Inclined towards sin?  Hmm.

You know…this is meaningless.  I mean, really, to say such a thing and offer no qualification is a glittering example of what the rape of reason looks like.  Further, this doctrine shows just how little Reformed Protestants esteem people in general.  It isn’t merely an insult to the rational minds of their fellow human beings…it is representative of the full-on rejection of human existence as having any moral worth or truth at all.  This of course is nothing more than a contradiction…an equivocation of reason which stems from the grand “truth” defining all of Platonist thinking, from Marxism (and all other variations of altruistic social engineering, otherwise known as Collectivism) to Theocracies to Monarchies to Mystic Tyrannies like Calvinism, and so on and so forth.  That grand “truth” is that humanity is a contradiction in and of itself.  Existing, but not really.  Humanity is, and yet is NOT at the same time.  There is always, it is assumed, something ELSE “out there”, in the spiritual ether, determining and controlling all humans do and think (the scientific determinists might call it the “laws of nature/universe/physics”; the Protestants call it “God’s grace” and the “sin nature”).  This of course removes any metaphysical distinction whatsoever between humans and the absolute, all-determining force outside of them, which then utterly removes  man from himself.

Man either exists therefore as a function of the Primary Consciousness (or, more precisely the human proxies who claim to represent the Primary Consciousness incarnate, somehow defying their own human existential failure), demanding a categorical surrender to the human incarnate proxies and complete absorption into the collective, or man doesn’t exist at all.  And one who refuses to conform and thus forfeits his or her own right to exist then becomes utterly irrelevant to the “moral imperatives” of the proxy and his group.  When this happens, get ready for the death squads and the trains stuffed to the point of bending rivets with human beings destined for the ovens and the gas chambers.  If you don’t exist then you have no rights to your humanity, obviously.  And a human who insists on existing in defiance of the absolute “truth” and perfect “goodness” of the absolute collective and its ruling despot MUST die in service to truth.  There can be no other alternative.  If you don’t join them you don’t get to exist…

…which means live.

In other words, this is no laughing matter.  When you deal with the tyranny of irreconcilable ideas like “man is inclined towards sin”, you deal with the tyrant.  And the tyrant, contrary to popular opinion, doesn’t want to be God.  No…he wants to be the fucking tyrant.  His tyranny IS the end of itself. He has no objective beyond that. He thinks he is better than God.  And further, he doesn’t want to be God because God does not and cannot exist within the paradigm of his doctrinal and philosophical insanity.  God is wholly reasonable…and as such, He cannot possibly share the podium with this asshole.  And the best way to be the true tyrant is to deceive and enslave those who are willing and lazy and self-indulgently stupid, and to kill the rest.

And so I ask…

Inclined towards evil?

Hmm.

Does that mean all men are equally inclined? Well, if you know any true-blooded Reformed Protestant then you must understand that it does.  For no man is exempt from his “inclination”.  Inclination then is the STATE of man…man IS his “inclination towards sin”.  Man is equally and universally inclined as a function of his root being.  The very IS of man is “inclined” towards sin. The the divine mystics who rule over the barbarian masses as God in His stead notwithstanding.

But then, this begs the question (which should be obvious, but in this Platonist world sadly isn’t, because people don’t even THINK to wander down the primrose path of fallacious determinist ideas to their logical conclusion; the path being, of course, the wide road to hell)…ahem…begs the question: If all men are equally inclined then how can man define “inclined” in the first place?  That is, what does “inclined” look like when there is no frame of reference, by very doctrinal definition, to determine what is inclination as juxtaposed to NON-inclination?  If there is no such thing as one NOT inclined towards sin, then how in the hell do we even arrive at what inclined IS in the first place?  In order to tell an inclination to choose vanilla ice cream, one must observe an example of someone who normally chooses chocolate.  But in their brilliance, the Calvinist rational larcenists say that it is impossible for any human being to prefer chocolate, and thus be “inclined” to choose chocolate over vanilla.  Except vanilla is “sin” and chocolate, which is “good” doesn’t exit.  So then, again, in the absence of any “inclination” contrary, it is quite impossible to observe an inclination towards sin.  Man’s “inclination” then is simply another deception…another way to state what they really think:  man is utterly, categorically evil and a rank moral atrocity simply by virtue of being born.

In other words “man is inclined” towards his total depravity means that man is TOTALLY depraved. No matter how much they want to torture the logic and burn it at the stake like Michael Servitus, they cannot get around the fact that “total” does not leave room for any part of man that is not EVIL incarnate itself, by definition.  Which is what they utterly believe.  They believe, then, by logical extension, that God directly creates evil.

This is why all sane human beings who actually believe in God should run screaming from these apostates with all manner of savage invective and denunciation for what they believe blowing forth with every breath.

*

Now, some of the more wily Reformed types and/or Calvinists might argue that Jesus is what “not inclined” towards sin looks like.  But that won’t wash into a rational argument for a couple of reasons.  The first is that, according to their beliefs, Jesus was fully human.  And thus, if He is not inclined towards sin then neither must be any other human.  For if ALL humans are inclined towards sin, and Jesus was a human…well, if A is Jesus and B is Human and C is Sin, the A=B and B=C, then A=C.  Understand?  Its a simple logical relationship.

But Jesus was also fully God (never mind the obvious logical contradiction which is merely ipso facto if you are a Reformed Protestant…that is, two absolutes cannot possibly be reconciled into a single absolute, by definition, for the entire premise is impossible; I argue that Jesus was a human, who happened to be God, if that makes sense…if not, well, that’s another article).  So they will argue that it is his God “part” which made him walk contrary to human “sinful” inclination.  Of course the problem with this is that God is ontologically/metaphysically distinct from man.  That is, His nature is wholly exclusive to man’s nature.  When sin and evil and depravity become a part of the existential nature of man (man’s root SELF at the level of pure, naked existence) and not a CHOICE man makes to act in service to an objective standard of truth/morality that he is fully capable, innately and inherently, of reconciling himself to, then existential essences which are utterly exclusive (i.e. God’s SELF at the level of existence vs. man’s SELF at the level of existence) cannot relate.  That means that whatever God does as a function of his existence man cannot possibly observe, because what God does, God IS…and we have just, via the false doctrine of Total Depravity, separated man and God completely at the level of existence.  Man would need to have existential equality with God AND moral equality (both man and God, as a root function of being, are GOOD) in order to ever observe and integrate into his own context anything God ever does, including acting in a way not inclined towards sin.  In other words, in order for anything God does or says or is to have meaning and relevancy in man’s life, man must be able to rightly observe it and create right ethical and epistemological definitions of it.  This means it would have to have legitimate value in the context of man’s life.  But when man is existentially separated from God by his depraved inclination towards sin, man’s context is wholly parsed from God’s context…again at the level of root, naked existence.  So, if man IS his inclination towards depravity, which the Calvinists argue, and God IS not, then man and God can have absolutely nothing to do with each other, up to and including mere observation.   And this would obviously preclude God from being the Creator, and would preclude man from even knowing about God in the first place.  So by doctrinal abdication, Calvinists trump their whole fucking argument .  If man is existentially separated from God, then God and man can’t even know each other are around.  So why are we even discussing Total Depravity in the first place?  It speaks to a relationship, man and God, which cannot exist according to its own assumptions.

