Online Narcissists

From An Upturned Soul:

I came across this brilliant post – Online Narcissism: Writers with NPD by Thomas Swan – which explores Narcissistic Personality Disorder expressed in writing on a blog and gives ways to spot if the blog you follow belongs to someone with NPD. There are a plethora of online articles written about online Narcissists. This is a good one – How to Spot a Narcissist Online by Julie Beck.

Mostly they cover Narcissists who use Facebook and Twitter. Some are informative, insightful, and others seem to confuse Egotism and Narcissism with Narcissistic Personality Disorder which can lead to people misdiagnosing the disorder in themselves and others. Someone who posts lots of pictures of themselves and takes a lot of Selfies may be Narcissistic but does not necessarily have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In my view the opposite is often more of a sign of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as Narcissists need to control how people see them so they are not as willing to post spontaneous photos of themselves, as these have to be vetted and studied to be sure they convey to those who look at them what the Narcissist wants them to see – their chosen identity.

Being Egotistical and Narcissistic is different from having Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The former is something we all have the natural ability to be, and a healthy dose of Egotistical Narcissism boosts our confidence, it’s a form of self-validation. An ego trip is fun, but it’s usually quite brief, we may only do it online, and the rest of the time we have both feet firmly planted on the ground. Someone on an ego trip will handle being confronted about it very differently from someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Those with NPD can’t, don’t and won’t come to their senses when confronted instead they go on the defensive which is usually an offensive offensive.

They’re the sort of online Forum member who attacks another Forum member then claims they were the victim of an attack when their victim defends themselves, then they report their ‘attacker’ to the Moderators, push to get them banned and publicly shames them in front of all the other members forcing their ‘victimiser’ to publicly apologise. They won’t accept the apology and will continue their campaign of online hate until the other person commits internet suicide to get away from them. (Please note: The story detailing this scenario comes from – Online Narcissism: Writers with NPD by Thomas Swan).

Confusion is an intrinsic part of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The person who has NPD is confused and they dump their confusion all over the place like a volcano spewing confusion lava. Those who interact with someone who has NPD end up confused, drowning in it and desperately trying to make sense out of nonsense which is often disguised as authoritative rhetoric. So it’s not surprising that those who write about the disorder confuse it with other personality traits and disorders. NPD often overlaps with other disorders and those who have NPD often have sub-disorders. (Read more.)

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Duchesse de Berry in Black

A miniature of Caroline of Naples in mourning. Share

Two Ways of Dying

From Tom Piatak at Chronicles:

In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More states, when his interrogators threaten him with death,

Death comes for us all, my lords.  Yes, even for Kings he comes, to whom amidst all their Royalty and brute strength he will neither kneel nor make any reverence nor pleasantly desire them to come forth, but roughly grasp them by their very breast and rattle them until they be stark dead.

More later reinforces the point: “For our own deaths, my lord, yours and mine, dare we for shame desire to enter the Kingdom with ease, when Our Lord Himself entered with so much pain?”
More’s world was one in which reminders of death were all around, and also one in which most people reflexively accepted the tenets of Christianity, including the knowledge that, in the words of an earlier English playwright, “the Everlasting had . . . fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter.”  Our world is different.  We believe that life is about maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain, that our bodies belong to us, and that no one can tell us how we should live our lives or end them.  We avoid reminders of death whenever we can, and pretend that if we eat the right foods and do the right exercises we can avoid death altogether, or at least avoid a painful death.

The kings of today’s world, the billionaires of Silicon Valley, are funding projects to bring us immortality, as Adam Gollner noted in The Daily Beast in August 2013.  Gollner quoted Aubrey de Gray of the Methuselah Foundation, the recipient of some of this largesse, as saying that “the first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today.”  De Gray is a pessimist compared with some of the billionaires, one of whom is “100 percent certain” that man will attain immortality by 2045, and another of whom plans to live for “millions, billions, hundreds of billions of years.”

Until 2045, though, we all still need to face death, no matter how we seek to avoid it.  And a death in Oregon on November 1 of last year exemplified a way of dying fully in accord with our widespread belief in personal autonomy and the importance of avoiding pain.  On that day, Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, took 100 capsules of secobarbital, dissolved in water, and died, surrounded by her mother, her stepfather, her husband, and her closest friend.  This was the death Maynard had planned; she had moved from California to Oregon to take advantage of Oregon’s law allowing doctors to assist in the suicide of their patients.

The way Maynard prepared for her death was also reflective of modern American thought.  After receiving her terminal diagnosis, Maynard traveled to Yellowstone, Alaska, and the Grand Canyon, with the last trip representing the final item on Maynard’s “bucket list.”  Maynard also asked her mother and stepfather to remember her by going to Machu Picchu, one of the places Maynard had visited before her diagnosis.  As Maynard’s mother told People, “It’s a very sacred spiritual domain.  She knows if we can feel her, it will be there.”

