The Rawness

I’ve discussed how and why shame-based personalities tend to fluctuate from one extreme to another, often viewing themselves as either subhuman or superhuman. I’ve also discussed how these extremes often coexist at once in one shame-based individual, leading to codependents with disguised narcissistic tendencies and narcissists with disguised codependent, needy tendencies.

Today I’m going to discuss another manifestation of codependent entitlement: Superior Inferiority. Simply put, Superior Inferiority is when a shame-based person plays games with the aim of proving the superiority of their particular brand of inferiority. The person is out to prove that they have it worse than anyone else on earth who has it bad. It can also be called comparative victimology. In past posts, I’ve discussed how once a person realizes they’ve had subservient tendencies or bad boundaries, it can be seductively tempting to make those traits into their identity and define themselves by them.

One of my favorite books on narcissism is The Object of My Affection Is in My Reflection: Coping with Narcissists by Rokelle Lerner. She has a list of types of narcissists,and goes into the concept of superior inferiority when describing a specific type of narcissist she calls “The Sufferer”:

You mean a sufferer can be narcissistic? Absolutely! For the sufferer, anguish is usually the only focus, the only awareness that makes them unique. Personal identity is constructed around being in pain, or being a victim, or being a survivor. Pain justifies a pervasis self-focus, with parasitic demands and exploitive relationships…

A sufferer often carries around a lot of emotional baggage, but letting go of the past is not an option. Without this history, the sufferer would lose his or her grounding for self-pity. In fact, the art of self-pity is perfected and provides an endless source of raw material.

Naturally, this pain is not ordinary pain. The narcissistic pain of the sufferer is laced with self-important features. “No one has suffered as I have suffered” is this narcissist’s only consolation. There may even be a transcendent dimension with religious meaning to this suffering: God sanctions the pain…

It is important to make a distinction between healthy and unhealthy pain. What needs to be faced may be painful, but this is the way of growth. In contrast, avoiding necessary pain leads to what’s been called “dirty pain.” The sufferer is a master at this kind of endless self-defeating misery. This is the narcissist’s defense against experiencing [healthy] legitimate pain [the kind that is more challenging but leads to more genuine growth –  T.] while at the same time getting the attention they feel they deserve.

Eckart Tolle also discusses this. In the book A New Earth, Tolle says:

A very common role is the one of victim, and the form of attention it seeks is sympathy or pty or others’ interest in my problems, “me and my story.” Seeing oneself as a victim is an element in many egoic patterns, such as complaining, being offended, outraged, and so on. Of course, once I am identified with a story in which I assigned myself the role of victim, I don’t want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” becuse they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.

In the book The Power of Now, Tolle says:

The first thing to remember is this: As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain. Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome is to make it conscious.

He later says (emphasis added by me):

Most people are in love with their particular life drama. Their story is their identity. The ego runs their life. They have their whole sense of self invested in it. Even their –  usually unsuccessful search for an answer, a solution, or for healing becomes a part of it. What they fear and resist most is the end of the drama. As long as they are their mind, what they fear and resist most is their own awakening.

This, to me, is one of the dangers of trying to fix and rescue people. Many people don’t want to be fixed or rescued. Yes, they want you to try to fix and rescue them, and they may encourage you to do so, but they are very invested in keeping you from succeeding, and that’s for ego reasons. That’s why I write about codependent entitlement, and the importance of realizing covert narcissism.

There are two reasons they want to avoid letting you fix them. First, they want to prove that their problems are unconquerable, that you aren’t good enough to fix their issues, that their inferiority is “superior” to anyone else’s inferiority issues (they take a perverse pride in how no one else can top their wretchedness). Second, if they allow your solutions to work, in their minds that makes you superior to them. You could figure out the solution to their problem when they couldn’t. So not only is their inferiority not superior to everyone else’s inferiority, since it turned out to have an easy-to-reach solution, but they also have to admit that someone else is better than them for figuring out that solution during a single conversation while they live with this problem 24/7 and couldn’t figure one out. To someone with a big ego, that’s unbearable. Shame-based people would rather preserve their ego and be miserable as a result than let their ego take a hit but be happier in the long run as a result.