What all this boils down to is this:  If a human beings can observe what “not inclined towards sin looks like”, then there is no reason to ever assume human begins actually are inclined towards sin. Because “not inclined towards sin” would have to be a knowable, relevant aspect of man’s contextual existence.  And if it is knowable in man’s existential context, then it is actual IN MAN (because man IS his context, his life, his existence), somewhere, somehow, by someone, so that it can be rightly SEEN.  Again, since ALL that man rightly knows and rightly defines is a product of man’s senses FIRST, then “not inclined towards sin” must be actual in the life of mankind, somewhere, somehow, so that man can recognize it.  And if this is true, then by definition man in general is NOT inclined towards sin.  The declaration is patently false…or, here,  outside of Calvin’s Metaphysical Traveling Sideshow, a lie.  If he can observe this concept of “not inclined toward sin” so that he can know what “inclined towards sin” looks like, then “not inclined towards” sin must exist TO man.  The concepts “inclined” and “not inclined” must be identified as a product of man’s SELF, and as such, this observation then must deny the idea that ALL men are inclined towards sin.

In short, God cannot show you what “not inclined towards sin” looks like and then proceed to say that it is utterly outside your metaphysical essence, existence, nature, and context, to ever actually BE “not inclined” whether “saved” or “unsaved”.  If He shows it to you and then says that it is utterly beyond you as you then “not inclined” is totally irrelevant.  And any concept which is totally irrelevant all the way down to the root position of man’s existence cannot have any meaning at all.  And anything that has NO meaning cannot actually exist TO man.  Ever.  Something with utterly NO meaning means that man cannot know it.

Thus, if man can observe “not inclined” so that he can define “inclined”, then man cannot be “inclined” by existential nature.  Inclined must thus be a choice of man, not a product man’s SELF.  A  choice driving man to action, and rooted in assumptions.  Thus, all evil is really a function of man’s assumptions (ideas, doctrines, beliefs, etc.) never a function of man himself.

*

Since all humans are inclined towards sin, there can be no median from which to quantify any standard deviation that could logically be identified as a trend of “inclination”.

This will further be elaborated in part three.  Stay tuned.

One thing we all must realize:  Those who wish to rule over men and women fall into two categories.  1. Those who are the followers (yes, they too claim power over you via “enlightenment”) of despots and tyrants, giving into the “comfort” of their intellectual laziness and/or self-loathing by surrendering their minds and wills to those assholes.  2.  The assholes themselves.  The tyrants, dictators, narcissists, megalomaniacs, psychotics and despots who want to rule you for no other reason than to slake their own evil and insatiable hunger for human flesh.

The single greatest piece of propaganda they use to bludgeon the masses into submission is the idea that human existence is the root source and substance of all the evils in the world.  The singular BEING of man is why there is such misery, they will tell you.  The fact that you cannot do good because at your essence you aren’t good is how they convince you to surrender your mind and body and possessions to them.  Their altruism goes like this:  give all to me, as the Primary Consciousness demands (God, or the Church, or the State, or the Party, or the Race, or the Workers, or the Less Privileged, or the Culture), and we will, as divine proxies, save you from yourself.  What this really does is preach that YOU don’t actually exist.  You are always a function of some force outside yourself.  Without them, this force is known as your “depraved (read, categorically evil and an affront to God just for being born) nature”; but with them in charge, they will exchange that all determining force with another:  “grace” (or some form thereof, which is simply absolution for your evil existence).  In either case, again, YOU are never YOU.  You don’t exist, and as such, whether “depraved” or “under grace” you are completely outside of the existential equation.  Therefore, you never, ever have any legitimate claim to your life, your mind, or your property.  Once you concede your complete existential/ontological irrelevancy, they OWN you.

(Quick bit of advice:  If you are considering churches, be sure to give a wide berth to any one with “grace” in its title.  “Grace Community Church”, “Sovereign Grace Ministries”, “Grace Fellowship”, “Grace Body of Christ”, etc., etc.  “Grace” is almost always a code word (read: deception) for utter doctrinal devotion to tyrannical ideas like Total Depravity and Predestination (determinism)/Election among others.  Beware!  And avoid at all costs.)

In Christian circles, this piece of propaganda is known as the doctrine of “Total Depravity”.  If you look up any Protestant church (and the Catholics have their own version, trust me…I just don’t know what they call it.  Oh yeah, they call it the Pope…see, you need a “Pope” to lay down the rules for all you savages; he saves you from your depraved belief that YOU can actually think for yourself and do good apart from the “Church”)…if you look up any Protestant church on the web and look under “Statement of Faith” or “What We Believe”, I guarantee you seven or eight times out of ten you will see a reference to the “total depravity of man”.  Stay the fuck away from that church.

But should you ignore my sage and eloquent advice and do not stay the fuck away, instead deciding that Grace Fellowship Brethren Grace Church of God’s Sovereign Grace is a place you’d like to get to know, for some horrible reason, you might run into the doctrine of Total Depravity and decide you have some questions about it because something just isn’t sitting well with you in the common sense department.  And you may find yourself irresistibly tempted to approach the man in the khaki pants and the shirt which is too big and the tie which is too small…or the hipster youth with the spikey hair and the the khaki pants but this time hanging low on the waist and with Converse Chuck Taylor shoes.  And should you have the impudence and temerity to actually question the mystics you will undoubtedly be treated to a veritable cornucopia of bullshit equivocations.  “Total depravity doesn’t mean man is as sinful as he could be”; or “Total depravity means that man is totally depraved in his ability to please God” (honestly, I don’t even know what the fuck that means, but I read it just yesterday in the comments thread of a blog I occasionally peruse), among others.  The more astute and/or seasoned mystic shills will likely punt the entire doctrine into the great cosmic abyss of God’s mystery.  They will shrug and then pensively drone on about how God’s ways are beyond us and we should just follow along and do as He says…for our own good, of course.

If that doesn’t satisfy you (and it soooo shouldn’t) then they’ll simply shrug again and give you a sympathetic stare–similar to the way they might look at a four year old who has shit his pants because the poor little fellow just hasn’t gotten the hang of his potty training–and explain that you’ll just have to believe before you can understand.  If you would just accept Jesus and cast all your little questions upon his shoulders (“because he cares for you”), you’d become like them…under God’s “grace”, and just knowing that they know.

Yeah.  You know what this is?  When someone argues that you have to agree FIRST, before you can understand?  (Or that they just know that they know…or, as I heard one person put it:  “I just know that I know that I know”.  Which merely proved that they really didn’t.)  This is what a belief utterly devoid of reason looks like.  It looks like mysticism and acts like tyranny and results inexorably in man’s destruction…it is cultish and completely reliant upon the intellectual surrender and sacrifice of its followers and accomplices.  ANY person, no matter how altruistic or humble or kind or sage or meek or innocent they may seem, who argues from the perspective that logically reconcilable ideas and assumptions are actually the antithesis and enemy of their “truth” should be rejected out of hand and their ideas vociferously denied.

Gotta break.

Stay tuned for part two.

