Awe

I was pondering the question of what the hell is wrong with so many of the people in positions of power on our planet, and I've come to the conclusion that part of it is that they've lost the capacity to feel awestruck.

When we're awestruck, in a way, our entire world gets turned on its head.  The day-to-day concerns that take up most of our mental and emotional space -- jobs, relationships, paying the bills, keeping up with household chores, the inevitable aches and pains -- suddenly are drowned by a sense that in the grand scheme of things, we are extremely small.  It's not (or shouldn't be) a painful experience.  It's more that we are suddenly aware that our little cares are just that: little.  We live in a grand, beautiful, mysterious, dazzling universe, and at the moments when we are privileged to perceive that, our senses are swept away.

The philosophers have come up with a name for such experiences: numinous.  It doesn't imply a connection to a higher power (although it manifests that way, or is interpreted that way, for some people).  German writer Rudolf Otto describes such a state as "a non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self...  This mental state presents itself as wholly other, a condition absolutely sui generis and incomparable, whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed."

What would happen if you couldn't -- or were afraid to -- experience awe?  This would trap you in the petty quotidian trivia of life, and very likely magnify their importance in your mind, giving them far more gravitas than they deserve.  I suspect it could also magnify your own self-importance.

It'd be interesting to see if there's an inverse correlation between narcissism and our capacity to feel awestruck.  After all, how could you simultaneously perceive the glory and grandeur of the universe, and remain convinced that your needs are the most important thing within it?  And if you combine narcissism with amorality, you produce an individual who will never admit fault, never look beyond their own desires, and stop at nothing to fulfill them.

We could probably all name a few prominent people this describes.

I think the two things that have the greatest ability to make me feel awe are music and astronomy.  Music has had the ability to pick me up by the emotions and swing me around since I was very small; my mom used to tell the story of my being about four and begging her to let me use the record player.  She finally relented (one of the few times she ever did) and showed me how, and -- to my credit -- I never damaged a single record.  They were simply too important to me.

Just a couple of days ago, I was in the car, and Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis came on the classical station I was listening to.  If I had to name one piece that has that ability to lift me out of myself, that's the one I'd pick.  The first time I heard it, as a teenager, I ended up with tears streaming down my face, and honestly had been unaware of where I was for the entire fifteen-minute play time.

It's astronomy, though, that is why this topic comes up today.  A paper this week in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics describes a new study of the Silver Coin Galaxy in the constellation Sculptor, a beautiful spiral galaxy about 11.4 million light years away.  The study, which required fifty hours of time at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, produced an image with unprecedented detail:

The Silver Coin is called a "starburst galaxy," a region of space undergoing an exceptionally high rate of star formation, so it's of great interest to astronomers and astrophysicists as we learn more about how galaxies, stars, and planetary systems form and evolve.  "Galaxies are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand," said Enrico Congiu, who led the study.  "The Sculptor Galaxy is in a sweet spot.  It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system."

In that one rectangular photograph is captured the light from billions of stars.  From what we know of stars in our own galaxy, it's likely that the majority of those points of light have their own planetary systems.  It's not certain -- but many astronomers think it's very likely -- that a good many of those planets host life.  Some of that life might be intelligent, and looking back at us through their own telescopes, wondering about us as we do about them.

How could anyone look at this image, think those thoughts, and not be awestruck?

To me, that was part of what I wanted as a science teacher.  I honestly couldn't have cared less if my students got to the end of the year and couldn't tell me what the endoplasmic reticulum did.  (If they need to know that at some point in their lives, they can look it up.)  What I do care deeply about is that they know how to think critically, can distinguish truth from fiction, and have enough basic understanding of biology to be able to make good decisions about their health and the environment.  And in addition, I tried to instill in them a sense of wonder at how cool science is.

That I did at least sometimes succeed is supported by a funny incident from not long before I retired.  I was having one of our required twice-yearly administrator observations, and the principal was watching me teach a lesson to my AP Biology class.  I recall that it was something about genetics -- always a favorite subject -- but I can't remember what exactly the topic was that day.  But something I said made one kid's eyes pop open wide, and he said, "Wow, that is so fucking cool."

