The “Moral Narcissism” of Valuing Life
The “Moral Narcissism” of Valuing Life
in which saying on FB “all children’s lives have equal value” is bad
This image triggered big controversy on Facebook last week, at last glance I saw over 153 comments about this simple message. Jihadi Jew, an interfaith educator and a member of the Jewish community, expressing regret at the loss of innocent children’s lives apparently offends the most tribal within the Jewish community. The outrage expressed the pro-Israel herdists at the perceived threat of the thought that Palestinian children have an equal entitlement to live as do Israeli children sends danger cues to the pro-Palestinian herd it’s. Blame + Shame in a downward spiral follows.
What if we could think about this thru the lens of threat perception? What if the most plugged-in group-thinkers perceive inadequate gang signaling behaviour as danger cues? Phrases such as Moral Narcissism and Virtue Signaling got lobbed at my lovely Jewish friend, who is a simple a guy living an Orthoprax Jewish life on the east coast of America. What’s Moral Narcissism, you ask? It’s your luck day reader, the Thought Police Constable provided a definition!
Moral narcissism is best identified by causing harm in the name of virtue. In the realm of social justice advocacy, virtue is often attached to social or political causes. Moral narcissism adopts a cause (usually many) and weaponizes those causes to abuse, shame, ostracize, dox, cancel, and punish those who defy their ideologies.
The difference between altruism and moral narcissism is that altruism does not cause harm for harm, nor does it use labels to crush dissent. It is people/cure centered & focuses on engaging and enlightening.
Moral narcissism, on the other hand, causes harm under guise of curing harm, because the primary motivation is not to cure harm but to project inner feelings of guilt and shame onto others while using a weapon (the cause) to sanitize their actions as virtuous. In this way, not only does moral narcissism escape under the radar, but the harmful actions are actually praised as virtuous, even though there is no beneficiary of the harm, and only more harm as a result.
It is noteworthy that the people engaging in such acts rarely belong to the groups they purport to defend. This is likely because they are projecting the shame they received (or otherwise felt) for not sooner recognizing social harms. Thus, moral narcissism is an outgrowth of toxic shame culture, and the downstream effects of shame are-as predicted-even more harm. — via social media comment under the FB post
Projection much? This accusation, provided by someone in the pro-Israel segment of the Jewish community, conveys the intense outrage directed at Jihadi Jew for daring to post this Banksy image as a way to express his disapproval that innocent children had to lose their lives in the crossfire of war and in the shadows of military retaliation. The individual posted several inflamed comments under Lee’s Banksy image post.
Where does this vehemence of response come from?
Why does publicly declaring human concern for The Other’s children garner a disproportionate response such as this? Does it come from fear? This disproportionate reaction reminds me of the time in my Muslim life a few years ago that I dared to say on Facebook Lars Vilks was human and not evil or bad, just some guy with an opinion and the next day I awoke to 141 comments from angry extremists — it weirded me out. Social media does something weird to human connection sometimes, it seems to amplify fear. Go look at that passage above— in that 229 word excerpt the word harm appears 11 times.
It is noteworthy that the people engaging in such acts rarely belong to the groups they purport to defend.
Okay we are all human beings here, though. What Other group would the commenter mean, d’ya think? In fact when you go to look at the Facebook post, Lee has simply reposted it without commentary. He said nothing about Palestinian children. Commenters brought their own story to that image. Do you find it fascinating how already in people’s minds some decision making process has engaged and begun to calculate the human mathematics needed to achieve the desired political aim?
Muslim FB commenter :: [Insert name of Zionist here] keep your pseudo-philosophy mumbo jumbo to yourself, because the world knows that killing children is criminal and no amount of psychobabble can hide that.
Zionist FB commenter :: [Insert name of Muslim here] then tell your coreligionists to stop murdering children in Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Kurdistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Nigeria, to name a few sites of conflict where Islamists and war lords and Turkish bombers and Boko Haram (ten Nigerian children murdered last week) murder with regularity and impunity. And tell them to stop murdering Israeli children.