Maynard also chose to publicize her death.  She was the subject of a cover story in People, featured in a video produced by Compassion & Choices, an organization advocating assisted suicide, and asked to write an opinion piece for CNN explaining her “right to die with dignity at 29.”  To date, the online version of the People story has been viewed some 16 million times, and the video has been viewed some 11 million times.  Maynard stated, “My dream is that every terminally ill American has access to the choice to die on their [sic] own terms with dignity,” and she took steps to see that this “dream” survived her, working with Compassion & Choices to set up the Brittany Maynard Fund to advocate for assisted suicide in the 45 states where it remains illegal. (Read more.)

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Opera and Vatican II

From Crisis:

Opera is a pretty strange experience to begin with, but what I saw in those Austrian productions many years ago didn’t “fit”—that is, a “minimalist” version of Verdi (and Mozart) made no sense in Graz’s resplendent opera house.

I have often thought that this is the “problem” with the Novus Ordo liturgy when it is celebrated in a pre-Vatican II church: the fit is all wrong. Sure, it is valid and licit (as certainly as I can say, “I saw Verdi and Mozart performed in Austria!”) and no doubt fulfills our “Sunday duty”—but whenever I’m in a magnificent church, I find myself hungering for either a full-blown choir chanting with the pipe organ or, at Low Mass, the unbroken quiet of the numinous experience of the unbloody reenactment of the Sacrifice on Calvary while surrounded on all sides by stained glass that recounts our collective salvific history and statuary that actually resembles the saints.

This disconnect may account for why post-Vatican II churches look the way they do—that is, a sort of cross between something Lutheran and Low Anglican: they were never intended for a Solemn High Mass sung in Latin—they were meant as a sort of ecumenical meeting-hall. The “event” of the Mass had been lowered from the rococo style to the post-abstract-expressionism of the 1960s. (Read more.)

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Handsome Louis

Louis XVI with earring

The informal portraits and sketches of Louis XVI seem to capture him better than the official paintings. It has been said by contemporaries that he was handsome with a good sense of humor. He was tall, muscular and well-built with long, thick, blondish hair.

Young Louis XVI

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From Grief to Grace

God often sends me the right book at the right time, even before I realize my own need. I opened Jeannie Ewing's From Grief to Grace at a moment when the sky seemed to be falling in on me. Sometimes, especially after we have already suffered greatly, we think that God owes us a "happily ever after" for good behavior. The idea of suffering, especially when we are already in pain, is overwhelming and our human nature rebels at the thought. Jeannie gives practical and profound advice on how to face trials in a Christian manner in those very moments when we want to fall into an abyss of self-pity. To quote from the Sophia Institute Press website:

Grief touches all of our lives, but it does not have to paralyze us with fear or inaction. God allows suffering because He knows how powerful it can be to our spiritual lives and to helping us fully embrace His love and mercy. In this insightful and practical book, you’ll learn how to live a life of redemptive suffering that will draw you through grief into a state of tenacity, meaning, holiness, and joy.

Author Jeannie Ewing is no stranger to suffering. Her family has long struggled with bipolar disorder and depression, and her baby daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder that caused her bones to prematurely fuse together. Despite the many layers of sadness, loss, confusion, and anger, Jeannie responded to God’s calling and transformed her life into one with profound purpose and joy. Combining her training in psychology and counseling with real-life examples, Jeannie will show you that there is much life to be lived in the midst of loss, and that all things – even the most painful life experiences – are working together for a greater good. (Read more.)

Jeannie explores the nature of clinical depression and other organic illnesses that can be part of one's spiritual suffering. She quotes extensively from the writings of the saints, including Saint John of the Cross, who wrote of the dark night of the soul. In the words of the author:

When a person enters the dark night, it is an arduous path to Heaven, at least for a time. Grief very much feels this way: that our thoughts, our emotions, our very livelihood are encapsulated in darkness. This makes traversing through that darkness cumbersome and painful, but fidelity to God in the midst of such spiritual fog enables us to persevere through the trials of suffering. We merely need to begin with a desire for the 'labor necessary for the struggle.' (p.101)

The most beautiful part of the book is being introduced to Jeannie's daughter Sarah, born with a rare genetic disorder, which initially produced reactions of shock and grief in her parents. However, it gradually becomes clear that Sarah, with her sweet and determined nature, all her little ways, including her very being, is a gift and a grace. A situation that to human eyes was darkness turned out to be great light.



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Prepare for Persecution

From Monsignor Pope:

Scripture says, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle (Psalm 144:1). Preparing people for war — a moral and spiritual war, not a shooting war — should include a clear setting forth of the errors of our time, and a clear and loving application of the truth to error and light to darkness.

