Narcissist: Quo vadis? E-Book

Traute Wohlers-Scharf

• Herausgeber: novum pro Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 172

Beschreibung

The Alien Lotus visits Earth to investigate whether the blue planet can still be saved after the rapid rise of malignant narcissism, greed economy and corrupt politics. In the National Library in Vienna, Lotus meets the student and future journalist Marta, who has just been dumped by a narcissistic colleague. Together they rummage through the fundus of the library and meet old wisdoms and historical personalities who offer a deeper insight into the human soul and how one can proceed against human narcissism. The emphatic alien and the enterprising journalist seem to be getting closer...

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2024 novum publishing

ISBN print edition:978-3-99146-373-3

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99146-374-0

Cover images:With friendly permission of: Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Roma (MiC) – Bibliotheca Hertziana, Istituto Max Planck per la storia dell‘arte/Enrico Fontolan;Teamarbeit | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

www.novumpublishing.com

Preface

This book could not have been written in this form five years ago. And yet it contains nothing that could not have been thought and grasped for a long time ago.

To put it even more clearly: The facts described here were not only accessible to human thinking and feeling decades ago, but also in ancient times. What was missing, however, was the willingness, or even just the reason, to deal with the serious consequences of this development trend.

Aggression has always existed in interpersonal behavior. However, at present this has spread to a high percentage of mankind, predominantly in the western world. Additionally, the ‘greed-economy’ has become an accepted form on a collective level. On a personal level, people stick to the ‘Do ut des’ schema of ‘I give so that you give’. This explains the inability to transcend the personal space and go from a ‘having-consciousness’ to a ‘being-consciousness’.

In the recent past, a drastic surge of negative phenomena has taken place in many countries. A morbid society – with an octopus spread of power and information across national borders, to a worrying increase in aggressive violence, sexual abuse of children and young people, even bestiality – met a global pandemic in 2020-2022, and the aggressive war of Russia against Ukraine, starting on February 24th2022.

The entire Blue Planet is in a state of upheaval. It is the beginning of an accelerated evolution. A turning point is announced. A similarly dangerous situation of a nuclear conflict already existed in the 1960s, when the democratic West, the USA and Europe, faced the communist East, the USSR and its satellites. This crisis has been overcome.

Lotus, an alien visiting the Blue Planet, thinks in larger terms of time. He even includes Plato’s legend about Atlantis in his considerations: A highly developed civilization, driven by pride – ‘superbia’ – had launched a war of aggression and attrition against countries of the Mediterranean, which finally led to a cataclysmic downfall 12.000 years ago.

Hermes Trismegistos, an Atlantean who later became the Egyptian Thoth – god of wisdom – imparted hermetic principles to other ‘earthlings’. Only the inclusion of this wisdom and the hope for a change in the value system could counteract the current crisis.

This is the very mission of Lotus, who is investigating in the National Library in Vienna whether the qualities of ‘earthlings’, who acted and lived according to hermetic principles, could avert an atomic meltdown. Corresponding biographies are found for each of the seven hermetic laws – which are working throughout the whole cosmos and at all times:

Steven Hawking – the principle of the mindFriedrich Schiller – the principle of resonanceLaotse and the Tao Te King – the principle of vibrationMartha Graham – the principle of rhythmRainer Maria Rilke – the Principle of PolarityAgatha Christie – the principle of cause and effectHildegard von Bingen – the principle of gender

All of these people acted contrary to narcissistic behavior or solely for personal gain.

At the National Library, Lotus meets Marta, a young student who has just been dumped by her narcissistic friend and colleague. She has been dealing with the omnipresent topic of the narcissistic society already for a certain time. Now it has become her personal concern, which makes the analysis all the more emotional, but also more concise.

Driven by pain and disappointment, Marta, whose career goal is journalism, writes essays that characterize narcissism on a personal and collective level, (as well as the biographies of the three female representatives who lived according to hermetic principles):

Myth and origin of narcissismNarcissism in the circle of family, partner and childrenNarcissism reflected in gender

Marta and Lotus see in narcissistic behavior an equally destructive danger within the western world as an external nuclear attack: narcissism as an internal atomic bomb with a collective danger of destruction.

The encounter and the subliminal intergalactic flirt between Lotus and Marta invites you to smile. But the results of the investigation of the very angry journalist about narcissism in family and partnership are explosive. This proves that the Blue Planet is threatened not only by an external nuclear bomb, but also by the internal danger of collective narcissism in interpersonal relationships.

