[N.P.D.] Narcissism Within Veganism (& NorVegan's Documentary)

it's a little bit odd for me to kick off
this video because I'm aware that a few people are going to watch it who've never seen any other video on my channel because this video does discuss NPD narcissistic personality disorder and I hope to discuss it in a meaningful way with some sensitivity and with some depth on the other hand I know that people are going to be clicking on this video who are regular viewers of my channel who probably have no specific interest in NPD narcissistic personality disorder and they instead want to hear me talk about the film that I'm linking to in the description below this video a film really dealing with narcissism why it matters why it is so troubling for us to think about in terms of recent events within veganism as a movement now great reckon my set here Marty get tech support why it matters so much in veganism why it's something important for us to think about in terms of the internal politics within veganism in 2017 and beyond look guys the main compliment I want to give to the video among you to hear video by noir vegan over an hour-long in-depth discussion part one of a three-part documentary and full disclosure I have had email back and forth this guy ignore vegan he asked me for some screenshots you asked me what happened in various times and to my knowledge part 2 and part 3 of this documentary series is going to talk a lot more about me and what I've been doing in the vegan movement last couple years um the biggest most important compliment I can give this video is that I know for a fact it reached its target audience it reached its intended audience the message he was delivering got to the people whom he wanted to hear it and it got to the people who really needed to hear it now this is a backhanded compliment because the fact is I am not really that audience I'm not the kind of guy who needs to hear this I've got email from Chiang Mai and people saying look you know groups of vegans in Chiang Mai sat down and watched this video about narcissism about MPD about the psychological factors that are linked to political questions we have in veganism today they watched it and for them it was stunning it was Hakan it was a whole new perspective on what's been going on in veganism last couple years and also the particular examples the particular case studies we're going to say particulars of evidence employed were really shocking and new to them so that's very positive I'd say I say that just as a complement to the filmmaker tun or vegan that he really did a good job he reached the people who he wanted to reach and the people needed to hear it now for me it's a little bit over overly familiar right he's like most of the facts he's striking out almost all that I've kind of heard it before I feel I've heard it too many times a lot of it stuff I don't want to talk about it or deal with anymore etc and oddly that's the case for me both with the the case study the issues in veganism and with these arguments linked to narcissism and NPD narcissists of a narcissistic personality disorder certainly define look guys I have known several people whom I believe did have narcissistic personality disorder just one to my knowledge was formerly diagnosed with the disorder you know psychiatric establishment by psychiatric professionals if you have met someone with this disorder it's unlikely they have been diagnosed and then if they have been diagnosed it may be incredibly difficult to get them to admit that they've been diagnosed as you can guess even from the name of the disorder people who are narcissists in this sense people who are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder are quite reluctant to admit something as humiliating and disempowering to you as that they have a really serious psychological problem they have a personality disorder of this kind and it is still just not that commonly diagnosed it's difficult to diagnose I'm going to get into a little bit and my main reservation in endorsing this video by noir vegan which is in many ways a great video link provided I hope you all see it and you know watch as much or as little as you like um my main reservation is something that he addresses himself within the first ten minutes of the video he talks about the extent to which this word narcissism has become diluted and diluted it's become an all most meaningless insult it's become a general category of bad behavior and more and more stuff is just flung into this category whatever people dislike about somebody whatever they want to complain about just get categorized as narcissism and from my perspective that's a dangerous tendency given that NPD narcissistic personalities are given that it is actually in the class of personality disorders that as we examine it more and more as we study it scientifically more and more it actually becomes realer and realer what do I mean by that some concepts in psychology came to be regarded with greater and greater skepticism over time is psychopathy something with medical reality or is it really just a cultural concept or even a kind of stereotype that were applying to human behavior that really is unrelated and doesn't fall into one category and is certainly not a medical condition within my lifetime I'm 38 years old I've actually seen Psychopaths go through different fads and phases there were periods of time when it seemed like the consensus was that no it was not a medically valid term at all there were periods of time when people felt they had mustered together enough evidence to really take this seriously as a medical