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Narcissism Is Not Bad …Or Good
I f asked whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth goes around the sun, most people these days would say the latter: the earth goes around the sun.
Some may even recognize the word describing how the earth goes around the sun, heliocentrism, and oppose this to the word describing how the sun goes around the earth, geocentrism.
Then why do people today continue to confuse egoism, how things revolve around the self, and narcissism, how the self revolves around other things (language, family, environment, etc.)?¹
If I think all my words are mere reflections of the ideas in my head, then that is a form of egoism.
On the contrary, if it is observed that my language precedes me and to a large extent, produces my thoughts, that is narcissism.
When I recognize that my library or computer greatly determines my ability to think, then this ‘thinking from the outside’ is a form of narcissism.
W hen looking at a mirror, narcissism is often misconstrued with egoism.
When someone takes pride in their image and says, “Oh, how I look good today.” that is egoism and vanity. Left at this level of egoism, narcissism is trivialized into ‘shades of…
