How to Spot a Dangerous Man

The article I referenced in two earlier posts, " Narcissism and the Dynamics of Evil ", is a treasure trove of observation, insight and profound wisdom. I suspect I'll be spotlighting various points in this article from time to time because many of the author's points should be emphasized to maximize their impact. The article makes an important observation and recommendation that I think we would all do well to digest and absorb especially since it goes directly against what our narcissists have worked hard to train and prevent us from doing. Underlining and emphasis mine: Man is a person, from the Latin persona (through sound). He longs to express himself, to communicate himself to others, whether depraved or not. Just as those who contemplate the marvelous or the beautiful cannot hold themselves but will cry out in praise of what they behold, so too the depraved cannot help but on occasion burst out and spit their bile, thus providing others a momentary glimpse of...

Do you love the narcissist? Or are you in love with your fantasy of what you wish the narcissist to be? How can you tell whether you love the person or the fantasy? The following applies not only to romantic relationships; it applies across the board of all relationships including parent/child. You can not truly love someone until they have revealed their characters to you. Why is this so? Because who we are is revealed by what we choose to do . Our characters are the sum total of the choices we've made. Until you know someone's character you can not say in truth that you know or love who they are . This explains why so many marriages fall apart. People fall in love with their imagined version of the other person and don't become acquainted with that other person's character until enough time has passed for the consistency of their characters to be revealed. This is why short dating periods are often disastrous in the long-term. We each have a will. How we exe...

This quote is from the site I mentioned in my previous post : The most dangerous predators among us are ingeniously veiled. They carefully surround themselves with people entirely unlike themselves, that is, with deeply empathic human beings who wish to please others , who are slow to judge , who are excessively tolerant and who have an eye for the good to be found in others . They know how to exploit to their own advantage such character traits. It is their association with such people that maximizes their chances of perpetuating the facade and keeping themselves from exposure. " Narcissism & the Dynamics of Evil " The underlining is mine. I want to focus your attention for a moment on the kind of good person, good qualities, and good intentions which are used to support and hide "the most dangerous predators". If good is used for the evil purposes of predators then good itself becomes dangerous. We really must make determined efforts to not allow good t...

I came across this article two years ago and really appreciated its insights. I will share some excerpts of the article here and hopefully you'll be interested enough to read it in its entirety. By Doug McManaman : ...evil is parasitic. Its host is always a good. And since evil is a kind of non-being or nothingness, pure evil is impossible. Pure evil would be completely nothing, and nothing is not evil; it simply 'is not'. Evil is a privation that requires a subject in which to inhere... From a purely moral point of view, this is how the narcissistic character disordered are created. They are self-created, or better yet, self-decreated, and then re-created, although what is re-created is not a self, but a reflection or an image. The greater the opposition between his depravity or moral nothingness (and thus self-loathing) and his egotism (his injustice and his regard for others as mere instruments of his own gratification), the more pathologica...

"There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it..." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone . Those words are coming from the character whose mind is controlled by the evil character Lord Voldemort in the popular children's book referenced above. The above words are the succinct description of the narcissist's rationale. Sorry to cite J.K. Rowling, but she has captured in few words the essence of how evil does away with the whole idea of evil. I have stated before how narcissists don't see themselves or their deeds as evil. They have constructed a view of reality which enables them to operate as they please while avoiding such sticky labels as "evil". It is important to understand how evil people skirt the whole issue of evil by reducing every human interaction to power...those who are strong enough to take it and those who are too weak to take it. This philosophy is often called the "law of the jungle" an...

If your desire is to live in something resembling the Healthy Family model as outlined in the last post then you are forced to make some decisions. If the dynamics of your family of origin more resemble the Mob Family model you are going to have to recognize the Mob Family will never become the Healthy Family as long as the narcissist is allowed by other family members to maintain their tyrannical rule over them. If you decide to keep the Mob Boss, i.e., the narcissist, in your family then you are deciding to maintain the structure of the Mob Family. You have the right and even the obligation before God and your fellow human beings to fight for the Healthy Family. This means you have to remove the unrepentant and recalcitrant evil doers from your "community" if there is to exist a Healthy Family. You can't have everything in this life. You have to make choices. If you want a healthy environment for yourself and your own family you are not going to be able to opera...

Family is a foundational structure to a society or community. It is itself a community. A community has the right to restrict the access of criminals and other destructive types from the rights and privileges that the community confers on those who live within certain rules of decency. This function of a community is imperative if the members are to have a reasonable expectation of safety and happiness. What I'm describing is how a healthy family functions. In a healthy family there are rules for conduct which are based on objective moral reasoning. Because there are rules of conduct there are also expectations of accountability when rules are broken. There is an authority structure, but authority figures are not exempt from the rules. They are set up as examples and have a strong sense of their need to lead by example. The healthy family structure strongly encourages personal integrity to principle. By principle I mean objective standards of moral behavior. The healthy f...

What follows below is my dissection of my sister's "apology" email. This was an exercise I did within a day or so of sending her my response since I was still turning her statements over and over in my mind. The only way for me to put it to rest was to completely pin her down onto paper. It worked very well to that end. My hope is that my dissection of this non-apology will be helpful to someone who is dealing with something similar. My comments are in bold print. ************************************************************* My Dear Sister, I am so sorry that my last response offended you. She is apologizing for my feelings-- which means nothing. My feelings are not something she has control over. She can only control her own feelings and her own actions. So apologizing for my feelings is like apologizing for the sunrise. Meaningless, stupid and condescending. Why condescending? Because of the presumption of power over me that it assumes. It isn't necessarily ob...