David, this is why I love your comments.  They get me going…the thinking juices flowing, the motivation striding.  And the best part is that I do not necessarily find myself ever completely disagreeing with you.  I see where you are going with your thinking and I like and get it.  I just think the way you approach your ideas is…well, it’s certainly interesting and unique (this is not a sideways insult, btw), but it makes assumptions which I think need to be rationally tweaked, if I can say that without sounding like an arrogant prick.

Maybe I can’t.  I’ll let you be the judge.  If I can’t…touche; I can see that.

You wrote:

I think you are thinking of morality in terms of positive commandments. I only think of morality in terms of negative commandments. When I say morality I mean: Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. I never mean anything like giving to the poor, etc. So often people confuse morality with benevolence. Morality is a necessity. Benevolence is just a nice to have. I don’t believe in any obligation to feed the poor, but I do believe in any obligation to not defraud them. Once people try to make morality based on positive commandments (do’s) rather than negative (don’ts) then you have tyranny.

*

David…and, see, that’s the rub.  Your observation is precisely why people MUST think critically when evaluating any idea, but particularly any idea which claims authority as a “law” or a “commandment”.  Because we so quickly resort to our default Platonism:  abstractions rule men, men don’t rule themselves.  Meaning is outside of man; and man is obligated to organize his life around the ethereal abstractions as if they are absolute and he and his life exist purely to conform to the “ideal” (the “form”).  Instead of the other way around, which is the only rational way of living.  It has become so second nature to us…hell, I would not even say “second” nature.  Our default nature IS our Platonist assumptions.  I mean…look, the entire fucking Standard Model of Physics is utterly rooted in irreconcilable Platonist metaphysical assumptions.  Obviously all matter inexorably will trend towards infinity…this is just a natural function of the reality of everything’s inherent BEING.  In order for any “law of nature” to work, there needs to be the OBJECT which IS in order to receive the influence of the “law”.  That is, all objects need to possess the inherent and innate ability to be acted upon by any law; and it is this which is the root of their existence.  The SELF of whatever is…must be infinite.  And yet, there they go, building billion or trillion dollar super colliders looking for the infinite, dimensionless particle which is the building block of all matter.  A particle which even a cursory infusion of reason into the entire fucking premise will tell you cannot possibly exist.  There is no such thing as “a particle” which exists separately from all that IS and yet is the source of all that is.  You cannot have the INFINITE source of what is be separated from everything which is a direct function of it.  This is simple logic.  An absolute cannot be parsed by “space” or “time”.

Anyway…you get my point.  And Christians aren’t any more reasonable…oh, hell no.  Our contradictory doctrines are a punch line to a bad fucking joke going back almost two thousand years to St. Augustine.  So quickly do Christians resort to Platonism that we make statements like “God creates man out of nothing”.  Nothing cannot literally exist, by definition…so, how does that work exactly?  God made the world in six literal “days”, when a day didn’t exist until man decided to invent the concept.  “Day” is an abstraction, and abstractions come from where?  Man’s mind.  If man wasn’t around, then neither is was a “day”.

And what also doesn’t work?  The idea that man can be commanded to do a “not”.  Every action of man is a function of man’s infinite being…thus, all man does is DOING, it cannot be NOT doing.

 Let me explain.

*

There is no such thing as a “negative” commandment.  All commandments require men to ACT…which is to do.  Since BEING is the source of man’s life, and being is perpetually active, and is the singularly infinite source of all man IS and does, man cannot, by definition, do “nothing”.  “Nothing” is a metaphysical/epistemological, even mathematical, placeholder.  It does not actually exist.  When God says “do not murder”, He is not advocating that man do “nothing”, which is a logical impossibility.  The implicit imperative behind these “negative” commands compels man to ACT: they are assumptions (ideas) which should lead to the volitional doing of things.

And the assumptions behind the Ten Commandments which man then uses to compel his actions are devoted to a singularity of TRUTH/MORALITY…that is, the infinite standard by which the Ten Commandments can be known as good and true.  That is, man is to use the assumptions to DO something in service to the standard.  In all Ten Commandments I submit the standard is man’s SELF…his LIFE, his singular existence.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that man’s life then is the authority behind the “law”.  Thus, just as I said in my article, the Law ceases to be a law at all…for it lacks any authority of itself, no matter where it is from or who gave it (the “state”, the “church”; even God, Himself), to either condemn or justify/affirm man.  Man’s existence is the singular authority behind any “law”.  Period.  Full stop.  Which makes man the only real authority.

This is why the Law can never justify nor condemn…and why I am a Christian, not a Jew, even though I obviously understand and affirm the usefulness of the Law in laying the foundation of right assumptions in a world where insane and destructive Platonist philosophy burns up cities and nations like a napalm bomb the size of the fucking moon.  But “law”, no matter which one, gets its authority from man’s life, which means that man is never ethically obligated to a law.  On the contrary…the law is ethically obligated to serve the individual.  And the individual is only ethically obligated to his own existence.

I do affirm your assertion that “morality is necessary”.  Truly.  But why?  What is morality saying exactly?  Morality is literally NOTHING MORE than declaring the individual human the standard of GOOD (and TRUTH).  Any other definition of morality is not rationally defensible.  Kantianism, Platonism, Marxism, Calvinism, Socialism, Collectivism, Communism, Theocracies, Monarchies…none of these have a rational basis for their standard of morality.  Thus, morality as an ideal is only valid if we are speaking of the right of each individual person to wholly own themselves.

So I agree that morality is necessary, but not any morality…because there is no such thing as any morality.  Morality is only non-relative/non-equivalent, and thus RATIONAL and reasonably EFFICACIOUS, if the standard is man’s life.  This is true for any conceptual abstraction (idea), whether it is morality, or space, or time, or math, or blue, or purple, or distance, or flavor, etc..  All ideas serve and affirm man’s life and/or make it possible for man to organize his environment in service to the promotion of his life…or they are false; they are irrational, and should be rejected out of hand.

Man simply CANNOT function off of mutually exclusive presumptions.  Leading your cart with a philosophy that has no reconcilable definitions/assumptions/and by extension conclusions–and thus no meaning, and thus no relevance TO life because its ideas contradiction themselves–WILL never bring peace because peace preserves life.  And life, of course, without a rational standard by which to know it objectively so that it can be pursued efficaciously is impossible to affirm.  A philosophy, a “world view”, a “faith”, a revelation which can by no means be rationally married to the individual life’s inexorable and singular frame of reference/context (that is, the context of his SELF, NOW) MUST be antithetical to life, because life is only efficaciously and objectively pursued when it is understood to be a direct relationship between a standard of all TRUTH–which must and can only be man’s SELF, NOW, in this material context– and concepts and actions which move in DIRECT service to that standard.  Without an objective standard of TRUTH, which is LIFE of SELF, NOW, concepts and actions are ships with no rudder, and no anchor by which to stop and contemplate where they are going.  They float around aimlessly until they inevitably crash and burn and sink, without purpose and without meaning.  There is no reaching the shore, or anywhere else, because the shore does not exist.  The ships have literally no where to go, because there is no definable objective.  The ships have no where to go because they have no idea why in the fuck they are there in the first place.  So they go nowhere except, eventually, straight to the bottom.

