Thread: What is morality? It's not about being inoffensive to everybody.

Narcissism is like testosterone. It's not an all or nothing proposition - we've all got it in varying degrees, along a sliding scale. The problems kick in when you've got too much or too little.

If it was even possible to have none at all you'd be a blithering wide-eyed innocent moron, happily doing everything anyone told you to do. Too much and you turn into an evil self-centered jerk.

Why Nietzsche? Because he gave us a very intriguing way to look at morality that lets us see it in a broader perspective. I'm sure there are other philosophers who have done that, but I'm not familiar with them. If anybody wants to introduce ideas of other philosophers on the subject that manage to avoid falling entirely into one camp or the other, then I'm all ears. But Nietzsche is the only one I'm familiar with who has pointed out that all modern morality is based on the self-effacing ideas of democracy and Christianity, and how incomplete that is. To really follow the edicts of Christianity (as if anybody actually does) is to turn yourself into a sheep blindly waiting for the wolves.

It's this slave morality that allows politicians to inflict self-censoring on society, in the form of politically correct Newspeak, so that people begin to think in increasingly ridiculous ways and follow the program. It's slave morality that says "yes, we should all let the government take away our guns, then there won't be any more crime!" - but guess what kind of people will still have guns? The ones who refuse to be good submissive slaves. It's slave morality that says people must always blindly do what's legal, even in cases where it's not right, as it allows government to call whistleblowers criminals and traitors when in actuality they're defending the Constitution and the American people from a corrupt and increasingly evil government. It's slave morality that says we should let the government give illegal immigrants as much or more rights than citizens.

Funny how in every case slave morality says the masses should lay down and let their fate be decided by the leaders, the alphas (the most narcissistic ones).

You seem to think I'm saying we should jump all the way to the other end of the scale - but that's not it at all! I mostly just want people to understand that there IS a scale, and that you should think for yourself about where on that scale you want to be (it will vary from time to time). Our leaders want us all to be good little compliant slaves - it makes it much easier for them to corral us wherever they want to put us. But I'm saying it's foolish to willingly make yourself meek and submissive. It's often better to be bold and adventurous (which is only partway up the scale, not as far as evil and dictatorial). Isn't this exactly what you advise for achieving WILDs? Slave morality equates with total non-lucid thinking, just going along with the program. Self awareness includes an element of narcissism. I don't mean pathological narcissism, just the healthy kind we all need. KIds are all narcissistic to a high degree - growing up involves learning to move away from it.