Transactional Analysis, the school of psychology created by Eric Berne in his classic book Games People Play discusses this dynamic when describing a game called “Why Don’t You –  Yes But.” This website describes the game:

WHY DON’T YOU, YES BUT (YDYB).

…Seven years after Natalie Phistie and Bill Winnerton got married, she and some friends are having a discussion over coffee while her husband is out bowling:

Natalie: “I’m so upset- I just don’t know what to do about Bill. He doesn’t seem to be listening to me anymore and he is always running out on me.”
Friend 1: “Why don’t you sit him down and have a serious talk?”
Natalie: “Yes, I’ve tried that but he won’t sit still.”
Friend 2: “You probably have cabin fever. Why don’t you take a vacation from each other?”
Natalie: “Yes, but we can’t afford it.”
Friend 3: “Well, why don’t you just get a divorce?”
Natalie: “Yes, but what about the kids?”
Friends (thinking): “I give up, this situation is hopeless.. .”
Natalie (thinking): “Nobody can help me.”

As you can see, this conversation is recurring. Natalie has been through it many times; her friends have been through it many times. As a matter of fact, much of their time has been spent playing Why Don’t You, Yes But, and it is the type of conversation which occurs over and over again, especially in therapy groups. It is devious and covert: on the social level, it appears to be a conversation between a person in their Adult ego state asking a question from a group of others who are also in their Adult ego states.

However, you will notice that Natalie does not accept any of the group’s suggestions. The reason for that is that, at the psychological and much more meaningful level, what is really going on is that Natalie is asking for strokes [recognition of her existence - T.] in a devious manner. But she needs a great deal of strokes and therefore must continue to ask for them. Further, because these strokes are being given in a roundabout way they are not as satisfying to either Natalie or her friends as would direct strokes be. This is why the game ends on a note of frustration.

The pay-off of this game is that it proves to Natalie is doomed just as her father said; and it proves to her friends that there is no use trying to help people because they never accept advice anyway.

“Why Don’t You, Yes But” is the preferred game for those trying to establish Superior Inferiority.

UPDATE: I want to add something to this article I forgot to mention when I first published it, but meant to include when originally writing it. Another aspect of superior inferiority can be that the person who refuses to take any advice or allow any advice to work for them, may in turn be a huge advice giver. It’s another superiority game, with two payoffs. First, they have the solution to other people’s problems, but other people never have the solutions to their own problems. Therefore they’re superior to other people in problem solving ability, since they can fix other people’s problems that those other people themselves can’t fix. Second, by showing that their problems have absolutely no workable solutions , yet other people’s problems do have workable solutions, they get to feel superior to other people because their problems  are now clearly established to be so much more profound and deeper than any problems other people have.

Recommended Reading:

• The Object of My Affection Is in My Reflection: Coping with Narcissists by Rokelle Lerner

• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

• A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

• Games People Play by Eric Berne

A good example of the codependent entitlement or covert narcissism I described in the last post comes in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy that many introverted, artistically inclined men have. These codependent men are withdrawn, shy, introverted, and afraid to call attention to themselves. But along comes this fantasy girl who acts insane, outgoing, exhibitionistic, kooky, and draws him out of his shell. The whole appeal of the girl is that the codependent protagonist believes she fits his fantasy image of what an ideal girlfriend looks like, even if he’s projected many of these qualities onto her with his own fevered imagination. Her main appeal to him is how she reflects and brings out his greatness. She also is inexplicably drawn to him despite little effort and zero game on his part. She’s both a mirror for his false, idealized self as well as an extension of him. She exists to draw out and reflect his greatness, without any deep, abiding needs of her own other than to take him on an emotional rollercoaster ride and reveal his own desired greatness back at him. In this way she acts as a mirror to him, reflecting his idealized self-image. She acts flamboyant, eccentric, and outgoing for him in a way he feels he can’t directly, and in this way acts as an extension of him. She has no other purpose but to “rescue” the protagonist and bolster his spirits, and he (sometimes) gets to rescue her in return.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl term was coined by critic Nathan Rabin after watching Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.

In an article where about the 16 types of Manic Pixie Dream Girls, Rabin describes:

the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She’s on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness.