This denial of the standard of TRUTH being man’s individual SELF, NOW, in this material context is a problem because human beings are wholly conceptual agents.  It is our ability to conceptualize the SELF of our individual person as opposed to the OTHER of our environment and other people which allows us to define not only what LIFE is objectively (as the SELF) but to then conceptualize what we observe in order to organize it in service to our LIFE.  It is this ability to “see” beyond ourselves via abstract concepts (up, down, left, right, hard, soft, fast, slow, here, there, cold, hot, direct, circular, black, blue, time, space, distance, stick, ball, chair, house, fort, wall, stab, slash, weak, soft, etc., etc) which puts man at the top of the food chain.  By giving man choice…thus man possesses the unique ability to act in the the most efficacious way possibly in service to his life.  When confronting the angry lion he can make the distinction between “fight” and “flee”, and then CHOOSE which of those concepts to follow at the moment…which offers him the best way to preserve his life.  An animal cannot make this distinction.  An animal cannot organize its environment by separating “SELF” from “OTHER”.  An animal may instinctively pursue its own life, but it cannot conceptualize it or the environment in order to volitionally  pursue the best option for living at any given moment.  If the environment does not happen to possess readily a means for the instinctive animal to live, it will die.  It will not cross its mind to consider altering the environment in service to its life.  Either the environment is conducive to life or it is not.  Now, certainly a bird can fly south for the winter, but its ability to fly is its tool for living, not its ability to conceptualize.  It will move to warmer weather, but it cannot build a fire so that it does not have to move.  It cannot build a shelter by which to keep the cold air out.  For the animal, the environment controls behavior categorically.  It will never alter its behavior to serve a SELF in the conceptual sense.  Meaning, it cannot fundamentally change its “nature” to pursue its own life.  A beaver will build its dam so long as their is material to do so, but it will never decide to NOT build a dam when there is no material and seek to make use of some other means of shelter.  A squirrel will climb things as long as there are things to climb.  But it will never decide not to climb things because there is a better, more efficient way to pursue its life.  Again, the environment ALWAYS is the direct dictator of how an animal acts.  Animals always act linearly.  There is never any distinction made between the SELF and anything else, so that the SELF can be pursued in a myriad of ways, even if it means altering the fundamental “nature’ of who the animal is.  Birds don’t all of a sudden start to walk around on the ground because it is more conducive to their SELF.   If a bird cannot fly, a bird will eventually, sooner rather than later, die.  The bird will not think to make a fortress, and live in that fortress, and organize its life in a new way using the fortress as the new primary means of survival, against its natural tendency, in order to live.  (Yes, I understand that birds do not have opposable thumbs, but this is not strictly a matter of physical ability.  On the contrary, the primary limitation of animals, and why man rules over them categorically, is cognitive.  A bird would not need opposable thumbs to say, build a nest which was surround by sides and a roof, and to stuff the holes with mud, and to pluck its own feathers to make a downy interior.  Or to pick up a sharp stick in its beak and stab the cat with it.  It doesn’t do this because it doesn’t think to do this, because it does not conceptualize.)

A little side note:  Now, when I say man can “change his nature” I do not mean that man’s SELF changes.  What I  mean is that man’s ability to conceptualize SELF means that man can be a tree dweller, or a desert dweller, or a tundra dweller…he can change his actions in service to life, even if it means not playing to his inherent physical attributes.

But man does not in any way think like an animal, I submit.  Man acts in service to SELF, not to the environment.  The environment may dictate what choices man makes, but it will not alter the standard of the conceptualized SELF as the motive for what man does and why he does it.

The power of choice is a direct function of the power to conceptually abstract.  But all choice must be in service to something–for no choice is an end to itself–and the only logical something is mans’ LIFE.  And further, there is no such thing as any rational nor efficacious pursuit of choice in service to death.  That is called insanity.

And it is also called “Christian Orthodoxy” and “sound doctrine”.

When the conceptual abstractions man devises in order to pursue his life are contradictorily divorced from the singularity of man’s material SELF, then they must demand man’s death.  If they are divorced from man’s brain, they become absolute and infinite.  Instead of promoting man, they demand his death in service to their infinity.  Instead of serving man, they seek to destroy him, seeing him as nothing more than an imperfect limitation on the perfect infinity of the abstract concept which, in a vacuum of itself, cannot co-exist with man or God or anything else.  This is axiomatic.  The abstract concept of “blue”, divorced from a material (physical) and finite object by which to give it a value by which it can be observed, known, and integrated into man’s LIFE, and pressed into man’s service, must be infinite.  Meaning, the concept is the end and beginning of itself.  It has no definition and no relevancy beyond itself.  “Blue IS” is the only definition of the concept of “blue” absent a material THING.  

You see, if our life, our SELF, no longer is the standard, because we have decided that the standard of TRUTH, which should be the SELF, is now utterly outside ourselves, then all the concepts we create which are suppose to affirm and propagate the SELF go to serve whatever we decide is the standard of TRUTH outside of us.  The problem with that is that any standard outside of the SELF is by definition not only infinite, but by logical extension, categorically unknowable.  What is infinite cannot be observed, axiomatically. And if it cannot be observed it cannot be defined, known, or limited

Now, for those of you who are raising your hands in protest, remember, that which you concede you don’t know is a direct function of your ability to observe what you observe and thus DO know.  In other words, there is no such thing as what we don’t know…for what we don’t know is a conceptual abstraction; it does not actually exist.  We make conjectures about what we don’t know, again, by directly observing what we do.

At any rate, when our concepts are not conceded to be direct extensions of our physical SELVES, NOW, then they are divorced from  man entirely.  Thus, our concepts go to serve some phantom in the sky (because if we cannot set the standard of TRUTH as SELF, then we have no rational frame of reference to actually define anything, much less God) or some other concept/abstraction, neither of which has anything relevant to do with us (because, again, it is wholly outside our existential frame of reference:  the human SELF).  The logical conclusion then of this kind of thinking is that our concepts are not supposed to serve our SELF, but they go to serve something NOT us.  Which means that our concepts go to serve our death, no longer our life.  We exist to DIE, is the point.  And notice that in Calvinism, just like every other bastard son of Plato, man’s DEATH is the greatest moral good he can do.  Deny yourself, sacrifice your life, your money, your property…reject reason, reject emotions and your own understanding of right and wrong.  All your ideas are steeped in depravity, making it impossible for you to make any kind of right judgement; reject your own conscience in service to that which you are utterly incapable of grasping because it is wholly outside of you.  Look at the cross, cross, cross…and never move beyond it because the death of man, the destruction of life, is the panacea for all of life’s ills and sins.

And that is what Calvinism is.  A cult of death, as John Immel rightly and poignantly concludes. We never move beyond the cross and neither does God. Jesus is nailed there as a constant reminder of what is demanded of you:  your very existence.  It is gone, from the womb to eternity.  Whether you think so or not, YOU were dead (i.e. not YOU) when you got here and you will be dead when you leave.  There is no overcoming death in Calvinism, there is only its wholesale worship.  Even after you are saved, notice your free will is still utterly null and void.  You are still a product of evil; all your good deeds as a Christian are not really of you, they are of God.  Whatever you earned, no matter how hard you worked or how many hours you put it, you don’t deserve.  It doesn’t belong to you; it’s all God’s (how many times have you heard that tidbit of rational rape).  You can work until your back hurts and still  you don’t deserve what you earned.