Then he had the sudden aghast realization that the principal was sitting in the back of the room.

The kid turns around, red-faced, and said, "Oh, my god, Mr. Koeng, I'm sorry."

The principal grinned and said, "No, that's okay.  You're right.  It is really fucking cool."

I was lucky to work, by and large, for great administrators during my 32-year career, and I often discussed with them my goal as a science teacher of instilling wonder.  But I think we all need to land in that space more often.  The ability to look around us and say, "Wow.  Isn't this amazing?" is incredibly important, and also terribly easy to lose.  The morass of daily concerns we're faced with can add up in our minds to something big enough to block out the stars.

And isn't that sad?

So I'll end with an exhortation: find some time this week to look and listen and experience what's around you.  Get down and examine the petals of a flower.  Go out on a dark, clear night and look up at the stars.  Listen to a piece of music -- just listen, don't engage in the "listening while" that most of us do every day.  Create the space in your life to experience a little awe.

But don't be surprised if you come out of the experience changed.  Being awestruck will do that.

In fact, maybe that's the point.

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The face in the mirror

Like many people, I've at times been in the position of having to interact with narcissists.

I'll not name names, but two, in particular, stand out.  One of them frequently said things like, "What I say is the law of the land" (without any apparent awareness of irony, because this is also an excellent example of someone being a Big Fish in a Little Pond).  This individual did have "advisors" -- for a time I was one of them -- while in point of fact never actually taking a single piece of advice or admitting to being wrong about anything.  Ever.  Worse, every interaction became about being perceived as the most knowledgeable, smart, funny, edgy, savvy person in the room, so every conversation turned into a battle for dominance, unless you refused to play (which, eventually, is what I did).

The second had a different strategy, albeit one that still resulted in the role of Center of the Entire Fucking Universe.  For this person, negative attention caused a complete emotional breakdown, which resulted in everyone having to circle the wagons simply to restore order.  Worse still was when something this individual said made me upset; because then, the focus shifted to someone else's needs, which was completely unacceptable.  My expression of annoyance, anger, or frustration was turned around into my having unreasonable expectations, which precipitated another emotional breakdown, returning me to the role of caregiver and he-who-pours-oil-on-the-waters.

It's a relief that neither of these two are part of my life any more, because being around narcissists is, among other things, absolutely exhausting.  The incessant focus on self means that no one else's needs, and often no one else's opinions, ever get heard.  Both of these people did considerable damage to others around them, without there ever being any sign of concern for the chaos they were sowing or the emotional scars they were inflicting.  (There was plenty of deflection of the blame toward the ones who were hurt, however; "it's their own fault" was another phrase I heard numerous times.)  Worst of all, neither one had any apparent awareness of being narcissistic.  I heard both expressing, at one time or another, how puzzling and unfair it was that they couldn't keep friends or maintain good relationships with business associates.

Funny how that happens when you don't consider anyone but yourself, and funnier still that neither one ever seemed to realize what the common factor in all of their difficulties was.

This lack of self-awareness makes narcissism difficult to study, because it's hard to analyze a condition that the patient doesn't know (s)he's got.  But a team at the University of Graz (Austria), led by psychologist Emanuel Jauk, has not only looked at what it means to be narcissistic -- they've done neuroimaging studies to see what's going on in a narcissist's brain.  The result was an eye-opening paper that appeared in Nature.

"Narcissism is a topic of increasing interest to science and the public, probably because cultural changes in the past decades favor narcissistic behavior," Jauk says.  "Our study was aimed at taking a closer look at the self-image of narcissistic individuals using neuroscience, which might help to unveil its less conscious aspects."

The results were fascinating.  In the authors' words:

Subclinical narcissism is a personality trait with two faces: According to social-cognitive theories it is associated with grandiosity and feelings of superiority, whereas psychodynamic theories emphasize vulnerable aspects like fluctuating self-esteem and emotional conflicts...  While social-cognitive theory would predict that self-relevant processing should be accompanied by brain activity in reward-related areas in narcissistic individuals, psychodynamic theory would suggest that it should be accompanied by activation in regions pointing to negative affect or emotional conflict.  In this study, extreme groups of high and low narcissistic individuals performed a visual self-recognition paradigm during fMRI.  Viewing one’s own face (as compared to faces of friends and strangers) was accompanied by greater activation of the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in highly narcissistic men.  These results suggest that highly narcissistic men experience greater negative affect or emotional conflict during self-relevant processing and point to vulnerable aspects of subclinical narcissism that might not be apparent in self-report research.