As this article from Bitch Magazine says:

The…Manic Pixie Dream Girl must never grow up, because that way, men never have to grow up, either. Peter Pan might lose most of his hair while his beard goes gray, but at heart, he’s still a little boy, and his companion in life reflects that: She’s not Wendy, but Tinkerbell. The “dream” supplied by…Manic Pixies past and present is one of a Never-Never Land where, although we cannot stop time, we can do without sobriety and reasoned maturity, and where a childlike fascination with the whimsical and fanciful is the way out of, never into, every nightmare of crisis and grief.

My theory is that the guys who write Manic Pixie Dream Girls and the guys who love watching and fantasizing about them are codependents. Meanwhile, the Manic Pixie Dream Girls themselves are Cluster Bs, usually either borderlines, narcissists, and histrionics, explaining their flair for the dramatic and the feeling of intense connection they generate with others. Cluster Bs, when you first meet them, are incredible charming and exciting, and the reason they create these intense first impressions is because they are overcompensating as much as they can up front, often because they know they’re crazy and hard to tolerate and are worried about the other person discovering what they’re really like and abandoning them. They also create great first impressions and a sense of intense connection because they work to figure out what you want and then try to appear as that thing to cater to your ego and fantasies in order to suck you in deeper and extract narcissistic supply for you. They have no problem being admired for something they’re only pretending to be. It still counts as narcissistic supply. Studies even back up the idea that narcissists make more intense, positive first impressions than others. (PDF of the original study; Psychology Today article summarizing the study)

I think what happens with Manic Pixie Dream Girl movies is that they only capture the idealization stage of the codependent/Cluster B pairing, the honeymoon phase, and as a result they feel intoxicating to the young, codependent men watching them. The movies end before the inevitable devaluation phase of every relationship with an emotional vampire. For example, to everyone reading who has had a relationship with a Cluster B, don’t you remember how intoxicating and euphoric those early days of the relationship were? With MPDG movies, you don’t stick around long enough to see the red flags that get huger and huger, the tantrums, the meltdowns, the crazymaking behavior, the cheating, the escalating disrespect, the erosion of the partner’s self-esteem, and the eventual discarding.

The self-obsessed male protagonists in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl dynamic perfectly illustrate the dynamic I was describing in yesterday’s post about Codependent Entitlement. Just like the dynamic I described in that post about the ways in which codependents can be manipulative and narcissistic in relationships, the codependent protagonists in these movies can’t see the MPDG in any way except for the ways in which she’s an extension of the him or a mirror for his false, idealized self, and the dream girl he sees her as who exists to complete him never actually exists in reality but is rather just a fantasy the protagonist want to exist so badly that he (and the screenwriter and the male audience members) projects that fantasy onto a person who he never actually got to know and who he never sees for who she really is.

This video discusses these topics, as well as more self-aware examples of the dynamic that subvert the trope. It’s does a good job of dissecting the covert narcissism of the codependent men:

Two movies the video discusses, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and 500 Days of Summer, are great because they explore the long-term dynamics of entering into such unions and what happens when the idealization stage wears off. My favorite quote from Eternal Sunshine is when she says: “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”

For comparison to the ways in which the narcissist idealizes and objectifies others, treats them as mirrors and extensions, projects his idealized fantasies onto them, and never sees them as flawed individuals in their own right with their own inner lives and needs, read this Mad Men-related post about Don Draper. Then compare to the dynamic described in the post you’re currently reading, along with yesterday’s post, and you’ll hopefully see similarities and understand how a sense of covert narcissism exists in many codependents.

I’d like to add, this post is not intended in any way to excuse the behaviors or cluster Bs, or to somehow “blame the victim” by creating some sort of moral equivalency between codependents and cluster Bs. I think cluster Bs are without a doubt worse than codependents. I do think though that codependents do have to learn to recognize the quiet grandiosity that lurks within them too if they want to break the dysfunctional cycles they get caught in, because that quiet grandiosity is exactly what creates much of their chemistry and toxic dynamic with cluster Bs.

UPDATE: Yohami left a comment that was pretty good, that he eventually made into a blog post which you can read here. I thought it was good enough to add to the original post.

UPDATE 2: A lot of first-time readers have read this post, and have emailed to tell me they feel they fall into the codependent category and want to know what to do to change. I would recommend a few things. For men, I’m currently big on recommending the book The Great Female Con, an ebook which you can download and buy here for $20. It’s well worth it, and despite the title it’s not as harsh as it seems. It will change the way you view everything. I’d also recommend this post about boundaries by Mark Manson. Finally, I’d recommend reading the past 2 years or so of this blog.