How is this possible?

Because there is no you.  You ARE evil…you don’t just CHOOSE evil.  And as such, there is no YOU at all.  Thus anything “good” you receive, insofar as you are able to define a “good thing” (you aren’t), must by logical extension be purely God’s grace. You can’t deserve anything or earn anything no matter how hard you work because you are not really the human you, the SELF, you are the conceptual abstraction of EVIL. 

And you are right.  When you think about it, none of this makes any fucking sense at all.

You obey, but it doesn’t matter.  Why?  Because your life doesn’t matter.  In Christ you are dead, just as you were before, except that now the contradiction becomes “divinely ordained”; a product of your “election”.  Unsaved your death is punished.  Saved your death is rewarded.  The same depraved self, the same definition of moral perfection:  death.  The only thing that changes is now hell is redefined as heaven; it is purely a matter of word swapping. What each one actually IS, doesn’t change, because the meanings of “heaven” and “hell” are irrelevant to a SELF which does not actually exist to know them.  You cannot ever rationally make a distinction between heave and hell because you do not exist as a free agent who can actively observe his/her life and universe, make moral and epistemological judgments and pursue them.  And as such, you have no ability to really know anything because you cannot define SELF.  You are first depravity incarnate, and now in Christ you are morality incarnate.  Both are forces which possess your body, but exclude your mind…somehow (again, its all bullshit).  For this type of person, any distinction between heaven and hell is immaterial because there is no YOU to understand the difference anyway.

I want to hammer, hammer, hammer down this point.  In Calvinism/Reformation theology (and collectivism/communism, scientific determinism, socialism, fascism, Platonism, gnosticism, Kantianism, etc., etc.), there is no way to define YOU.  You are utterly removed from any metaphysical and epistemological equation.

And that is why it is all, by definition, a lie.  YOU are the only rational objective singularity in your existence.  Therefore, any idea which denies this must be a total lie.  Period.  Full stop.  There is no such thing as a philosophy which does not start with the individual existence of the human SELF.

Here is how they bullshit their way around it:

The utter contradiction in Reformed theology, which exists like a cancerous leaven in essentially every doctrine and every orthodoxy of Christianity in the world today, is that you are dualistic in your existence.  There is an infinite schism in man’s metaphysic. He both is and is not.  He knows and knows not.  He can choose and not choose.  He is evil and he is good.  He has distinct body and distinct spirit, which are each complete.  He is finite and infinite.

Man is not one; he is a a function of two essences which are mutually exclusive. This is the metaphysical assumption of Christianity in our day.  And therefore contradiction is and must always be the root of our “faith” and our theology, and thus our philosophy.  There is no such thing as a rationally founded or a rationally conclusive philosophy which can proceed from a metaphysical dualism; from a severed SELF.  Ever the two parts of man will contradict…and this is why Christianity is more a force of human destruction today; and it is a world view the likes of which are not actually philosophically discernible from communism/collectivism, fascism, Islamism, atheism, determinism, mysticism, gnosticism, Platonism, and the political theory which drives and has driven every two bit dictator in the world.  Tyranny and naked despotism is Christianity’s handmaiden, and it all goes back to the inconsistency of its Platonist ideas.

Man never gets to be what he is NOW, in this life, in this body, observing what he sees NOW and judging it and organizing it with respect to how it affirms his moral goodness and right to live and be NOW.  And this is why Christianity in general will continue to be a destructive force in the world, loving death and power more than it loves God or His children, or Christ and His salvation.  It will continue to worship man’s death and pursue it as the means to spiritual perfection.

And even worse is the marriage between a philosophy of death and the love of money.  They go hand in hand.  The death-is-life business is very profitable.  If you convince people that they don’t matter, then you can easily convince them that what they have and what they do doesn’t matter.

Now…are you connecting the dots?  Are you seeing why the ecclesiastical “authority” is so invested in Calvinism? Convince people to fear and hate themSELVES and they will fear and hate WHAT THEY OWN…and give it to you.  And that is the big motherfucking point of it all. They don’t give a shit about people, but they sure as hell want to get their paws on the cheddar people own.

It is a long and very old story, going back to the beginning of time…to the seeds of evil.  If you can successfully separate people from who they are, then you can very easily separate them from the property they possess.

Works every time, too.  Church is a gooooooooood fucking business.  And from the looks of things, it will continue to be.

“The more you bend your will to me, the more you function as a constant source of my own affirmation, and perpetually concede my right to claim you for myself and mine own ends, so that I may demand your ongoing succor, worship, adulation, and capitulation to my vacillating and fickle needs and whims; and thus, the more I can love myself.  Which is, of course, the point of it all.  Mine own adulation is the single greatest and most prestigious moral action in the entire universe.  The purpose of all that exists is to facilitate my adoration of myself.  In this sense, you are at the same time needed and wholly unnecessary to the purpose and material reality of the universe.  I am eternal, you are non-existent.  You, insofar as we choose to label you “you”, are merely an extension of me, so that I can feel through you, and claim your life-force for myself.  And yet, the contradiction which is so obvious to everyone except me is this:  without you and the succor and affirmation you are obliged and commanded by me to grant, I am faced with the crushing guilt of what I know is my infinite inadequacy.  And worse, I am made aware of the actual truth, which is not that I am spectacularly inadequate, but that I am merely an average man.  I am not particularly brilliant nor successful nor smart nor special, and even my failures are unimpressive.  And this is something that I,the narcissist, cannot endure.  Because I cannot accept average because there is no, and never has been any middle ground with me.  I am either the paragon of life gone utterly wrong, which I lived with for a time as a child, or I am God incarnate to the universe, which I became in order to kill that useless child.  And so now I am not average, you see…for this I cannot accept lest I die. I am Him and He is me when He affirms me.  And you are me when you affirm me.  And when you and He does not, then you both are void.”

This is the lie in the mind of the narcissist; it is his creed, if you will.  It is perpetually before him as the singular philosophy which defines his every living moment.  The inherent contradictions are brushed off as either irrelevant or the narcissist considers it his divine right to define and/or re-define reality in service to his “perfection”.  The never-ending violations of logic are like the climaxes of a serial rapist, feeding his false sense of intellectual and even physical superiority.  For he truly believes that he is able to see things others cannot see, to know things others cannot know, to do things others cannot do.  His presumed ability to redefine reality at will so that it bends to his emotional and psychological needs does not tell him that he should seek professional help, or that his understanding is skewed, for it is impossible for him to concede that he could ever make an irrelevant or irrational statement, or believe a contradictory belief.  So, rather than prove his need for psychiatric treatment and remediation from his destructive lifestyle, the narcissist’s irreconcilable “logic”, on the contrary, is abject evidence that no mere mortal understands the depths and complexity of his psyche (when the reality is that the narcissist is about as uncomplicated a personality as exists…all narcissists, though they think they are so unique, think the same, and their thinking is not particularly deep).  The narcissist is the lone genius in a sea of imbeciles who pretend to understand him, to counsel him, and yet he knows that they cannot possibly apprehend his mind and emotions.  When he is happy, you cannot fathom the degree of happiness, for it so transcends your pitiful emotions.  And when he is in despair, his suffering has no equal in the world, and the circumstances surrounding his anguish are of course positively epic in scope…you could never understand the weight of the responsibility he shoulders; the burdens his poor soul must endure.  You simply don’t understand, and never will, so don’t try.