Despite all the dangers of a doomsday scenario, it is also the blunt intention of this book to be entertaining. The visit and experiences of the alien Lotus on the Blue Planet are described as part of a sci-fi story – in the past one would have chosen the form of a fable.

Lotus is to take stock of the acute risk of nuclear annihilation of mankind. This would also upset the balance of galaxies when the Blue Planet becomes nuclear waste. The situation is hopeless but not serious, as they say in Austria. However, there is a meta-level that also displays positive solutions.

So the outcome of this sci-fi story is also optimistic and gives hope that the ‘narcissus’ flower can overcome the death of the beautiful youth Narcissus. The hermetic principles of Hermes Trismegistos – which so many special people followed in the past – may find many followers today.

This story aims to tell and convey knowledge from many eras, as well as to draw attention to dangerous behavioral symptoms that characterize contemporary society. The reader can turn to anywhere and start at any chapter. Where his interest is aroused, the bibliographical references should facilitate his access to the sources (which, however, only concern the Blue Planet and historical times).

The material compiled here is based on my more than 15 years of work as a psychotherapist (symbol drama), as well as my work as an economist in Africa (Senegal) and Asia (Philippines, Asian Development Bank), with many missions in countries on this continent, as well as in the OECD Development Center Paris. These experiences in different cultures have shown that human needs for acceptance and tolerance are the same everywhere, as are negative traits of life-threatening egocentrism.

At the end, a word of thanks should not be missing, to everyone who helped me with the writing of the book: Teachers, professors from many different faculties, colleagues, friends and many books shaped my understanding of the world and my writing style.

Dr. Renate Dorner carried out the first editing of the manuscript with commitment and care. Afrodita Posch was helpful in transferring the corrections, as well as suggestions for shortening and clarity. A big thank you to everyone.

Happy reading!

First Report: Status quo of aggression on the Blue Planet

Dear Gowinda!

Happily landed on the Blue Planet. Still quite dizzy, not only in the head, but in all limbs. Such a galactic beam is very exhausting.

Nevertheless, I immediately set to work, in the center of the chaos, in the point of absolute calm: the National Library in Vienna: a place with beautiful reading rooms, adorned with books from the walls to the ceiling. Few visitors, the holidays have begun.

It is a very special feeling to touch paper, to turn the pages, to smell these treasures. With us everything is digital, compressed into the smallest space, no personal contact. I know it, you are more pragmatic and see the advantages of the digital system. I felt a real nostalgia for the past when I finally received my first book order.

You guessed it right, it’s the work of Konrad Lorenz: ‘The so-called Evil. On the natural history of aggression.’ I have finally been able to study this bestseller closely and can report to you amazing results.

This book was written exactly sixty years ago, with a note in the last chapters that the Blue Planet is observed from Mars. The father of the greylag goose Martina, as you now know, Konrad Lorenz, rightly remarked that an extra-terrestrial observer could not understand the reactions of terrestrial people in the course of history and the present, because they violate logos and common sense.

Two nations fight each other, even if no economic reasons compel them to do so. Two political parties or religions are relentlessly at war, despite the amazing similarity of their programs of salvation. The priests of the same religion of both conflicting parties bless the weapons.

An Alexander the Great and a Napoleon sacrifice millions of subjects in an attempt to bring the whole world under their sway. Curiously, the schools of the Blue Planet teach that ‘earthlings’ who have committed these and similar absurdities are to be worshiped as great men.

Sixty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, a possible escalation of a nuclear war between the two superpowers USA, the capitalist West and the USSR, the communist East, and their respective satellites, was dangerously high.

This dangerous cliff was successfully circumnavigated and a long period of peaceful coexistence followed, up until on February 24th2022. There was an attack on Ukraine by Russia that trampled on all norms of international- and martial law. Together with other factors, such as the three-year global pandemic (which is still not over), climate change, energy crisis, inflation, danger of starvation in Africa and other third world countries, etc. – all these factors are leading to a Turning Point in history!

This development is not unknown to our Star and is also the reason for my mission: How bad is it on the Blue Planet? Is it still possible to avert the super catastrophe? Or is it already ten minutes past twelve?

