have.    We are not taught those things any more and I suppose if we trie to d to makew people aware of them we'd be put in jail for it.

Having killed the main safeguard against murderous lying disruptive decivilizaing chaors, we've open ed the door to a realm of horrors  hat those who are aware should experience as terrifying.  those who are blithely denying religioun and any morality beyond their own pleausre won't get it until it is too late.

Jesus died to save us from an eternity of midsery for our violations of the Moral Law.  that is still offered to anyone who will diligently look 8into it, believe it and surrender to it. Even if the world around us all continues to come aparet at the seams.  

 tTucker Carlson 12/10/24 | Tucker Carlson Tonight December 10, 2024

More Prayer Now, more Repentance, More Seeking of God's Will, That's what we need more of.

 Some on the Right are understandably rather full of themselves these days, carrying on about how Trump won so resoundingly  that we're now going to get to right all the rwongs we've been enduring for so long.  Trump has a mandate and now we'll get  the border security and the economic propserity and the peaceful international scene and the trade agreements that work for everybody and don't put the USA behaind the eight ball as it were, and racial relations will go back to their condition pe Woke when we could point to measurabhle progres despite knowing that there will always be some tension, and Wiokeness irtself will go away finally and America will again be the great force for good in the world we used to be.  

I want that to be true of course, but it puts my teeth on edge that God is not invoked in these optimistic effusions of hope.  If we are not gdoing it all consciously in God's power and for God's purposes in the world , but doing it all by human means and in human strength and for human purposes, even with the occasional thaknks to god and so on, how long will this wonderful merciful reprieve He's given us last?   Only Christians can be expected to understand the situation in this light of course, but I'd expect to hear more of it than I do.  Which is prettymuch none at this point, just listening ot the news I mean.   

The Woke insanity is tstill out there, the murderous self entitlement of the Left is still out there, the plots against Trump go on in Leftist circules despite some surprising soul souearching on the Left.  Yes our war is not against flesh and gblood but against the powers and principlalityies of the Satanic kingsomdome,  yes, but Satan never resests, he bides his time and he knows who to trigger to do his purposes.   

jI also hear warnings that this is not a gime to let our guard down becaue of the ongoing Leftist designs.  that part I do hear.  What I don't hear enough of or at all is that it all depends on God and staying in tune with Him.

Devolution of Culture Inevitable result of Giving Up on God

 So Christmas has devolved into a completely secular holiday, not new since it's been devolving for decades now, but it seems more extreme this year.  Probably just because of how it has been coming at me.  Grandson was part of the Christiamas chorus at the tree lighteing dceremony in his town and the teacher was told that one of the songs awas too religious and had to be dropped.  I don't know which one yet but  any religious note in anything they sing would surprise me since it's all been relentlessly secular that I've heard fso far.  except for one of the songs in the honor choir I mention in the previous post but that one is not a popular song, I'd never heard of it before and it's vegaue enough to fly under the radar.  O Love that will not let me go is the first line,  an d it's about God'xs relationship with the Christian soul.  Now that I've mentioned it someone may notice and it will hnever be sung again.  It's one of the gons I like the most, lovely chords weafving in and out between the four voices from bass to first tenor.  

Whle they were visiting last week I became aware that my grandsons don't know the Christmas Carols at all.  Some of the melodies sound familiar to them but that's about it.  Well, their parents aren't Christians so they don't have the experience of church where they might have heard the carols.  Nbobody had the patience to learn them while they were here so I'm hopihng they'll hear them somewhere else.  

It's still true that the beauty of the music in the Honor Choir gives me ope for the culture but the initial thrill of it has worn ofrf by now.  Beauty in the mouths of teenage boys I mean, which is unexpected for some reason though literally I shouldn't be surprised.  because I'm aware of the existence of such choirs.  Just hit me from a new angle this year I guess.  

There is so much craziness continuing to dominate the news it's hard to keep up my state of hopefor the culture.  If Trump hadn't won the doward sligde would be even more precipitous of course, pretty total and sudden so at least there's the relieief of a temporary mitigation of the ineitable ultimate crash as this fallen world reaches its destiny which it can't help to do since it has abandoned God.

theyu fitht viciously against anyu shred of Christian influence.  that was never the plan of the Conssituion or the framers of the nation certainly not the Declaration of Independnence which affirmed the importance of God in the conception of a nation.   Tennessee and Luisian a have recently made laws to bring back Christain influence in their schools but it's being fought in the courts already.  Give up on the ten Commandments and you get the criminal ctrends we've been seeing olately, but they deny that we need religion to protect or guarantee a moral society.  Even George Washington sayid wwe need that in one of his speeches, that you can't divorce morality from the Christian religion.  John Adams said the same.  jeffereson concurred.  They weren't true Christians, anyh of them but they aprpeciated the hristian heritage.  And now we've lost even that much.   We can't put up the commandments against stealing, lying, murder, adjultery or covetousness or disrespecting paraents because these days the whole cultrue is going in favor of those once criminal behaviors, well murder anyway since lying and adultery and coverintging aren't criminal.  Oh stealing too used to be criminal but now it's supported by the law of all things so that businesses are having to close their doors.  Truly it's all incsance but insancne but somehosw they go on in this directly anyway and never get it.  We now see rioting in favor of murder of all things.  Sorry I'm tired I shouldn't be writing this yet I suppose.  Not rioting but loud opinions in favor iof letting a man hurt people on the subway rather than praise the man who restrained him, loud opinions in favor of the murder of a man on the streets of new york.  Utter unbelievable insanity.  I could neverr have buguessed that the world cold go this far in this direction if you asked me ten years ago let alone twenty or thirty even though it was already pretty insane by then.

