"...Let me please introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste...." Sympathy For The Devil. Mick Jagger, Kieth Richards
Important research on narcissism documented. Read at the guardian:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/08/the-age-of-entitlement-how-wealth-breeds-narcissism
"...Even people simply primed to feel rich helped themselves to more sweets meant for children in a lab next door than those primed to feel disadvantaged.
The reason, it turns out, is that even thoughts of being wealthy can create a feeling of increased entitlement — you start to feel superior to everyone else and thus more deserving: something at the centre of narcissism..."
I doubt that even the most deluded individuals in the middle class don't realize that the super-rich plan to escape to domed fortresses as human civilization collapses. Of course, the hubris of the super-rich has rendered them quite insane. They believe things won't spin out of their control as the environment collapses, and that they will escape with their slaves and private armies to new fortresses, somewhere in Antarctica and northern Greenland.
But the vast majority of the US middle class is completely unaware of its own embrace of the Asshole Effect, or for that matter, it's massive addictions. In my opinion, this is some of the most important research to bring to the middle class, if it ever is willing to face it's denial! (I've largely given up on the ability of the middle class to understand policy issues in the post literate, post constitutional society; without massive remedial interventions across all age groups. And that is not likely to happen)
The American middle class avoids reality vicariously, through worship of their gods of wealth. To the awakened, generally from the lower classes, it seems absurd that the middle class sees themselves as junior CEO's, whom haven't yet been recognized for their divine superiority over the "savages" in the lower 50% of the economic classes. Until the majority of the middle class recognizes "the Asshole Effect" in shaping their ideology, I don't believe there is hope to save the human specie!
Our avoidance of the crimes against humanity, by all parts of the US corporate/military empire, is a macro-example of the asshole effect over our "exceptional" society.
The neighborhood example:
When the neoliberal gentrification began, our self-anointed "civic leadership class" embraced all the aspects of this asshole effect. Slogans like, "put your money where your mouth is" showed off that bullying was the new way of "doing community business."
But the silence over the propaganda barrage (i.e. no one goes to Clark Park except "prostitutes, gangs, and drug dealers") shows the mass complicity with criminality!
Long ago, when I confronted the self identified "reasonable ones" in the civic association leadership about the real purpose of these outrageous dehumanizing lies throughout history; here is what they said. They were being told by the operatives of the corporate university that they must protect and embrace these lies in order to receive windfall resources packaged as "grants."
With profound incredulity, I explained on several occasions, that what they were so excited about, has a legal term associated with it: fraud! Everyone in this neighborhood knew that the gentrification was primarily based on outrageous lies about us and our neighbors. But so many among us were complicitous or silent about this acceptance of criminality. So many were hoping for trickle down forces to make us "cleaner and safer" (another completely dishonest slogan) that they defended cheating and a base criminal ideology!
Please open your eyes, and recognize how the asshole effect is what trickled down to the middle classes in neighborhoods like this, across the country! We have terrible values concerning those we judge as beneath us in economic class, wherever they are in the world. This is the most important part of middle class denial to overcome before citizens can address civic illiteracy and begin to effect reasonable and humane policies which might allow future generations to live!
My goal is not to unduly insult people from the middle class, but point to the most serious pathology threatening human existence. Please read and ponder this discussion of our extreme middle class narcissism!!!!
Thanks,
Glenn, always under surveilance