At the time, Konrad Lorenz, a comparative behavioral scientist and Nobel Prize winner, described an analogy between animals and humans. As the magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ so aptly put it, Lorenz’s conclusion ‘from the goose to the whole’ [von der Gans auf das Ganze] was and is controversial.

However, Lorenz’s observations and conclusions of the animal world are noteworthy. His basic thesis is that aggression in animals and humans is a primal drive that has a species-preserving effect.

However, there is a fundamental difference between humans and animals: In the case of animals, all variants of aggression are never aimed at destroying their fellow animals, but at driving them away, or at placing them in a hierarchy, the pecking order. Thus aggression in animals is system- and lifesustaining, not destructive and a priori not ‘evil’.

Aggression in animals is about attacking conspecifics, not about attacking prey, but about competition and rivalry for territory and females. In Darwinian terms, aggression is an instinct to preserve the species.

Carnivores are evolutionarily protected from destroying conspecifics by various mechanisms of inhibition of aggression. Man is not a predator. For a being only armed with weak teeth and short fingernails, there is no selective pressure to develop instinctive inhibitions against aggression. The invention of weapons changed the situation fundamentally. There was no time for opposing adjustment processes.

These martial items have spread rapidly. Even the hand axe is a global phenomenon. Man promptly used hand ax and fire to kill and roast his brother. This is proven by finds in the dwellings of the Beijing people: Next to the first traces of the use of fire there are smashed and roasted human bones.

However, the aggression, which can lead to murder and manslaughter, cannot be bred away. According to Lorenz, it would also be wrong to switch off this primal impulse, which is the driving force behind many human achievements in science and art, and has a species-preserving effect.

Lorenz gives three reasons for this, which apply to both humans and animals:

Through intraspecific aggression, the living space is divided up in such a way that each individual can make ends meet. The best feeding grounds/workplaces are defended against conspecifics who have to find their livelihood elsewhere.The strongest/wealthiest males get the chance to produce offspring’s.The progeny is always aggressively protected in the animal world, mostly in humans, which also serves to preserve the species.

Lorenz also makes suggestions on how to compensate for the lack of balance between aggression and aggression inhibition in humans: redirection of the aggressive drive to substitute actions; ritualization of fights in sports and other competitions. This led to the smoking of the ‘peace pipe’ among the American indigenous people, which marked the end of any fighting.

Other important factors are education, science and art, which encourage mutual exchange and international friendships. Last but not least, humor has an aggression-inhibiting effect. He who laughs does not shoot. Dictators never laugh.

Lorenz also recognized that human beings are part of the overall context of nature and was ahead of his time. This also applies to his awareness of ecology. Unfortunately, also for his correct assessment that man’s instinct for aggression cannot be compensated for by moral rules, as the current international political and economic situations show.

The nuclear threat of the superpowers is repeated today, and more than ever there is no inhibition of aggression. Russia’s ‘special operation’ is not just a war of aggression, but a war of annihilation. After the enemy troops have withdrawn, no stone is left unturned, every life is wiped out. This type of aggression does not occur in the animal world.

Lorenz sees the contemporary human being as the link between the animal and the truly humane human being. It will still take a few development steps, and it will take some time for the Blue Planet dwellers to become real ‘humane’ beings!

To prevent humanity from mutually destroying and wiping out, we must intervene intergalactically. Nuclear waste on an entire planet upsets the cosmic balance!

Gowinda, I have to interrupt now, … A young lady is approaching me …

… Gowinda, I’m back. Something unlikely happened: I was exposed! But not seen through.

It was not a huge secret police man in a raincoat and dark glasses, but a mass of blond hair, a long tail, big blue eyes and a mouth that’s always a little open in curiosity.

At that moment, I didn’t know what betrayed me. I grabbed my tie, that choker that we no longer wear on our Star, which gives me the most unpleasant feeling of lack of air.

“Mr. colleague”, it chirped, “a tie like that is really not necessary in this heat. Take a relief! Why don’t you loosen up this stupid patricide. The ladies at the loan desk are already talking about you”, I was told mockingly.

“But I wanted to ask you about something else,” she continues inquisitively.” You read so fast! You turn the pages so quickly and write on your smartphone at the same time. How do you do that? I’ve also taken speed reading classes, but it is astonishing the way you do it. And what model do you use? I have never seen that, and I follow every development in the digital system. “

Now I knew what betrayed me: my rapid reading. This young lady has no idea that I operate from the twelfth dimension, while she only has four dimensions at her disposal. I had to distract her now in this moment, although I had planned an adjustment period of at least one day to the terrestrial environment. So I discreetly cleared my throat and boldly jumped into the new language.

