The man who destroyed America’s ego
“If you went up to Einstein and told him he was stupid,” says Baumeister, “he’s not going to get mad.” Narcissism, though, is different: It’s the desire to feel you’re superior. “Narcissists believe they deserve to be treated better than other people,” he says. They also lack the moral values of people with genuine high self-esteem.
Narcissism, then, is a kind of addiction to self-esteem.
.. Baumeister has certainly been noticing something like that amongst his students. “They’re very confident and self-assured, but because of that, they don’t work as hard as they might,”
.. Twenge claimed that narcissism among Americans was rising at the same rate as obesity, and documented how the mantras of the self-esteem movement had begun infiltrating churches ..
.. his determination to remain apart from ideology is so strong that he even refuses to vote. “I try not to have political views,” he says. “I try to get rid of all biases. I want to be open to all ideas. Caring just slows me down.”
.. The mistake of many modern feminists, he writes, is that they “look only at the top of society and draw conclusions about society as a whole. Yes, there are mostly men at the top. But if you look at the bottom, really at the bottom, you’ll find mostly men there, too.” His examples: The homeless; the imprisoned; the people who die at work, 92 percent of whom are male. The popular modern view is that it’s women who are most poorly valued by culture. But, ever the contrarian, Baumeister says men are demonstrably “more expendable than women.”