Your purpose is never to criticize or offer counsel, suggestion, or advice…for this is a rank insult to his superior status.  And never, ever hint at his own culpability in the matter, for to do so will invite an onslaught vitriol and invective.  The only thing you can possibly offer him is a shoulder to cry on; to be the one who affirms his greatness and tells him that all men of infinite moral worth and intellectual perfection must frequently endure the torches of the commoners –those empty-headed automatons who run in pointless circles, only shells of life.   You must reassure him that his plight is merely proof that he is far above the rest; that his Tower of Babel he has been successfully built, and its greatness is such that not even God can  bring it down.  Reassure him that his victory in the face of such Herculean odds is inevitable; that he has proven time and time again the superiority of his intellectual and psychological fortitude and his physical stamina, of which no mortal words can adequately describe.  Tell him without reservation that he is the personification of stalwart resilience.  He is invincible, everyone else temporal, expendable, and doomed to eternal failure and to the curse of the fires of hell.  After a while he will come out of his funk, brimming with narcissistic supply, and able to see once again that all the universe rises and falls by his will and purpose.

Well…he will come out of his funk for a time, anyway, until his narcissistic supply runs shallow, which it always inevitably does, as reality has a cruel way of inexorably intruding upon the narcissistic fantasy…and then the cycle will begin again.

*

You think I am exaggerating?  Really? Then I submit you have never met a true narcissist.  Your incredulity is irrelevant…and I mean that not as an insult, but only as a matter of fact.  Not only is this not an exaggeration, I have likely not done justice to his perceptions of himself.  The level of self-deception and false hubris is likely beyond what one who is not a narcissist can adequately explain.  Truly, these are sick people, and that is the primary thing you need to know.

And they have their own theology, in the form of neo-Calvinism and the resurgence of Reformation ideals.

And they are quite probably right now running your church.

Are you afraid?

You should be.

*

The narcissist will regale you with long and ostentatious tales of his unconditional love; of the free gift of his grace and doting heart; of his immaculate and infinitely sacrificial charity…

…and then he will proceed to innumerate, without skipping a beat, your countless moral deficiencies which constantly foil and restrain his “free” grace and his “unconditional” love.  In short, you soon find out that with the narcissist, every day is opposite day.  “Unconditional” means absolutely conditional in every way imaginable.  “Free” means absolutely at severe cost to you.  If you want to partake of his divine and corpulent dispensations, you must pony up the narcissistic supply.  Your claim to your self-ownership is the single greatest condition which prevents the narcissist from bestowing upon you anything at all, even the mere recognition of your existence.  You are either a source or potential source of narcissistic supply, or you are void.  Irrelevant. Non-existent.  Disregarded.  Out of sight and out of mind.

The narcissist will never hesitate to contradict himself to your face in service to his full-on farce of existential superiority…for what does he have to fear?  Again, need I remind you that your existence is so immaterial that it isn’t even truly recognized.  Whatever contradictions you may point out to him are dismissed or savaged as yet another condition of yours which presents a stumbling block to his “unconditional” love.  His “free” and “unfetter” desire to show you his perfect grace is fettered by your faults, of which he is, of course, categorically allowed (hypocritically) to point out.  And your stubborn insistence on your existence is the biggest motherfucker of all your “conditions”.

Let do that again.

Your existence is the insufferable condition which will automatically exclude you from the grace and love of the narcissist.  The narcissist, in so many words, will explain that it is, at the root, your very being which is the primary problem…why you can’t understand him, why you can’t possibly commune with him, why you must be punished.  For your own good, he will hypocritically and contradictorily explain.  He will deflect the accusations (either from you or from the small, thin voice of his “true self” which is little more than a dried up husk of the actual human being he used to be) of his own hypocrisy by arguing that the reason his unconditional love may appear hypocritical is because you persist in the lie that you are actually YOU…that you even exist to have an opinion concerning him or anything else at all.  You, not him, are the hypocrite who makes your own existence the condition which then must preclude an unconditional love.  Your refusal to renounce your individual, autonomous SELF is why instead of unconditional love he is forced to heap upon you hate and violence and endless criticism. The sin of your existence has created a condition in you which is the root of all your pain (of which you are of course wholly culpable for, somehow).  And the condition is defined thus:  that you insist (rightly) that you must be YOU in order to receive love, grace, adoration, revelation, and reconciliation, which, of course, renders the unconditional love a categorical contradiction in you.  Your very existence is the condition which precludes the unconditional love.  This is otherwise known, in certain peculiar theologies, as “total depravity”.

For you neo-Calvinist survivors…is any of this sounding more and more familiar?  Of course it is.  Narcissism is narcissism is narcissism.  Wherever it is found, in whatever form, the template is always the same.  You exist to serve someone else, or you do not exist.  In other words, you don’t exist…you are merely an extension of those who claim to rule over you by divine mandate.

By demanding that “unconditional” love require an object in YOU that it may be defined and known as love, you have contradicted the narcissist’s root assumption:  that he alone is actually aware of SELF.  By insisting that YOU are a prerequisite to any relationship involving something specifically directed at YOU–that YOU must come first in any equation involving the transference of value between YOU and someone/something else–automatically proves that you cannot possibly be elect.  As in Calvinism, the entire problem narcissists have with people is that they always want to BE people, individually, and self aware.  That is the sin of them totally defined.  And that is what the narcissist despises, because it demands that the entire philosophy is one of relationship, not of rule.  And the narcissist, like the Calvinist, insists that the only real existence is one in which you have no actual volition of your own.

You see, in a relationship, moral worth is equal.  In rule, right is claimed by special, unknowable, divine mandate, which always ends up “verified” to the masses through their wholesale slaughter and oppression.  And human value is replaced by divine right to either own or destroy the opposition.  For indeed, the right to destroy the premise of humanity’s own existence is the narcissist’s idea of a perfect world.  He rules you, period.  Full stop.

It is this claim–that of your autonomous self–which enrages the narcissist like nothing else can.  He does not tolerate the presence of any other volitional agent, not even God.  Your claim to self-being and self-ownership invites his wrath like a line of cocaine invites a drug addict to snort.  Because what it says to the narcissist is that he is obligated to consider you in the relationship, and thus may not then reserve all his unconditional love for himself.  By claiming your own SELF–and even worse, the moral and existential equality of your own SELF–you deny him his “rightful” place at the center of the universe.  Interaction cannot be wholly self-serving.  He must share his charity and affection with you…and this notion utterly contradicts and distorts the narcissist’s twisted definition of love.  You see, to the narcissist, unconditional love means love which is completely self-directed.  Since your existence presents a condition which denies his definition of “unconditional”, he rejects your claim to SELF entirely.  He will see you dead or destroyed…or, more likely, will abandon you, before he cedes one inch of love to you.  The only love is the love reserved for him.  If it is not directed solely inward, it is not love, by definition.  It is a lie, a farce, and a sin.  He is the only one who does not present a condition which precludes unconditional love.  Because he is the source of all love (and everything else), due to the fact that he alone is morally perfect, he alone gets to say what is done with it.  And since no one else can receive it because no one else exists–and those who “do” deny the unconditional love by the condition of their existence–all the love must go to him.  

