As someone with good parents, I get very demoralized hearing about how ungodly awful most peoples’ parents were. It’s so ubiquitous that I almost (almost but not quite) subscribe to the philosophy my friends have where they hold that children should (literally) be raised “by the village” rather than by two parents, which in theory would minimize the effects of one imbalanced mind having full control over the children.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of books on narcissism and have been picking up on the idea/notion/possibility/viewpoint that narcissism is a spectrum like autism is. In autism, which itself is incredibly common due to the fact that it’s multiple genes/processes/whatever performing multiple parts of a spectrum (think a carpet representing humanity and a shattered cup on the carpet, I use the shards in this visual to represent pieces of the spectrum scattered across humanity, apologies if anyone thinks a shattered cup seems like a negative comparison, I don’t), you have the majority of humanity having some variance in it, which goes to demonstrate there’s no such thing as a neurotypical. As in, if a scouter was invented that instead of scanning your power level scanned your autism level, everyone would have their very own signature number. I would be over 9000. Same with narcissism, if this view is correct, as it would be another shattered glass on the carpet that is humanity, with the shards from both glasses overlapping in their territories (which when you think about it makes the family dynamics in The Good Doctor all the more awkward, it’s one spectrum at odds with another in a show where the main character is a medical savant with autism). And again, not trying to make an awkward comparison, I have friends who openly confess to me they’re deep on the narcissism spectrum, and these people at least are trying their best in life, as well as showing narcissism is a neutral condition that just happens to seem more negative in modern urban situations.
Consider this the sequel to my last such question which had a similar idea to it. What’s the most narcissisty your parents ever come or came, even if you hold them in generally good regards?
Not my parents, but I’ve had a narcissist work colleague pester me about my partner and I not wanting to have kids, trying to convince us I guess, using her ultimate argument…
Her: But… you need to have kids so they take care of you when you’re old!
Me: So… wait. Is that the reason you had kids?
Her: Well yea! (like that’s the only logical answer, duh)
Me: … wow …
Fast forward. Her kids are all grown up now, they’ve since cut all contact and she hasn’t seen them nor her grandkids in years. I run into them once in a while and I’ve helped them out with a handful of times with things like moving or maintenance or tax reports or whatever. There’s a few things they never really got to learn growing up and anything they could ever do was never good enough for her, even though she’s terrible at most things.
Now and then, she’d still complain about them being ungrateful and I’d just ignore her… she’s never once come even close to the self-awareness that she drove them away by being a narcissist asshole.
She’s retired now, so neither of us have to deal with her now.
Great fucking plan, having kids to guilt trip them into caring for you…
They had the guts to move on and I’m proud of them.
I was probably the first to tell them so, some random passerby.
Fuck narcissists.