Solipsism is the philosophical analogue to Narcissism; it proposes that only one's self can be verified and all else is illusion. Where the Narcissist denies, or is unaware of, his need for other people (while being acutely dependent on their approval) and is incapable of seeing other people as whole, independent other selves with desires and minds of their own, the Solipsist takes things a step further. He believes others not only do not matter, but do not even exist in any meaningful way. Other people are mere animated objects which he places into his universe for his own pleasure. There are many variations on this theme; one which stands out in my memory is an old Twilight Zone episode featuring Burgess Meredith. In Time Enough at Last, he plays the role of a bank teller who despises people as intrusive to his desire to read great books. In a typical twisted Twilight Zone ending he finds himself with all the time in the world to read books without interruption, but lacks the means to take advantage of his opportunity. At the end the landscape he encounters (after leaving the bank vault where he waited out the nuclear war) is devoid of life, a reflection of his interior landscape from the start.
As you move from the Narcissist to the Malignant Narcissist (which overlaps with the Sociopath) the inner world of such people becomes more and more barren. Normally, our minds are populated with many complex, often conflicted, collections of three dimensional images that represent the important people in our lives. These collections of images make up what Psychoanalysts refer to as object-representations; that is, the mental images which help define our relationship to others. The more such object-representations we have, the more subtlety and complexity our minds have.
[A coherent collection of object-representations is integrated and synthesized by the mind to form a mental "object", that is, the correlate to a person with whom we have a relationship.]
The Narcissist, because he sees other people's minds as being just like his own has a less complex inner world than healthier people. The Malignant Narcissist's mind is practically devoid of psychologically meaningful objects; he does not even accept that other people have minds of their own; their only purpose in life is to support the Malignant Narcissist. (Think of how Hitler, Stalin, Mao, et al, have traditionally treated other people.) Solipsism is a pure culture of Malignant Narcissism. Such people have minds that are akin to the most arid deserts, with no life in them, barren and dead.
Michael Totten describes what happens when a country is ruled by such a monster. Libya today is a reflection of the mind of its ruler [HT: Roger Simon]:
The capital city of Tripoli was an asteroid belt of monolithic apartment towers with all the charm of gigantic sandblasted filing cabinets. The streets were mostly empty of cars, the sidewalks empty of people. I saw no restaurants, no cafés, no clubs, no bars and no malls. Nor did I see anywhere else to hang out. Libya, so far, looked depopulated.
More than once in this powerfully evocative piece of reporting, Totten comments on the lack of people; even where there are people, there is no life. There are no woman; there is no music; there are no voices, no humor, no colors. This is a landscape of cement block buildings in the neo-Stalinist style copied by such luminous cultures as Nazi Germany, North Korea, and "perfected" in Soviet Russia. It is no coincidence that such large, monumental tombs have been built in totalitarian states. These men do not understand that what makes a culture great is not the size of its buildings but the freedom of the minds of its people. In totalitarian states, all survive by the sufferance of the tyrant and his minions. The only safe course is to extinguish all outward signs of life so as not to attract attention. Thus, buildings all look alike in their lifeless drabness because no architect lives too long whose own ideas threaten to take on an independent life from the tyrants.
We see the same kind of psychic numbing in the worst cases of child abuse, in children who have been raised and treated as if they were mere extensions of their abuser's minds, with no independent life and desire of their own. Such children learn to shut down their own minds in order to avoid catching the attention of the monster they live with. It doesn't work but if they shut down their minds, at least they can avoid their constant terror and pain. After a while, the tendency permanently stunts the mind of such unfortunate children.
Totten describes how the Libyan despot has set up a museum which offers the illusion of life in order to impress visiting dignitaries:
Abdul picked me up again in the morning. His job was to show me Tripoli’s sights. There weren’t many: Green Square, the museum, and an old city smaller than downtown Boise. That’s it. That’s all there is.
We started with the museum. Phoenician and Roman artifacts were on the first floor. Upstairs was the “Islamic period.” The top floor was entirely dedicated to the glorification of Qaddafi.
One room displayed gifts to the colonel from foreign officials and heads of state — swords, jeweled boxes, a crystal map of “Palestine” that included Tel Aviv. A living-room set upholstered with a tacky floral print was roped off in a corner. “That’s where el-Qaddafi sits with foreign guests he wants to impress,” Abdul said.
Right outside the museum was Qaddafi’s Green Square — which isn’t green, by the way. It’s famous, but it shouldn’t be. This is no Italian piazza we’re talking about. It’s an asphalt parking lot ringed by a six-lane urban speedway.
Because the dictator treats other people as if they do not exist except when they are within his sphere of perception, he travels within a small bubble of reality and the rest is a gray formless mass of non-existence. Those who reside in such a limbo know better than to breathe too loud lest the tyrant notice and object to their pretensions to having an independent reality and existence.
It is inspirational that some who live under such terror can still aspire to something better and freer. Totten leaves us with these comments:
Libyans are fed a steady diet of anti-Americanism, but it comes from a man who has kicked them in the stomach and stomped on their face for more than a third of a century. If they bought it, they sure didn’t act like it.
I crossed paths with a middle-aged Englishman in the hallway.
“Is this a good hotel?” he asked.
It sure beat my last place in town. At least I wasn’t stranded out by the towers.
“It’s a good hotel,” I said, not really believing it but grateful for what I had.
“I think it’s bloody awful,” he said.
I laughed. “Well, yes,” I said. “I was just trying to be nice. You should see the place where I stayed when I first got here.”
I heard footsteps behind me, turned around, and faced two Arab men wearing coats and ties and carrying briefcases. One wore glasses. The other was bald.
“It has been a long time since I heard that accent,” said the man with the glasses.
I smiled. “It’s been a long time since this accent was here,” I said. Until just a few months ago, any American standing on Libyan soil was committing a felony.
“We went to college together,” he said, and jerked his thumb toward his friend. “In Lawrence, Kansas, during the ’70s.”
“Yes,” his friend said as he rubbed the bald spot on his head. The two were all smiles now as they remembered. “We took a long road trip up to Seattle.”
“We stayed there for two weeks!” said the first. He sighed like a man recalling his first long-lost love. I watched both their faces soften as they recalled the memories of their youth and adventures abroad in America.
“What a wonderful time we had there,” said the second.
They invited me out to dinner, but I was getting ready to leave. I didn’t want to say no. They looked like they wanted to hug me.
We shook hands as we departed. And as I stepped into the elevator, the first man put his hand on his heart. “Give two big kisses to Americans when you get home,” he said. “From two people in Libya who miss you so much.”
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