(As an aside, those of you with narcissistic parents might have noticed how they abandoned you emotionally and psychologically as soon as you attained a modicum of self-sufficiency and self-acknowledgement.  Oftentimes, narcissistic parents are less likely to be violent with their children (though they certainly can be) and will instead resort to savage emotional abuse and the “silent treatment” as punishment for perceived slights to their perfection.  The most egregious slight being, again, any claim to your self-ownership/existence.)

A person with clinical Narcissistic Personality Disorder is, unfortunately, beyond hope and beyond help.  The human being who once embodied the vacuous shell which is now seen has been emaciated and destroyed by a long, tortured death inside the narcissist’s psychological iron maiden.  The vacuous shell is merely a semblance of a human being; a robot, charged and rebooted by the souls of others which program love into him so that he can “feel”.  Nothing is real to the narcissist.  Everything is a contradiction, a lie, a masquerade.  The love he feels for himself isn’t love at all.  It is hate.  The love he feels for others isn’t love at all.  It is rage.  The things he concedes about himself are the stuff fantasy movies are made of.  Reality brings the realization of his average status, and his wholly inadequate ability to live up to the illusion he has created.  Thus, reality is death, and he avoids it like the plague.

If this series on narcissism reads like a Calvinist theological catechism, do not be surprised.  You have judged correctly.  For Calvinism, like narcissism is merely another bastard son of Plato.  The Primary consciousness is the narcissist’s shell, rather than the Pastor/Priest-in-the-stead, but the functional assumptions are precisely the same, as are the outcomes.  Nothing beyond the cult of personality is real.  All either sacrifices itself to the “authority” of the vessels of the “revelation”, or it is sacrificed to the vessels by divine mandate.

Existence is sin.  SELF precludes love.  You do not get to be you.

Proceeding from where we left off in the last post, let us examine rule number two with respect to the assumptions and consequential behavior of the narcissist, as I have come to see it:

The second rule of narcissism is that it is perhaps philosophically (that is, clinically described as) a form of masochism, but the practical application of it to others resembles more of sadism; though, again, there is not the abject hatred of humanity and the requisite pleasure derived from their suffering.  Nevertheless, it must be conceded that the behavior of the narcissist towards his fellow man is catastrophically destructive, ruining the lives of his fellow human beings with a remorseless violence–be it emotional or physical or both–and there is an almost vampire-like lust for their routine sacrifice to his appetites. Children of narcissists may (and often do, I believe) become victims of severe psychological disorders, such as panic/anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, narcissism dependency, or even become narcissists themselves.

Narcissists have capricious temperaments, and can react differently to the same situation or words/behavior of his fellow man, without reason.  One never knows how a narcissist will react in any given situation.  This uncertainly renders his victims skittish to the point of dysfunction if exposed for too long; and his vicious temper when confronted with what he perceives as an insult or a denial of his omnipotent perfection can render his victims emotionally broken for years to come, and maybe for the rest of their lives.

He may be labeled as a masochist, but I submit that if he is no friend to himself, the narcissist is even less of a friend to his fellow man.  And for that reason, I do not concede he is purely a masochist.  He may not take direct pleasure in the pain of others, but the fact that their exploitation results in his pleasure (and exploitation is indeed what it is, whether he understands this or not) in the form of narcissistic supply means that there is a dark streak of sadism running through his personality.  Indeed, it is this tendency to annihilate his victims with a stoic, emotionless savaging of their autonomous selves which thus groups the narcissist in with other severe psychological pathologies such as psychopathy/sociopathy and Borderline Personality Disorder.  Narcissism is self-hatred which translates into a blanket punishing of humanity by routinely engaging in behavior which denies and destroys it.

What this means is that engaging the narcissist is extremely hazardous to your health.  His inability to see other human beings as actually human leads to all manner of human destruction.  He has no compunction about damaging or destroying anyone whom he deems “broken” or unable to perform their “jobs” for the narcissist.  And your job is, of course, solely defined by the narcissist.  You obviously have no say.  He possesses no capacity for apprehending individual human contexts, personality nuances, or belief systems of other people; and as such these aspects of people’s humanity are entirely ignored by the narcissist.  He has no objective beyond self-preservation through the slaking of his insatiable appetite for narcissistic supply…a full slaking of course ever eluding him.  Indeed, it is my opinion based on my reading that his need for narcissistic supply is the only real barrier between narcissism and full-on psychopathy.

But again, it isn’t that the narcissist hates people.  His hatred is reserved purely for himself…which is why they are I think considered more masochistic than sadistic.  No, the narcissist cannot hate people or take direct pleasure in their pain precisely because, as I have explained, they do not acknowledge the existence of other people.  And though we may be tempted to consider the narcissist more…hmm, “desirable” than the psychopath; less dangerous perhaps (which he is to society at large in a sense, which he disregards as non-existent and irrelevant unless he is actively engaged with it) or more “stable”, we must remember that to deny another person their humanity–and by extension, their natural human rights (life, liberty, autonomy, property)–represents the zenith of human destruction.  It targets man at the place sure to do the most damage:  his very SELF.  To deny a person the right to claim his or her very material existence–their very essence and being–as actual and as their own is the single greatest act of immorality which can be perpetrated upon man, I submit.  It completely eradicates man at his source, the SELF, and everything that follows which is a product of their lives.  Further, when human beings are deemed non-existent then not only are they denied the knowledge of themselves, who are TRUTH in the only way rationally definable, they are denied knowledge of and access to God, Himself, by definition, who is man’s Creator, and as such is the single greatest affirm-er of individual human life in the entire universe.  But the narcissist says no.  The narcissist declares God the Creator of nothing.

If one were to ask me if I thought the devil himself were a psychopath or narcissist, I would deem him a narcissist.  The psychopath takes pleasure in hurting humans, and will taunt them by saying that not even God can help them once they become his target.  The narcissist will say that there are no other humans to hurt, and that there is NO God to help them, regardless of whether they are his “target” or not.  And no matter how many times they may say God and you exist, your narcissist does not actually believe it.  Not in the sense that he concedes they are autonomous entities in their own right.  They are forms of narcissistic supply, existing to satisfy his craving, nothing more.  God is treated with no greater deference than you are.

This sounds more like the devil to me than a psychopath.

If I am making narcissism out to be more appalling than you ever thought, good.  Narcissism is the scythe put to humanity.  And once you have come face to face with a real, actual, clinically defined Narcissistic Personality Disorder…well, trust me, the horror of that experience is not easily shaken, if it ever is.  To be stripped of your humanity in either a violent or a coldly indifferent instant, and thought of and looked at as literally nothing more than a jockstrap to hold someone’s sad little balls up…well, it’s frankly disturbing.