The upshot is that this study suggests narcissism doesn't result in feelings of pleasure when you think of or view yourself; it increases your anxiety.  "Narcissism," Jauk explains, "in terms of an inflated self-view, goes along with negative affect towards the self on an involuntary level."

Which certainly makes sense given my interactions with narcissists.  Above all, neither of the individuals I mentioned ever seemed all that happy.  It appeared that the returning focus on self came out of insecurity, fear, and anxiety rather than conceit -- that it was more about reassurance than it was about praise.

So the condition itself is a little misnamed, isn't it?  The word "narcissism" comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was a young man whose appearance was so beautiful that he fell in love with a reflection of himself, and couldn't tear his eyes away -- he eventually pined away and died, and the gods took pity on him and turned him into the flower that now bears his name.

Narcissus by Caravaggio (1598)  [Image is in the Public Domain]

The reality is sadder.  Narcissists, apparently, think of themselves not out of self-love, but out of a constant uneasy sense that they aren't actually beautiful, intelligent, competent, or desirable.

Which is kind of a miserable way to live.  Knowing this defuses a lot of the anger I harbor from my experiences with the narcissists I described earlier.  For all of their desperation for attention, at their core they were unhappy, deeply fearful people.

The authors make reference to an alternate version of the Narcissus myth that is more in line with what true narcissists experience.  They write:

In another prominent version by Pausanias, the myth has a different ending: Narcissus is gazing at himself, when suddenly a leaf falls into the water and distorts the image.  Narcissus is shocked by the ugliness of his mirror image, which ultimately leads him to death.

 This more tragic ending is much closer to what the study found:

Considering the two versions of the ancient myth of Narcissus, our results are in favor of the less prominent version, in which Narcissus is shocked to death by the ugliness of his mirror image when a leaf drops into the water.  This myth can be seen to metaphorically reflect the ongoing critical self-monitoring that narcissists display when confronted with self-relevant material, presumably due to a lowered intrinsic coupling between self-representation and self-reward/liking.

Which makes me feel like narcissists, despite the considerable harm they can do, are more to be pitied than scorned.

****************************************

The face in the mirror

Like many people, I've at times been in the position of having to interact with narcissists.

I'll not name names, but two, in particular, stand out.  One of them frequently said things like, "Of course, I know I'm wrong all the time," while in point of fact never admitting to being specifically wrong about anything.  Ever.  This individual never budged so much as an inch off any claim, up to and including ones that were demonstrably false and complete matters of opinion like tastes in music and even food.  (If you differed in those opinions, you were "entitled to your opinion even though it's wrong.")  Everything became about being perceived as the most smart, cultured, savvy, and astute person in the room, so every conversation turned into a battle for dominance, unless you refused to play (which, eventually, is what I did).

The second had a different strategy, albeit one that still resulted in the role of Center of the Entire Universe.  For this person, negative attention caused a complete emotional breakdown, which resulted in everyone having to circle the wagons simply to restore order.  Worse still was when something this individual said made me upset; because then, the focus shifted to someone else's needs, which was unacceptable.  My expression of annoyance, anger, or frustration was turned around into my having unreasonable expectations, which precipitated another emotional breakdown, returning me to the role of caregiver and he-who-pours-oil-on-the-waters.

It's a relief that neither of these two are part of my life any more, because being around narcissists is, among other things, absolutely exhausting.  The incessant focus on self means that no one else's needs, and often no one else's opinions, ever get heard.  Worst of all, neither one had any apparent sense of being narcissistic; I heard both expressing, at one time or another, how unfair it was that they didn't have many friends.

Funny how that happens when you don't consider anyone but yourself.