“I’m working on a sociological study of the rise in aggression in the last decade. And I have only a very limited time.” I managed to choke out a little breathlessly, waiting for her reaction.

She was momentarily distracted by this almost truthful statement, especially by my ‘galaxophone’, which she had been eyeing longingly. And she enthusiastically began to talk about herself, as is also the case with females on our Star.

“I am a student after the first state examination, so I am ‘cand. phil’. I haven’t decided on my major yet. I hesitate between comparative literary studies, psychology and contemporary history. My career goal is to be a journalist. But you can’t learn to write at university. Either you can do it, or you better leave it.

However, I have a minor question: You are doing a sociological study and reading Konrad Lorenz, who was mainly concerned with animals and his greylag goose Martina, right? Would you like to also consult ‘Brem’s Tierleben’ and ‘Maya the Bee’ for human social life as well?”

I had to smile at the little rascal. But I also had to acknowledge that she had the right mindset for a future journalist.

“Oh that’s great, you didn’t snap at my funny remark. And you smile like Bruce Willis. You don’t look much like him, but the smile has the same consistency: a mixture of benevolence and sarcasm. I like that a lot, so I’ll take the liberty of commenting on your attire. Your suit is so crumpled, as if you had arrived from a second-class train, from Vorarlberg, directly in the National Library.”

“I had come a little further than that. And the fabric was also exposed to extreme stress,” I dared to defend my suit. My astronaut outfit paid little attention to my ‘quasi underwear’.

“Oh, did you do martial arts? Or practice push-ups on your thumbs like Bruce Lee?” The imagination of the young lady knows no bounds. But now it was time to shift the discussion to my areas of interest. The best way to defend and distract is to attack.

“But why are you currently reading about the love live of French kings, when it isn’t particularly related to your majors or minors?

“Oh, you can read over your head. And I was so sure that you didn’t look at me and my reading. I’m trying to get some articles published, it’s never too early to start.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had any success so far. The press offices don’t deny, they just don’t get in touch for weeks and months. This is very frustrating. In doing so, I strive for topics that could at least make people smile in these dark times. Just listen: a French king wrote to his mistress after winning a battle: ‘Madame, don’t wash yourself anymore. I’m coming!’

Gowinda, I like this idea so much in its oddity and absurdity! What do you think about it?

Back to the would-be-journalist. I didn’t just want to comfort her, I also wanted to open her new perspectives: “In Vienna, people are slow. Haven’t you tried to place your articles internationally, for instance in Spanish speaking countries which include Latin America? You know what Gustav Mahler said: “If the end of the world is announced, then I’ll go to Vienna. Everything happens there fifty years later.”

“No, I hadn’t thought of that”, she said, amazed. “But I would also like to add that Vienna was almost the center of the world during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. And that’s not so long ago if you analyze history in sufficiently large periods.

A bodyguard from the former Yugoslavia said that his sister – several decades ago – felt disadvantaged among five brothers and also wanted a pee. When her mother remarked that it wasn’t that easy, the girl answered firmly: “Why, you can buy anything in Vienna. That’s where the center of the world is.”

I gave in immediately and noticed that I was fully aware of the historical importance of the imperial-, capital- and residential city (Reichs-, Haupt- und Residenzstadt). Then I got back to Lorenz and his greylag goose Martina. “What do you think of the book about the so-called ‘Evil’ Isn’t it outdated, is it still relevant?”

“How did you come up with this absurd idea? As far as aggression and lack of inhibition of aggression is concerned, Lorenz understated it. Unfortunately, that has long been proven sociologically and statistically. And this is true on both. personal and collective level. We can discuss it later.

I appreciate the old gentleman Lorenz with his greylag goose Martina, although he made a serious mistake in his book. He often quotes Goethe at the beginning of his chapters, but forgets ‘Heidenröslein’, which describes one of the most nasty forms of aggression: rape! These verses belong to the love poems of world literature, although the word ‘love’ does not appear once in it.”

She notices from my questioning look that I’m not particularly well versed in the poetry of the Blue Planet. But my charming colleague wants to enlighten me and starts to quote.