One of the most damaging secret weapons of narcisstic societies is their subtle ability to force you to justify your personal choices, because in that way they control you even when you believe they don’t.
All statements of justification conceal an involuntary compliance that remains invisible to you from you. It subconscously grants them access to your boundaries of personal freedom and manipulates you into accepting that they would have a legitimate authority to impose certain limitations on your personal actions and subject you to questioning, judgment and scrutiny unless you bow to their criteria of what is proper or improper. The underlying implication being “IF I do this, they WOULD be right, but I DIDN’T do THAT“, which is entirely a false belief in their right to have ANY say on what you do or don’t do, be it right OR wrong. Because freedom of choice is an expressly given divine right to try things for yourself in practice NOT to blindly concede to conclusions, understandings and interpretations from others in theory.
Even the most strict prohibitions in all of the world’s religions cannot be properly understood by disregarding the textual emphasis in all of them on the imperfection of humanity and the natural inevitability of undergoing growth through a never-ending journey of trial and error, not only making mistakes unavoidable and forgivable, but also making the concept of “sin” itself a basic and indispensable element of human life, thus removing the ridiculous and illogical demands of perfection as a valid requirement by any rational and coherent system of beliefs preached by idealistic fanatics.
Therefore, as long as you cannot resist the impulse to verbalize your internal acknowledgement of their right to criticize your freedom, you will hopelessly remain in mental bondage to their self-given jurisdiction over your life choices. The only way to protect your freedom is to say “none of your business” without any explanations of what makes your choices subject to their approval.
The simplest formula for maintaing an internal state of happiness is this:
- True friends will share your happiness and encourage it as long as it is personal pleasure and not an act of harmful transgression against others.
- Covert narcissists will jump at any given opportunity to sabotage it, using a variety of common strategies such as moral judgment, popular standards, traditional shaming and the supposed obligation of social conformity.
The unhindered freedom to benefit from all life’s most necessary personal experiences – both good and bad – is not possible without treasuring the first kind of friends in your life and banishing the second kind of people from your life as well as even from your mere consideration. It’s actually that simple.
مساحة ♪ Jocktanian ♫ 