superiority.^19 And in California more recently, one disturbed gunman justified
trying to shoot up a sorority house with the fact that while women hooked up
with “inferior” men he was forced to remain a virgin.^20
You can even find it within yourself, if you’re being honest. The more
insecure you are about something, the more you’ll fly back and forth between
delusional feelings of superiority (“I’m the best!”) and delusional feelings of
inferiority (“I’m garbage!”)
Self-worth is an illusion.^21 It’s a psychological construct that our Feeling
Brain spins in order to predict what will help it and what will hurt it.
Ultimately, we must feel something about ourselves in order to feel something
about the world, and without those feelings, it’s impossible for us to find
hope.
We all possess some degree of narcissism. It’s inevitable, as everything
we ever know or experience has happened to us or been learned by us. The
nature of our consciousness dictates that everything happen through us. It’s
only natural, then, that our immediate assumption is that we are at the center
of everything—because we are at the center of everything we experience.^22
We all overestimate our skills and intentions and underestimate the skills
and intentions of others. Most people believe that they are of above-average
intelligence and have an above-average ability at most things, especially when
they are not and do not.^23 We all tend to believe that we’re more honest and
ethical than we actually are.^24 We will each, given the chance, delude
ourselves into believing that what’s good for us is also good for everyone
else.^25 When we screw up, we tend to assume it was some happy accident.^26
But when someone else screws up, we immediately rush to judge that
person’s character.^27
Persistent low-level narcissism is natural, but it’s also likely at the root of
many of our sociopolitical problems. This is not a right-wing or a left-wing
problem. This is not an older generation or younger generation problem. This
is not an Eastern or Western problem.
This is a human problem.
Every institution will decay and corrupt itself. Each person, given more
power and fewer restraints, will predictably bend that power to suit himself.
Every individual will blind herself to her own flaws while seeking out the
glaring flaws of others.
Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your stay.
Our Feeling Brains warp reality in such a way so that we believe that our