We’ve already discussed how shame-filled people are prone to view themselves in extremes, as either superhuman or subhuman. I called this the superhuman/subhuman dichotomy. You can see this dichotomy in the way shame-based people tend to become either narcissists (superhuman) or codependents (subhuman).

Although narcissists and codependents may seem like opposites on a superficial level, when viewing them from the outside, because they are both filled with toxic shame, they are far more similar than people suspect, in ways that aren’t always obvious. As I’ve said in previous posts, there is a little bit of codependence in every narcissist and a little bit of narcissism in every codependent. This is why they can seem switch back and forth from superhuman to subhuman so easily, because at any given time both the subhuman and the superhuman are coexisting in them, with little room for any moderation.

For example, although narcissists act like they think they’re better than everyone and have superior, arrogant attitudes, the fact remains that they crave admiration the way a heroin addict craves heroin. So even though the narcissist acts superior to everyone around them, they secretly crave and need the attention and approval of these so-called inferiors, and if deprived of it will begin to act pathetic and even plead and subjugate themselves if desperate enough.

Also, codependents may be considered to be self-effacing person with self-subjugating tendencies. However, there is definitely a quiet grandiosity among codependents, and subtle ways in which they think they’re superior to others. For example, when the narcissist tells the codependent a sob story about how everyone else has mistreated her before she met the codependent, the codependent believes he will be the one who will finally treat the narcissist right and “save” her. He has no trouble believing that he will prove himself to be the best partner the narcissist ever had, no matter what the background or attributes of her ex-es. It doesn’t occur to him that these guys could have been savvier and more mature than him and still failed. He automatically assumes he’s superior to all these past guys. Also, when the codependent starts seeing the red flags of the narcissist, he thinks he can deal with them and turn her around.  Codependent men are often jokingly called “Captain Save-A-Ho’s,” but even though this term is derogatory, it still shows a grandiose tendency because it’s evidence that someone views themselves as a type of superhero, even if it’s as a superhero for the cause of simping.

Because it’s so covert and counterintuitive, many people don’t realize the quiet desperation of narcissists and the quiet grandiosity of codependents, but you need to understand this phenomenon if you ever want to understand the psychodynamics of shame. This quiet grandiosity in codependents explains why many codependents, when they decide they’re fed up being a codependent and want to change, they end up going to the opposite extreme and become very narcissistic. It’s because that grandiosity is often in them already, just in a covert, subtle form. I described this dynamic in my post about codependent “average frustrated chumps” who easily turn into narcissistic pickup artists.

I want to focus on codependent entitlement for this piece. The subject of narcissistic self-debasement I’ll save for another day.

There was an old journal article from 1999 by Sally A. Farmer called “Entitlement in Codependency” that touches on this:

The notion of entitlement is just as important in understanding codependency as it is in describing exhibitionistic forms of narcissism. However, it is frequently hidden, and when expressed more directly it takes subtle forms. Codependent entitlement involves expecting others to change those aspects of themselves that make codependent individuals uncomfortable. Codependent individuals have trouble taking responsibility for making the changes they need to make in themselves in order to increase their own comfort level…

Tenzer believes that disorders of entitlement cut across diagnostic categories. She claims that the lack of overt entitlement observed in subservient individuals often masks self righteous rage and envy, Tenzer further states that patients with problems of entitlement tend to experience themselves as undernourished; their therapists, on the other hand, tend to experience them as insatiable.

Codependent entitlement arises from the notion that just as they are responsible for anticipating the needs of others, others are responsible for anticipating their needs as well. This gives rise to anger and “righteous indignation” when the people in their lives do not come through as they wish. Codependents frequently do not know what they want from others, and they often confuse “needs” with “wants.” Thus they have difficulty asking directly, and through the process of projective identification may actually invite others to deny them. A theme evident here is not really seeing others as people in their own right, with their particular set of strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Instead, they see them as extensions of themselves. Unfortunately, some adherents of the codependency movement reinforce this concept. In “sickness” they see others in a unidimensional way, i.e., as parental figures who must be placated, taken care of, and pleased. In “recovery” they frequently see them as villains who must be guarded against or escaped from. There is a lack of genuine compassion for the other person evident, only compassion for the self.