Adams said our form of government is adequate only for a moral and relig8ious people.  Well we've long since lost it and the crash is inevitable though hopow long it will tak to get there isn't glclear.  could be tomorrow.  could be years from now.    Fortunately there are people workjing to restrain it, but the voices on the other side are awfully loud and arrogantly certain of their righteness.  \\

Ot

It's a fallen world.  There's only one place a fallen world can end up.  In total and utter self destruction.  God will interviene before that happens to the uttermost but it's coming and it isn'[t going to be pretty.  

A Musically Happy thanksgiving for me

Belated Happy thanksgiving.  Coldn't get to my blog for a olong time.  Nothing much to say about the holiday itself except that it was a nice time with extended family and lots of food.  four generations under one roof on my borothe's sid3e.  His great grandsdaughter is almost two, and the star of the evening.  

The highlifht for me was getting to hear a recording of one of my gransndsons' choir perforan ces.  He's a senior in highschool and had qualified for the regional hojors choir which put on this show.  I can't find him in the crowd onstage but the music was lovely.  all the kids were chosen for their ability to sinbg well, on pitche, read music, etc etc etc and they sound great.  

There is a boys choir,m a girls choir and a mixed choir but all his dad recorded was the boys choir.  Maybe they call it mens rather than boys.  tghey sound likje jmen.  There's everything from two tenors to a baritone and a basss secrtion.  My daughter set me up with a set of ear hones that enabled me to experience it in wonderful sterio with great clarity and i8t reduced me to tears it was dso beuatufiul.

I think it was more than the music itself that so affected me, but the fact that threse are teenage boys, from fourteen to eighteen or so, and who expects such beaturfy from that age roup?  My grandson said he wants to be in the chorus because of the experienc3ew of being surrounded by such lovely blended sounsds, and that's my experience listening to it with these head phones.  He also played for me his own collection of the girls choir and the mixed choir and they are great too, and I'ld like to have a copy of those as well, but I think there's something abut the fact that boys can produce such musical loveliness that affects me the most.  boys get such a bad rap in our culture these days, and this performance reduced me to tears of hope for the recorvery of some of our lost westernculture.  

Intelligence, professionalism, musical skills of all kinds from pitch to timing to modulation to tonality.    

Here's the youtube channel:  @joemitola5178

there's a woman's head in the way so you have to see around her, and there are some background noiceses from time to time but not too bad I hope.

Economic Castles in the Air

I've been listening to some interviews with a Marxist economist, Richard Wolff. 

In an interview titled the Final Caste Against Donald Trump I just heard him say that taxing the rich stimulateds the economy but leaves the government without the revenuwe to pay its obligations.  This seems to me to be a simple logical error because the fact is that when the rich are taxed less it not only stimulates the economyu it grows the tax revenue, because there are more workers paying taxes and more workers earning more money so mpaying highter taxes.  It's fa fact that the tax revenue is hight.  In the reagan era when he cut taxes on the ricdh the tax revenue collected by the IRS was double what it had been before.  Shouldn't Wolff be aware of this?  Why isn't he?

He goes from there to how we are in debt to China, which I've also heard we are, to a frightening degree.  Seems we agree on that, or he agrees with the conservatives on that, but he has the wrong idea bout why, perhaps because he's a leftist who never faces the fact that it's the left that is always spending so much money it's the cause of the debt in the first place.

Not thta the republicans don't obverspend as well, but at least they make some effort to pay it down, which is trump's plan again when he gets into office.  this second time.

I suppose I'm sounding a lot more sure of myself rthan I have any right to.  I'm just repeating what I've een hearing from my own conservative sources.  I'm aware I know very little about all of this.  But I'm pretty sure I'm able to jusdge that this Marxist is living in some kind of seconomic lalaland as far as understanding the actual facts goes.  He talks in sweeping generalitgies and it's hard to know what exactly he's tlalkingabout.  I'll keep listening for a while though.

Years ago I made some effort to read Marxsx and amarxist wrigints.  I ended up with the impression that they never come down to earth, that it's all heady theorizing way above the level of actual nitty gritty reality.  

And this guy Wolff sounds the same.

 

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Friday:  This link doesn't belong here but it's not worth s separate post.  I still want to comeb back to this and say more about this economist, this Marxist Professor Wolff, and this link goes to a brief video about a leftist named Destiny who seems to hate us conservatives so much he hasn't the slightest sympathy for those who get killed such as the man at the raplly where trump was almost killed.  And he orestty much wishes us all dead, certainly censored so that not a word we ever eutter gets heard by anyonhe outside our own tight circles.  Such hatred the Left has for us.  This guy Wolff doesn't express that degree of hatred but since he manages to misreqpresent all kinds of things conservaiv in the economic realm I think it's fair to say he doesn't like us much either, he thinks we are stupid, because what he says we say is pretty stupid, although it isn't what we say.  Anyway I dstill hope to come back to him.    Meanwhile here's the link tgo the brief video o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2YqeGHwd_k

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