But there is little such training evident in Catholic circles today where, in the average parish, there exists a sort of shy and quiet atmosphere — a fear of addressing “controversial” issues lest someone be offended, or the parish be perceived as “unwelcoming.”

But, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now.

The Church of the 1970s-1990s was surely well described as the era of “beige Catholicism” (a term coined by Bishop Robert Barron, and not by way of flattery either). Those of us who lived through that era, especially in the 1970s, remember it as a time when many parish signs beckoned people to “come and experience our welcoming and warm Catholic community.” Our most evident desire was to fit in and be thought of as “normal.” Yes, Catholics were just like everyone else; and we had been working very hard to do that, at least since the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy was elected. Catholics had finally “made it” into the mainstream; we had been accepted by the culture.

Church architecture and interiors became minimalist and non-descript. Music and language in the liturgy became folksy. Marian processions, Corpus Christi processions, many things of distinctive and colorful Catholicism all but disappeared. Even our crucifixes disappeared, to be replaced by floating “resurrection Jesus” images. The emphasis was on blending in, speaking to things that made people feel comfortable, and affirming rather than challenging. If there was to be any challenge at all it would be on “safe” exhortations such as not abusing the environment or polluting, not judging or being intolerant, and so forth.

Again, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now. It is zero-dark-thirty in our post-Christian culture. And while we may wish to blame any number of factors for the collapse, we cannot exclude ourselves. We who are supposed to be the light of the world, with Christ shining in us, have preferred to hide our light under a basket and lay low. The ruins of our families and culture are testimony to the triumph of error and the suppression of the truth. (Read more.)

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Orb and Scepter

From Crown Chronicles:

The Sovereign’s Orb, as this part of the Crown Jewels is officially named, is a symbol of Godly power. A cross above a globe, It represents ‘Christ’s dominion over the world’, as the Monarch is God’s representative on Earth. Made for Charles II’s coronation in 1661, the orb is a 30cm-wide hollow gold sphere, mounted with nine emeralds, 18 rubies, nine sapphires, 365 diamonds, 375 pearls, one amethyst and one glass stone. The pearls divide the orb into three sections, which represent the three continents the medieval rulers believed existed. (Read more.)

Via Nobility. Share

Women Soldiers and the Stakes of War

From Chronicles:

To be sure, women have been involved in varying degrees of military service throughout recorded history.  One of the most famous examples is Deborah the Prophetess (Judges 4-5).  Her job was to motivate a commander named Barak who had cold feet about fighting Jabin’s army.  Barak would not fight unless Deborah went with him on the campaign, and she pushed him forward into battle.  Barak’s army was victorious as was foretold, and Deborah was celebrated.  Other famous female commanders include Boudica, a queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe, and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Boudica led a rebellion against the Romans in Britain around a.d. 60, and Queen Elizabeth I was the monarch in charge of the defenses of England during the failed Spanish invasion in 1588.

These famous and oft-cited examples of women in the military share two traits: They were capable administrators, and they were not splitting skulls as the men they commanded were.  Historically, when women have been used as soldiers, it has been in response to a desperate situation where there were not enough men available to defend a position or an area.  The Soviet Union used women to fight on the front lines during World War II to ward off a German invasion; female soldiers filled in the gaps on the lines.  Modern Israel—a small country surrounded by nations that wish she did not exist—conscripts women into combat positions.  In 2010, the Israeli Defense Forces reported that 34 percent of all its soldiers were women.  Most of them serve in support roles (medics, supply), but 88 percent of all IDF jobs are open to female candidates.  Although there are many jobs open to women, in the IDF women do not go into every field, serving in only 69 percent of the available positions.  Women also make up about 25 percent of the IDF’s officer corps.

In the United States, leftist activists (who will not have to live with the direct consequences of their radical policies) regularly point out that the IDF has women in its infantry units.  They fail to mention that these infantry units essentially function as border guards and would not engage in direct combat.  They also fail to mention that the IDF does not allow women into its various special forces.  Nor does their narrative account for the fact that many women serve in the IDF because they have no choice: Theirs is not an all-volunteer force.

The situation is very different in the United States, where these days our military is deployed not to fight against hostile neighbors but for social engineering, nation-building, and keeping markets open.  Given that context, the push by President Obama, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and members of Congress to require women to register for Selective Service is an empty gesture: Reinstating the draft would be political suicide for any politician who advocated it, and if we know one thing about politicians, it is that most of them would roll their own mothers into traffic to keep their jobs.  If the Selective Service were reactivated, today’s helicopter parents would lose their minds, and the fortunate sons and daughters of politically connected families would get deferments. Opening combat roles to women, however, is not an empty gesture.  Real women will fight and die.  This move raises some questions beyond matters of “social justice” and equality. (Read more.)

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