Just like narcissists can only see codependents as extensions of themselves, codependents do the same with narcissists. They often have an idealized image of what the narcissist actually is, and fall in love with that, rather than falling in love for who the narcissist actually is. This entitlement and grandiosity in the codependent is often what causes them to idealize the narcissist into something she isn’t, and oftentimes the codependent falls for the narcissist because he views the narcissist as the type of glamorous, attractive, or powerful person he views his ideal version of himself being with, and he wants to bask in her reflected glory and shine too. For example, maybe the codependent isn’t openly grandiose and cocky enough to strut and preen like a narcissist, but by dating the narcissist, he can let the narcissist strut and preen for the both of them, while he gets the ego boost of the positive attention having such a partner gives him. In this way, he has made the narcissist an extension of himself. I described in the past how the narcissist idealizes others and makes them extensions of himself, but as you can see, the codependent does the same in more covert ways.

Tomorrow I’ll show a pop culture example of the codependent entitlement/covert narcissism.

A great book I read on shame was John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame that Binds You. I’ve read better when it comes to getting into the hardcore psychodynamics behind shame, like Leon Wurmser’s books, but those books can be very intimidating, dense, and jargon-filled.

Bradshaw’s book, though, is great for laypeople, and has a lot of heart. Mark Manson over at Postmasculine wasn’t crazy about this book, and I can respect his reasons for disliking it. Bradshaw talks about Christianity a lot, which turns some people off. Although I’m not especially religious, the religious aspects of the book didn’t bother me much. I honestly don’t remember them being as intrusive as Mark recalls them being.

But the main reason I love Bradshaw’s book, and why I would recommend it even if I didn’t like the rest of the book, is that it’s the only book on shame I’ve found so far that really touches on how shame-based people can only view themselves in extremes, as either being superhuman or as being subhuman.

From the book (emphasis added by me):

As a state of being, shame takes over one’s whole identity. To have shame as an identity is to believe that one’s being is flawed, that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing.

Toxic shame is unbearable and always necessitates a cover-up, a false self. Since one feels his true self is defective and flawed, one needs a false self that is not defective and flawed. Once one becomes a false self, one ceases to exist psychologically. To be a false self is to cease being an authentic human being. The process of false self formation is what Alice Miller calls “soul murder.” As a false self, one tries to be more than human or less than human.

Later in the book Bradshaw expands on this (emphasis appears in original text):

Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is…

It is crucial to see that the false self may be as polar opposite as a super-achieving perfectionist or an addict in an alley. Both are driven to cover up their deep sense of self-rupture, the hole in their soul. They may cover up in ways that look the polar opposite, but each is still driven by neurotic shame. In fact, the most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.

I would also add that shame’s the core motivator of narcissists and codependents also. As I’ve described before, shame is the underside of narcissism and codependence. There are three faulty coping mechanisms humans engage in when dealing with our personal issues: overcompensation, surrender, and avoidance. The narcissist is overcompensating against toxic shame, and masquerading as superhuman and grasping for anything that can fuel his grandiosity. The codependent alternates between surrendering to and avoiding his shame, and he masquerades as subhuman.

Why such extremes? I think there are several reasons, and I don’t claim to know and understand them all. One reason, I believe, is that shame-based people take their own feelings and their actions to be reflections of their very identity. Since being shame-filled causes wildly oscillating feelings and actions in themselves, as well as wildly oscillating extreme feelings and reactions in others who they interact with, their identities end up fluctuating to the same extremes as the feelings and actions of themselves and others.

For example, if a person who isn’t shame-based hits on a girl, and she rejects him, he may say, “Oh, I failed.” He doesn’t think he’s a better or worse person than he was before the rejection. If before he thought he was a cool guy, not he just thinks of himself as a cool guy who just happened to fail at something. However if a shame-based person hits on a girl, and she rejects him, that guy would say, “Oh no, I’m a failure.” To shame-based people, everything they do or that happens to them is a commentary on their very identity and self-worth, and now views himself as a worse person than before he attempted. So now he feels subhuman.