condition and just in the last five years I would say the pendulum swung back the other way and more and more it seems like the scientific perspective is that no this is a pattern of behavior but there's no medical reality there's no biological reality to it there's no sense in which it is a real psychological problem any more that we can group together any other bunch of human characteristics traits or behaviors and then describe them as a personality type by contrast I'm going to give you a link below this video to a formal scientific article involving MRI scan so brain scans magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brain of people with narcissistic personality disorder MPD and this is a first step towards the thesis that NPD really does exist in the sense of a abnormalities I am not saying to you that this is an open-and-shut case I'm not saying that the scientific research is finished and over I think it's at a very preliminary stage however if you have met several different people with NPD the extent to which their behaviors and symptoms are similar is mind-blowing you feel like you're meeting the same person again you can't believe that the same extremely idiosyncratic irrational it just weird behavior that you thought was so unique about this one person the first version of MPD that you're discovering it again in another person from another culture another walk of life totally different experience you know speaks with a different accent and yet you're seeing this same pattern manifest itself I feel that the video bun or vegan it falls into a trap that it's set for itself because in the intro it says look we can't just treat narcissism as a category for all the things we dislike about a person we can't just say here are a bunch of bad traits throw them together and start talking to the stereotypes and yet the video as a whole and over our long I think does fall into that trap it does indulge in a great deal of that in quoting from these other YouTube channels reflecting on it one of the most important observers of NPD is a youtuber named Sam Vaknin he's also published books and articles he is diagnosed with MPD himself and he devoted a large part of his life to studying and really philosophizing about what narcissistic personality disorder is how to understand it how to explain it to people and I think that none of the discussion in nor vegans video talks about the fragility that from my perspective is at the core of MPD now I'm going to make this as anonymous as possible one person who might know why as far as I can be sure of anything one person my know to have MPD sat down with another person it's a person a and person B sat down at the table and person a was presenting an academic paper he had written to person B and person a after presenting his paper sat there it's a grown man fully grown adult and in a manner that would seem trial dish and shocking for anyone over eleven years of age maybe would even be surprising with an eight-year-old sat there and said my paper did you read it isn't the most brilliant thing you've ever seen isn't it brilliant isn't it genius isn't it fantastic and absolutely any answer other than it's brilliant it's genius it's fantastic would result in him having a kind of emotional collapse on the spot and him becoming crestfallen Sam Vaknin talks about this a lot in terms of narcissistic supply he talks about the extent to which people with MPD rely on external sources of validation external source of affirmation confirmation constantly that they're reaching out for narcissistic supply as he as he called it something to confirm their sense of worth the sense of their they're good enough and I'll tack on an observation my own here having spent time with people with MPD that is a pattern that I can understand and relate to only from incredibly early childhood memories I think if you can remember yourself at about age four you can probably remember what it was like to look around the world in a slightly off-balance disoriented way you can't fully understand even the language people using when you're four you know grown-ups use grown-up words you're only following half of what they're saying and of just looking around nervously trying to get confirmation that you're doing the right thing even that you're in the right place you know you're four years old you're disoriented I really see several of the personality disorders personnel disorders census or do you I see them in many ways as being a manifestation of early childhood characteristics is still being present later in adult life and it's this shockingly childish vulnerability neediness reaching out for affirmation that's what's there all the time for people who genuinely have NPD and it's misleading to examine the condition in terms of grandiosity in terms of the lies they tell in terms of Randy OHS behavior which not all the map by the way some people with MPD are very self adhering I mean you know some people with MPD are charming and some are not some are storytellers and some are taciturn some use their physical bodies and their physical appearance to try to get affirmation from other people and so on actually the ways in which the disorder manifests itself the way in which people act out these these tropes is quite a lot of variety but I think the bedrock of the condition is that terrible sense of vulnerability they have all the time and it's telling I mean Sam Vaknin himself is reflected on this there are other types of mania let's just say there are other types of ego mania where the maniac is happy you know if you're an egomaniac in the simplest sense