Narcissistic Personality Disorder––The Disease's New Poster Boy Appears To Have Won The White House

The criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders––DSM-5, published by the American Psychiatric Association) are used to diagnose this mental condition. They are listed at the Mayo Clinic website:

1. Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
2. Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
3. Exaggerating your achievements and talents
4. Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
5. Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
6. Requiring constant admiration
7. Having a sense of entitlement
8. Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
9. Taking advantage of others to get what you want
10. Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
11. Being envious of others and believing others envy you
12. Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

Mayo's website goes on to say "Although some features of narcissistic personality disorder may seem like having confidence, it's not the same. Narcissistic personality disorder crosses the border of healthy confidence into thinking so highly of yourself that you put yourself on a pedestal and value yourself more than you value others."

Extreme narcissism may cause an individual to inflate his or her own worth to the extent that other people's worth is degraded to zero.

It may cause you to believe your desires overrule and negate other people's wishes.

It may cause you to think that anyone who disagrees with you is evil and deserving of extreme vengeance to the end of time.

It may cause you to think the thoughts that pop into your head are pure genius. It may also cause you to think that the new idea that directly contradicts the brilliant idea you had five minutes ago means that your mind is a direct oracle from the Almighty capable of changing humanity's fundamental rules of right and wrong and true and untrue on a minute by minute basis. (Some of this description overlaps with key signs of the more severe forms of mania, so it might not be incorrect to call such an individual a "maniac.")

What's that? I believe we have a winner.

The man over on the far right, with the orange tan and the blond comb-over, the one sitting in the gold chair, is shouting "Bingo!"

Are Saints Bad For Us?

Are saints really good for humanity? Or are they just salespeople for an afterlife they cannot truthfully guarantee? In selling the afterlife are they, in more practical terms, supporting the ungodly selfishness of the powerful here on earth?

Here's a good article about the problem of saints, published in the Daily Beast. (Lest you think the Daily Beast is somehow connected with the satanic beast of Revelations, the paper's name is borrowed from the satire of Evelyn Waugh, who was a profoundly Catholic author.)

Philosopher Susan Wolf wrote a more profound and influential essay on this conundrum in 1982.

Christopher Hitchens (who had his own contradictions) subjected the next saint-in-waiting to this harsh accounting in 2003.

As unhelpful as she could be to the earthly human being, she was far from the worst thing that could have happened to the people she helped. She could have been better, or worse. This is where pure ideology parts company with practical good, with help that actually helps.

Catholic as she was, there is something dolefully Calvinist about the helping done by missionaries. Calvinists put the highest priority on an afterlife not on this one. Self denial is the holiest way to live. Meanwhile the whole idea of delayed gratification is so harmful to the world’s poor. The rich delay satisfying their appetites and are guaranteed immense gratification at a later date.The poor's delayed comfort accrues immediately to those who live in luckier places and circumstances, it bolsters their profit margin, it enhances their market advantage, and their piddling donations to the global mission absolve their far greater selfishness and the way they rig the global economy to keep billions conveniently in poverty. This is why Mother Teresa was the perfect saint for our capitalist world.

Explained: Why Health Insurance is a Waste of Money

The New York Times published an interesting and alarming story today.

I think what this NYTimes writer is trying to say is people who can’t afford health insurance die more quickly and cheaply than those who have insurance. Problem solved!

Here's a useful mantra rich people learn at their parents’ financial advisor’s knee.

If you pretend other people don’t exist you don’t have to help them.

If you don’t spend money trying to fix a problem there is no problem.

If something doesn’t happen to you it doesn’t happen.

All money spent helping other people is money wasted.

All money paid to other people is money that’s been stolen from you.

If someone dies horribly in a forest and there’s no healthcare there it doesn’t make a sound.

A Utopian and a Magical Thinker Walk Into A Bar

A very useful tour of the things Hayek got right and wrong, via John Gray at the New Statesman.

And an interesting vignette of Milton Friedman creating one of the most hated tools of liberal government. From The Conversable Economist.