He may choose to just surrender to this feeling and stay subhuman and stop trying. Or he may overcompensate by trying extra hard until he gets laid, and now he thinks he’s a stallion, a real Don Juan. Now he’s superhuman. Since the success of our actions and the state of our emotions can fluctuate wildly from one extreme to another over the course of the day, when we tie our identity to those things, our identity can fluctuate wildly as well.

Another thing I notice about shame-based people is that they tend to elicit very strong reactions and emotions from other people, whether favorable or negative, especially people with their own damage and shame issues. This is why narcissists and codependents often have such chemistry. Since shame-based people also like to tie how they view themselves to how other people feel about and react to them at any given moment, the fact that they elicit more extreme, polarizing feelings and reactions from others than the average person does also contributes to them developing more extreme, polarizing views of themselves than the average person does.

To put it more simply, the more your self-esteem and self-image are generated internally, the more stable it’s likely to be, because your internal world is easier to keep consistent. The more your self-esteem and self-image are generated externally, the more extreme and volatile they’re likely to be, because the external world is very unpredictable and full of extreme highs and lows.

This explains why someone who was a total nerd and never got laid in high school can become the biggest sociopathic asshole player when older and accomplished. Or why a fat frumpy girl who used to act meek and mousy can sometimes become a total arrogant bitch after losing a lot of weight, getting a makeover, and becoming hot. They’ve gone from surrendering to the shame to overcompensating against it. Sometimes the guy who was a nerd in high school and never got laid becomes older and accomplished and better looking but still acts like the nerd in high school who never got laid. Or the formerly fat girl who is now hot still acts meek and mousy and still thinks of herself as that fat girl. They’ve gotten so used to surrendering to the shame they don’t know any other way to deal with it.

Either way, as long as someone retains the shame and never heals it, no matter how they change their externals they will still always be stuck in either a superhuman or a subhuman mode, rather than ever just becoming human.

Recommended Reading:

• Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw.

• My Reader Letters #1 series of posts also touches on this issue, especially part 4.

I am going to start adding humor and fiction books to the reading list. The first humor book is below.

Infinite Crab Meats by Byron Crawford

While I think I’m a good writer, one thing I always envy is people who can write funny and make it appear effortless. I think in real life I’m actually a pretty funny guy, but I always find writing funny to be way harder than just being funny. In reverse, I’ve met many people who write funny, yet aren’t very funny at all in daily life. Then there are those people who can write somewhat funny, but are obviously straining to do it, to the point there’s a slight air of desperation.

So when I see people who write funny, and appear to do it effortlessly, I get very impressed and envious. Byron Crawford is one of those bloggers who is great at writing funny effortlessly. His gift is the ability casually, seamlessly insert a joke within a serious sentence, all with the same straightforward, deadpan delivery, such that you don’t see the joke coming and it totally catches you by surprise. Sometimes you don’t even catch it until 10 seconds later, when you pause and think “Wait, what?”

Byron’s blog is a hip-hop humor blog, with a flair for being controversial. Infinite Crab Meats takes the tone, as well as some of the more popular topics from his blog, and expands on them in a way he can’t on his blog, in the form of a book of collected essays.

His humor is very cutting, caustic, and dry, but delivered in a matter-of-fact way with so little emotion or evidence of personal enmity that it never feels draining or excessively negative. He’s also as hard on himself as he is on others, as the book is also relentlessly self-depracatory. In some instances though, the hip detachment, world weariness and cynicism work against him, because after a while you want him to drop the shtick even for a few pages and show some cynicism and passion for something, anything, even if it’s just for the effect of contrast. It’s one thing to get all that cynicism and detachment in blog post sized chunks, but over the course of a book it could get a little monotonous. The closest I see him come to dropping the nihilistic pose and showing some sincerity and passion is when he takes to discussing cultural tourists like the founders of the website Rap Genius, which to me is easily the best part of the book.

Although Crawford is laugh out loud funny, he’s also clearly very bright and insightful, and you can see that in some of his cultural analyses and pop culture discussions. Topics include Rick Ross, Kreayshawn, Odd Future, the joys of Tumblr, porn, and Tumblr porn, self-shooters, drinking with El-P, smoking weed and hitting strip clubs with Killer Mike, Wyclef and Haitian foreign ad, white hipster rap reviewers, the Rap Genius website, Das Racist, and cultural tourism in general. I have to warn you, though, if you know little to nothing about hip-hop, this book may not be for you. It assumes you have at least a basic knowledge of who’s who in hip-hop.