I submit that Calvinism is little more than narcissism in mystic guise, which is why when you hear of abuse in the neo-Calvinist church, it is so fucking horrific, and yet simultaneously played down or denied as not really such a big deal after all.  “God” is always bigger than the circumstance, of course (they won’t even deign to call it abuse most of the time) and has great plans which will come of it…but never for the victim you will notice.  No, the victims are merely the “vessels of wrath”; cosmic bed pans for the divinely called priests/pastors-in-the-stead to defecate in as an expression of God’s divine determinism.  God’s all-determining will, which is the vehicle for the abuse of course, renders the narcissistic church not only perfectly morally innocent of any consequences of the abuse, but the recipient of what will surely come to a blessing for the church because of it.  Because the church, in lock-step keeping with the assumptions of the narcissistic personality, can only ever do “God’s will”.  Which is to say, they can never do wrong, no matter how wrong it might look to you or I.

In Calvinism, just as is the clinical description of the narcissist, there is no YOU.  Only they exist.  Even God is merely an illusion.  The real deity is the pastor/priest…for their theology can make absolutely no metaphysical distinction.  There is no difference between God and His men “called”, somehow, to enlighten the masses to His absolute “truth”.

Stay tuned for part four.

In my experience, there are two essential rules which seem to undergird and describe Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  I do not mean symptoms, of which I believe there are nine mentioned in the psychiatric diagnostic and statistical manual.  I mean that these are assumptions you can make about how the narcissist views you and others; and what the practical effects are upon human beings who engaged them, when the narcissist acts in service to his assumptions.  These two rules are:

1.  You do not exist as you.  You are a machine, or an appliance, of which they presume to be the sole operator/proprietor.  Their wants, needs, and desires, no matter how insane, contradictory or capricious, you are to categorically reflect.  You are a program or a switch..and this is exactly how they see you.  They react in anger when you make even the slightest pretense of autonomous existence; when you do not respond according to the preconceived notion of their sole ownership of all the appliances (people) they “purchase” with their “affection” and their “attention”.  A person the narcissist has deemed as belonging to himself but does not acknowledge his slightest whim is treated as, again, a broken machine/appliance in need of “fixing”, which comes in the form of verbal/psychological/emotional abuse, physical violence, or a simple tossing aside like so much useless trash (ignoring or the “silent treatment”).  You see, your job is to serve as a vehicle for his convenience, and thus your role is to serve as nothing more nor less than the perpetual affirmer of his omnipotence and moral perfection; their supreme ontological importance.  In short, his infinitely superior agency makes him essentially God to you.  He does not understand the nuances of humanity, the many layers of thought, feeling, and motivation which drive a human being along the pathway of his or her life.  And I mean literally.  As in he literally does not understand humanity outside of the machine/appliance model.

It isn’t that the narcissist, like a psychopath, hates people as such.  It is that he is, again, literally unable to understand the nature of other human beings as equally self-aware, equally feeling entities.  He simply does not and cannot see you as a full-on personality of your own.  You are a machine, a robot, a computer, an appliance, a thing which is merely a human doppelganger, wearing merely a thin and unconvincing exoskeleton of human form.  Underneath you are wires and microchips and transistors, brackets and harnesses, nuts and bolts.  He assumes ownership of you like he would own a television, or a cell phone.  Your life is literally not your own.  It does not matter that you may live in a different neighborhood, or county, or state, and have your own house and car and job and family.  All of that is utterly irrelevant, and makes about as rational an impact in his thinking than if you were a washing machine claiming to have a social circle of its own.   All of your life is utterly ignored…and when you are out of sight. like an appliance, you are essentially out of mind.  He may call you, or have you over for a visit, or take you out on a date, but understand that this is not in service to, nor proof of, your own separate existence as a rational being.  No, this is merely how he accesses you.  Turning on the television requires him to pick up a remote and press a button.  Starting the stove involves walking to the kitchen and twisting a knob.  Starting you involves calling a number on his cell phone and a well-imitated pretense of interpersonal interaction.  That is it.  Any gift given to you on your birthday, Christmas, or “just because” is in service to him.  Filling up the car with gas gets him around town.  Showering you with compliments and gifts and false empathy or love fills you up so that you will continue to run in service to himself…dispensing your narcissistic supply like the television dispenses his favorite shows, or the stove dispenses his favorite brownies.

You must accept this.  You are not a person to him.  Ever.  No matter how much he may make you feel like one.  For the narcissist, it is an impossible realization and connection.  As incredulous as this might be, trust me…if you know a narcissist, evaluate your relationship with him in light of what you have just read.  You will be shocked, I submit, at the eerie and seemingly uncanny ability I possess to describe this person, whom I have never met, so perfectly.  But it isn’t that I have some kind of special revelation or extra sensory perception.  This is the face of narcissism, and it is consistent amongst people, collectively and individually. Truly, when you have seen one you have seen them all. The narcissist, I submit, is the closest a human being can come to being deprived of a soul.  To being merely a plastic person.  The irony here, of course, is that he is the machine, not you.  He is the appliance, and you exist to keep him running.  And deep down, somewhere within the corpse-like husk of his “true self” which he killed years and years ago, he knows this.  But he cannot acknowledge it, lest he die.  The fear of this truth being brought to bear on his consciousnesses is what keeps him going so inexorably, relentlessly, in pursuit of his coveted narcissistic supply.

So as I was saying…you are an element of, or an extension of himself, like any other piece of his property.  You exist only to do a job that he alone gets to define.  You are nothing more, and never will be.  Full stop. If you are friends with or otherwise involved with a narcissist this is the first thing you must come to terms with should you decided to remain in the relationship.  To attempt to advocate for your own autonomous SELF will only confuse and enrage the narcissist.  Do not bother.  It is a complete waste of time.  He possess no psychological or emotional capacity to understand nor concede.  Even if he swears he does, he does not.  Being in a relationship with a narcissist thus involves surrendering yourself to one of only two options:  Leave and do not look back, or stay and accept your place as a walking canvass for his whims and desires; an ever-present source and reflection of his own self-adulation.  Accept that you may never speak of yourself as an autonomous human being without inviting the abject wrath of the narcissist.  And always remember that the narcissist does not change.

Now, over time, faced with a weakening body and mind, which are unavoidable reminders of his own fallibility and temporal existence (which he generally does NOT ever think about, let alone concede), the narcissist may grow more tolerable, knowing that he no longer possesses the strength nor alluring presence and disposition with which to restrain you and your own self expression.  He may slowly slink back and accept at least practically what he never could intellectually.  But this will come only after years and years of abuse, torment, and psychological/emotional savaging at the hands of the narcissist.  And by that point, your capacity for self-expression and acknowledgement will likely be almost as blackened and corroded as the narcissists “true self”, which only briefly existed in childhood until the false self, the monster which has been the face of the narcissist ever since and the only “self” of his you have ever known, murdered it in service to his own perceived survival.  And should you choose to remain, long term, with your narcissist, you likely won’t know what to do with your autonomous SELF any more than that he ever did.

(Please stay tuned for part three)