Sub-title The Narcissistic Imperative in Human Behaviour.
What is the most powerful driving force in our lives? Is it sex, as Freud postulated, or is there an overdrive to sex that is linked with our sense of personal identity? Does this narcissistic imperative rule our selection of our lifetime partner and some of our more virtuous social conduct but can it also be the origin of our most intense hatreds and of racism, organised violence and tribal, regional and world wars?
Whom do we fall in love with? With whom do we make love most joyously? Why don't we like people of other races and religions equally with our own?
The narcissistic imperative affects every aspect of our individual and social lives. We identify with the institution in which we work, the god in whom or which we believe, the football team for which we cheer.
Institutional narcissism, with its narcissistic transference, can be even more powerful than individual narcissism, leading to mob rule, racism and persecution, to tribal and religious conflicts and wars of mass deaths and massive devastation.
It can corrupt the institution and the purposes for which the institution was created. Democracies crumble under its force, visions of human cooperation are blotted out in nthe blinding light of the imperatives of the self.
The narcissistic image will decide a country's or society's rise or fall - its power and the prevalence of its culture.
Cloning - the ultimate narcissistic reproduction - might deliver a measure of narcissistic immortality to the individual, but might it take us further down the road to self-destruction?
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