Recommended. Best of all, it’s only $2.99 to buy the Kindle version. At least at the time of this writing.

_____________________

Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher

This book is a great introduction to game theory. I recently discussed game theory concepts like Prisoner’s Dilemma in recent blog posts, and this book is the first game theory text I ever read. It is light on equations and math, and instead mainly focuses on being relatable for laypeople and providing plenty of real-world, everyday examples for illustrative purposes.

I think this book is a great entry point for anyone who wants to learn more about game theory.

We’ve been discussing human nature and the naturalistic fallacy a lot, and how proving that something is human nature is not the same as proving that it’s a desirable trait to have today in modern society. As I’ve said in the past, human nature just means it was something that was at one point in human history very useful when it came to surviving and reproducing, but is not necessarily so useful now. Something that is part of human nature may still be useful for surviving and reproducing, but it also may be maladaptive, meaning it’s counterproductive to optimal living, but not so counterproductive that it ever ends up being weeded out of human nature through the evolutionary process.

To give an example, bugs evolved to be attracted to light. This is because being attracted to light, for a variety of reasons, helped them survive and reproduce in their original habitat. In the location of a big city, in an era where artificial light is the norm, this attraction to light is a maladaptive trait. When you remove your light bulb cover you may see a bunch of dead bugs accumulated in it. Bugs are known to waste time flittering around lamp posts at night, or hovering outside an apartment window, or flying into bug zappers.

However there are still plenty of habitats where this attraction to light still provides high survival and reproduction value, so this trait is not going to be weeded out of existence anytime in the near future.

Just like a big city with artificial light makes things that our part of a bug’s nature now counterproductive and dysfunctional, modern civilized society does the same thing to many traits that are part of our human nature.

The desire for violence is a part of human nature. So is the desire to live peacefully. Civilized society tries to police and reduce the former, or at least channel it into areas where it will do the least collective harm, like athletics, while encouraging and incentivizing the latter in a way that helps the greater, collective good. The urge to compete is part of human nature, as is the urge to cooperate. Civilized society tries to channel the competitive and cooperative urges into areas that it deems constructive, while discouraging people from exercising these same urges into areas it deems detrimental to the greater good. For example, civilized society may encourage cooperation in many instances, but when criminals cooperate with each other it’s its own separate crime, racketeering. Or society may give a criminal incentive to cooperate with the police and confess to a crime and incriminate his partners, but will punish criminals who cooperate with each other to cover up crimes.

Some human nature behaviors and traits are considered universally bad in civilized society, with no positive manifestations. Take for example, rape. It’s a controversial notion, but there is a school of thought that says that rape evolved under some circumstances as a genetically advantageous behavioral adaptation. This view was popularized by biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig T. Palmer in their 2000 book A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion.

The Wikipedia entry discusses how critics applied the naturalistic fallacy with this book:

Thornhill and Palmer write that “Rape is viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage”. They further state that by categorizing a behavior as “natural” and “biological” we do not in any way mean to imply that the behavior is justified or even inevitable. “Biological” means “of or pertaining to life,” so the word applies to every human feature and behavior. But to infer from that, as many critics assert that Thornhill and Palmer do, that what is biological is somehow right or good, would be to fall into the so-called naturalistic fallacy. They make a comparison to “natural disasters as epidemics, floods and tornadoes”. This shows that what can be found in nature is not always good and that measures should be and are taken against natural phenomena. They further argue that a good knowledge of the causes of rape, including evolutionary ones, are necessary in order to develop effective preventive measures.

Evolutionary psychologists McKibbin et al. argue that the claim that evolutionary theories are justifying rape, is a fallacy in the same way that it would be a fallacy, to accuse the scientists doing research on the causes of cancer, that they are justifying cancer. Instead, they say that understanding the causes of rape may help create preventive measures.

The point is, because rape was once an advantageous strategy purely from a survival and reproduction standpoint, especially during those parts of human history before the existence of modern birth control and abortion procedures, it is still part of human nature today, which is why our society puts so much effort into educating about, preventing, and punishing rape. Yet only an idiot or a sociopath would argue that a rapist is behavior to emulate, or that being a rapist was ever an example of good behavior.