This lack of self-awareness makes narcissism difficult to study, because it's hard to analyze a condition that the patient doesn't know (s)he's got.  But now a team at the University of Graz (Austria), led by psychologist Emanuel Jauk, has not only looked at what it means to be narcissistic -- they've done neuroimaging studies to see what's going on in a narcissist's brain.  The result was a paper that appeared last week in Nature.

"Narcissism is a topic of increasing interest to science and the public, probably because cultural changes in the past decades favor narcissistic behavior," Jauk says.  "Our study was aimed at taking a closer look at the self-image of narcissistic individuals using neuroscience, which might help to unveil its less conscious aspects."

The results were fascinating.  In the authors' words:

Subclinical narcissism is a personality trait with two faces: According to social-cognitive theories it is associated with grandiosity and feelings of superiority, whereas psychodynamic theories emphasize vulnerable aspects like fluctuating self-esteem and emotional conflicts...  While social-cognitive theory would predict that self-relevant processing should be accompanied by brain activity in reward-related areas in narcissistic individuals, psychodynamic theory would suggest that it should be accompanied by activation in regions pointing to negative affect or emotional conflict.  In this study, extreme groups of high and low narcissistic individuals performed a visual self-recognition paradigm during fMRI.  Viewing one’s own face (as compared to faces of friends and strangers) was accompanied by greater activation of the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in highly narcissistic men.  These results suggest that highly narcissistic men experience greater negative affect or emotional conflict during self-relevant processing and point to vulnerable aspects of subclinical narcissism that might not be apparent in self-report research.

The upshot is that this study suggests narcissism doesn't result in feelings of pleasure when you think of or view yourself; it increases your anxiety.  "Narcissism," Jauk explains, "in terms of an inflated self-view, goes along with negative affect towards the self on an involuntary level."

Which certainly makes sense given my interactions with narcissists.  Above all, neither of the individuals I mentioned seemed all that happy.  It appeared that the returning focus on self came out of insecurity, fear, and anxiety rather than conceit -- that it was more about reassurance than it was about praise.

So the condition itself is a little misnamed, isn't it?  The word "narcissism" comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was a young man whose appearance was so beautiful that he fell in love with a reflection of himself, and couldn't tear his eyes away -- he eventually pined away and died, and the gods took pity on him and turned him into the flower that now bears his name.

Narcissus by Caravaggio (1598) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The reality is sadder.  Narcissists, apparently, think of themselves not out of self-love, but out of a constant uneasy sense that they aren't actually beautiful, intelligent, competent, or desirable.

Which is kind of a miserable way to live.  Knowing this defuses a lot of the anger I harbor from my experiences with the narcissists I described earlier.  For all of their desperation for attention, at their core they were deeply fearful people.

The authors make reference to an alternate version of the Narcissus myth that is more in line with what true narcissists experience.  They write:

In another prominent version by Pausanias, the myth has a different ending: Narcissus is gazing at himself, when suddenly a leaf falls into the water and distorts the image.  Narcissus is shocked by the ugliness of his mirror image, which ultimately leads him to death.

This more tragic ending is much closer to what the study found:

Considering the two versions of the ancient myth of Narcissus, our results are in favor of the less prominent version, in which Narcissus is shocked to death by the ugliness of his mirror image when a leaf drops into the water.  This myth can be seen to metaphorically reflect the ongoing critical self-monitoring that narcissists display when confronted with self-relevant material, presumably due to a lowered intrinsic coupling between self-representation and self-reward/liking.

Which makes me feel like narcissists are more to be pitied than scorned. 

American Caligula

If you've heard of Gaius Julius Augustus Germanicus, it's probably under his better-known nickname of "Caligula" ("Little Boots"), given to him when he was a child and demanded to have a set of boots like the military officers had, so he could go stomping around giving orders.  While such behavior is at least arguably cute in a kid, it becomes decidedly less so when said kid grows into an adult and continues to do the same sort of thing.

And it becomes downright scary when such an adult toddler ends up in charge of a whole nation.