maybe you just have tremendous confidence in your own worth everything you're doing with your life what have you um people with MPD you really can't understand them at all if you don't understand the extent to which their lives are really nightmarish they're in a constant state of nying self-doubt uncertainty misery childlike need for someone to Pat them on the head and tell them that what they're doing is good and right what they need above all else is to be told that they're an exception to the rules that they're exceptional one of the classic symptoms of MPD is that when they show up at the psychiatrist's office for you know a consultation or evaluation rather may be that they start bullying the secretary at the front of the office into making an exception for the rules to schedule when the alarm is going to be and normal adults just don't do that and of course secretaries and offices that the old fueled MPD you know it happens again and again so they learn to kind of smile and throw their shoulders at it but again it's not just bullying it's not just narcissism it's not ego mania in that sense well you understand it's from their perspective they feel this desperate need for some kind of recognition or affirmation from the secretary and they're trying to get that by forcing the secretary to make an exception to the scheduling rules so the secretary will say you're special you're different from the others we're going to make an exception in your case and again maybe at four years old maybe at eight years old you dig around in your earliest memories maybe you can find something like that where you felt that way it's a little kid you want it to know you weren't just another face in the crowd but people at MPD I feel really never move on to the sense of self-reliance self-confidence that most of us as adults take for granted where we on a very deep level just do not care what the secretary making important slip-ups we don't care if we're just another name on a list of just another face in the crowd or if we do care we have other more constructive ways to try to exercise our egos know what have you I wish I could say that NPD is a minor foot down in my life that it's something I'm never going to have to deal with again to be honest with you this is a rare condition it is rare and yet it is one of the personality disorders that in our society people can get ahead with you can meet people who've risen to high levels of fame and prominence and just high levels of professional team with it I think I will encounter people with MPD again and the hardest thing about making this judgment if you were actually trying to diagnose people with MPD I think in principle it is impossible to diagnose someone with MPD so long as they can edit the videos that they are uploading themselves almost by definition all of the evidence that someone really has MPD that terrible vulnerability and so I've got terrible neediness that's exactly what would never show up in a video they have the power to edit themselves that's exactly what they never disclose whereas if you know someone with MPD face to face in the workplace in your own family what have you then that's what's most striking or over time you understand that to be the key to how they see the world I have had people writing to me many times over the last several years asking me if other specific vegans on YouTube other specific vegan political leaders if they have NPD and writing back them with all due honesty though I really have them quite a lot of research on MPD because of known people with the condition I have to read back them no keeping it all the way real I don't know I can't know and I think you also can't know unless you spend time with that person face to face in real life and on the other hand NPD it's striking if you really spent quality time with one person as the condition how much they resemble in their behaviors and their applications in their or paranoid excesses how much they resemble other people with the condition but I absolutely would not make that judgment on the basis of YouTube videos okay guys so again this is in some ways just shout out for the three-part documentary series by noir vegan you're going to find the link below this video and I just say it's not what I created this channel for but I am knowledgeable at MPD as it happens and it may well be that if you guys in patreon or otherwise want to carry on this discussion with me I certainly could make more videos talking about the disorder how I've encountered it and perceived it in my own life the ways in which it matters and I mean even the prospect in the future is there any treatment is the way to help people because if you have people in your own life of MPD you must ask yourself all the time what can I do to help and the vast majority of the literature both medical literature autobiographical literature just anecdotal literature it comes to conclusions there is absolutely nothing you can do to help that the only thing that you can do is walk away but ultimately human beings MPD are still human beings they still do have the power to change in meaningful ways they have the power to become vegan and the power to try to make a positive difference in the world stead of a negative difference and if you check out the YouTube channel of Sam back then even though he still struggles with MPD he struggles with the effect of the disorder day after day he is also an example of someone who became aware that he had the disorder tried to work around it try to despite that disorder do something positive the world something positive for his fellow man and I am out