Remember this is all in response to declaring you will never convince me that the solution to a problem is to kill children and then restating in disbelief not wanting to kill children is “moral narcissism.” So being alright with killing children is some kind of altruism. In the comments you can read about baby murders, beheading, genocide, (evil) zionists, racists, islamists, boko haram, sacrilegious, (evil israeli or zionist) entity, apartheid, tzadik posturing. Basically you can see the gamut of narcissistic outrage in the comments, both disproportionate reactions of the pro Palestinian and of pro Israel factions of Lee’s followers.
Sometimes you encounter an intelligent responsive comment, such as the one below about altruism and the Selfish Gene.
Lee Weissman Huh, that facetious formulation just gave me an epiphany about the folks who seem to be thinking that way. Yes, they probably do think of being alright with killing *someone else's children* as some kind of altruism, and they are technically correct, if we're talking about the kind of "altruism" of Konrad Lorenz & co.'s ethology/sociobiology. The "problem of altruism" in biology was originally framed as asking why an individual organism would place themselves at risk for a relative (or even distant kin or society member) who was not their own offspring. In the theoretical model(s) that developed out of this school of thought, altruism became defined, indeed, as really a kind of nepotism ("inclusive fitness" a la Dawkins's "Selfish Gene"). It makes sense: *any* behavior is always altruism (and justifiable) if it benefits "us" (Yuck). In such a model, seeking to preserve the genes of those who are "not us" would only ever be seen as a move to insincerely gain allies through manipulation for narcissistic reasons (then "outsiders" "owe you"). Huh. Gross. But, I guess it makes sense from a purely reductionist materialist perspective. — Kevin Prittle in the FB comments under the Banksy post
Kevin cleverly ties these interpretations into a view of human nature and society. In the Hobbesian view of human nature, State of Nature, we have equivalent human needs and resources, we live in a society that does not provide enough for all humans, we have limited altruism. Limited altruism means we have a sense of human obligation only to those closest to us, altruism on some level has a self interest or survival component to it. Viewing the Israel-Palestine conflict through a Hobbesian State of Nature lens, then limited altruism would allow a tribe to justify the killing of their designated enemy’s children and morality would prevent a society from devolving into a State of Nature scenario.
What if all this boils down to safety in social connection?
According to Dr Stephen Porges, “we have a culture that keeps us mobilised. If we weren’t mobilised, we’d be more generous, creative and benevolent.” In his view, religion dictates that “our relationship to Deity is more important than connectedness to other people. We have a need to be supportive of humanity. This is our spiritual calling.” — Jane Mulcahy
What if our relationship to G-d is our connectedness to other people, what if the Vagus Nerve is the soul, and what if supporting and loving humanity is the spiritual calling of following G-d? Well, that sounds very much like the Golden Rule. Hillel once said to a Gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism, that which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study. —Shabbat 31a:6
[audio clip of Jihadi Jew June 9, 2024]
I believe we were born with a moral compass, that we have a conscience, that we have an inner sense of right and wrong, and that while we often need advice and we need guidance and we need other people to help us to understand the world around us and to know what the right thing to do is, we often know deep down, we know what the right thing is. But nevertheless, we follow the direction of the herd. Even though we know that that direction isn't right, even though we know deep in our hearts that that's not the way to go still, we quiet that inner voice and we go with the crowd. I ask myself and I ask you to listen to the inner voice. Listen to your inner moral compass and just forget the herd sometimes. Instead of just going along with whatever your herd happens to be, make your own decision. Go your own way. Follow your own compass. — Jihadi Jew
Remember, you sometimes have to venture Outside the Camp to the Tent of Meeting to see the moral truth about the thing. Accessing your moral compass means connecting with yourSelf, it means feeling safe inside your skin. If you view the herd as safe and your inner vice as a threat you will choose the herd, even when you intellectually know it’s wrong. Sometimes the danger cues carried by an idea outweighs the safety cues provided by your values. Safety, i.e. eliminating immediate danger, is a biological imperative, we will always choose immediate survival over social stimulus in a threat state.