Caligula [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Caligula became the ruler of Rome upon the death of his great-uncle Tiberius in March of 37 C.E.  It'd be nice if people like him (i.e. sociopathic narcissists) suddenly had an epiphany when they found themselves in a position of responsibility, but that seldom if ever happens.  In fact, it's often the opposite.  When they gain power, it takes the brakes off entirely.  In his short reign -- only three years, ten months -- here are a few things Caligula did:

• He had a temple constructed in his honor, containing a life-sized golden statue of himself.  He ordered it to be dressed each day in clothes identical to the ones he was wearing that day.
• Because he was embarrassed at the fact that he was going bald, he made it an offense for anyone to look down at him from a balcony.
• He was so angry at the fact that there was a storm and uncooperative tides during his campaign in Britain that he ordered his soldiers to flog the waves with leather whips.  Afterwards, he had them collect seashells as "spoils of the battle."
• Upon his return to Rome, he ordered that hundreds of beautiful young people be painted gold and stood, naked, alongside the road as he passed, holding torches.  Unfortunately, the gold paint contained arsenic, and all of the would-be statues died in agony from absorbing the toxin through their skin over the next three days.
• He had his prized horse, Incitatus, appointed to the Senate.
• He spent lavish amounts of money on parties celebrating himself, at which attendees were commanded to make lengthy speeches in his praise.  Within months of his accession, he had blown through most of the Roman treasury, so he levied taxes on parts of the Empire he didn't like.

And that's only scraping the surface.  The man was, to put it bluntly, a nutjob, and it is honestly a mystery why the Roman people put up with him for almost four years.

I mean, you'd think the self-laudatory stuff would wear thin pretty quick, especially since the guy was far more interested in self-aggrandizement than he was in running the country.  Every speech he made did nothing but heap praise upon his own head; "No one," he said at one meeting of his inner circle, "has done more [for the country] than I have."  And instead of laughing directly into his face, all of the people in attendance just kind of nodded sagely, as if that was actually the truth.  To add insult to injury, he then demanded that each of his counselors speak in his praise -- and they did.  For example:

• "The greatest privilege in my life is to serve [here]."
• "I am privileged to be here -- deeply honored -- and I want to thank you for your commitment."
• "The people all love you."
• "We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing to serve your agenda."
• "Congratulations to the men and women you have gathered around this table."
• "It was a great honor traveling with you around the country for the last year, and an even greater honor to be serving here."

Oh, wait!  My bad.  That last bit wasn't Caligula, that was Donald Trump's last Cabinet meeting, which accomplished nothing than stroking the president's turgid ego.  (If you're curious, the quotes above are, in order: Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta; Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue; Chief of Staff Reince Priebus; Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson; and Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin.)

As far as Trump himself, he was just tickled pink to receive all the adulation, because as we all know there's nothing as wonderful to receive as forced praise.  Trump ended the meeting on another self-congratulatory note -- about the only note he knows how to play, apparently -- saying, "I will say there never has been a president, with few exceptions -- in the case of F.D.R. he had a major depression to handle -- who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done.  We've been about as active as you can be, and at a just about record-setting pace."

Which, of course, ignores the fact that both his budget and his attempted revamp to health care are in serious danger, he and his cronies are under investigation for various sorts of malfeasance, and about all that he's done other than that is playing golf every weekend, turning the United States into an international laughingstock with ignorant gaffe after ignorant gaffe, and issuing executive orders dismantling every environmental protection ever passed.

You can't continue fooling people forever, though, and eventually even the ass-kissers get tired of the thankless (and potentially dangerous) job of working for a lying, amoral megalomaniac.  In the case of Caligula, the powers-that-be finally had enough, and there was a conspiracy between the Senate and the Praetorian Guard.  One evening Little Boots was caught unawares in a corridor beneath one of his palaces on the Palatine Hill, and a bunch of the conspirators hacked him to death with swords.

One has to hope that eventually there will be enough of our elected officials who see Donald Trump for what he is that they'll be willing to use the metaphorical sword of impeachment based upon his obvious lack of fitness for leadership (if not for obstruction of justice, collusion with the Russians, or outright treason).  It took almost four years for the Roman Senate to say finis to Caligula; let's hope that we don't have to wait that long for our own American Caligula to be deposed.