Another reason why an aspect of human nature may be maladaptive is because it’s a free rider trait. Free riders are opportunists who game the system in a way that allows them to benefit themselves as the expense of others. Free riders behave selfishly in their own favor in ways that hurt the greater, collective good of the group.

Since free riders have existed throughout recorded human history, and because one can see the ways in which being a free rider can benefit someone, it’s tempting to use the naturalistic fallacy with free riding and say that being selfish is a desirable trait. As I described in a recent post:

[B]eing a free rider only works when a minority of people are free riders. There is always a tipping point level where if enough people start behaving selfishly and free riding the whole game falls apart. In the game theory game Prisoner’s Dilemma, if everyone starts competing it’s a mess. Same for the game Tragedy of the Commons: if enough people start acting selfishly the system falls apart.

In every system, there is always a balance between competition and and cooperation that must be aimed for. The more civilized and structured a society is, the more important cooperation becomes, and the lower the threshold becomes for crossing that free rider tipping point and having the whole system unravel.

So advanced civilization as it exists today must be taken into account when discussing whether a trait reflects human nature, and when discussing if that trait is still an optimal trait today or a maladaptive one. What works in the context of a hunter gather society from thousands of years ago, or even in the context of a civilized society from mere decades ago, may be dysfunctional and self-defeating within the context of the specific, advanced society of today.

As I’ve said in recent posts, proving that something is part of human nature is not the same as proving that it’s good. The belief that all human nature is desirable and should therefore be deliberately emulated is known as the naturalistic fallacy.

As I said previously:

Human nature is a collection of traits, behaviors, coping mechanisms, and instincts that at some point in history helped the human race psychically and physically survive and reproduce.This doesn’t mean that every one of these traits, behaviors, or instincts is still very useful to us in surviving and reproducing. Some of these are now maladaptive in modern society and cause us more harm than good. Also, in the developed modern world, surviving and reproducing are relatively easy thanks to available technology and resources and thanks to how society is structured to protect it’s less fortunate members. Since basic survival and reproduction no longer occupy a lion’s share of human concerns in the developed world as they did in past eras of human existence, we’re now able to evaluate our evolved behavior by other standards in addition to basic survival and reproduction value, such as whether it makes us personally feel happy, fulfilled, self-actualized, and content.

Free riders are opportunists who game the system in a way that allows them to benefit themselves as the expense of others. Free riders behave selfishly in their own favor in ways that hurt the greater, collective good of the group.

Since free riders have existed throughout recorded human history, and because one can see the ways in which being a free rider can benefit someone, it’s tempting to use the naturalistic fallacy with free riding and say that being selfish is human nature, and therefore always a desirable trait.

However, being a free rider only works when a minority of people are free riders. There is always a tipping point level where if enough people start behaving selfishly and free riding the whole game falls apart. In the game theory game Prisoner’s Dilemma, if everyone starts competing it’s a mess. Same for the game Tragedy of the Commons: if enough people start acting selfishly the system falls apart.

So collectively, when a certain amount of the population becomes free riders, free riding becomes detrimental to the population and therefore maladaptive. This is the collective free riding tipping point.

Also, on a personal level, free riding may work in my favor in the short term, but as time goes on, the people I keep acting selfishly with either start acting selfishly with me in return, or just avoid me altogether because they feel they can’t trust me. Also, my reputation begins to suffer among the group, and because of negative gossip I have trouble finding new victims to exploits, or even worse, I become a victim of retribution from the community, by being either imprisoned, exiled, ostracized, or even killed.

So the free riding may benefit me in the short run, and allow me increased opportunities to survive and reproduce at first, but in the long run I can reach a point where free riding works against me. This point where free riding goes from helping an individual gain evolutionary advantages to becoming an evolutionary disadvantage is the personal free riding tipping point.

Further Reading:

This is another example of how what you find in collective psychology is also often reflected in personal, individual psychology. I’ve discussed this in the past here, here, here, here, and here.

Also, for discussion on competitors versus cooperators, which is relevant to this discussion because free riders can be considered competitors, I highly recommend this series of posts, found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

For books on free riders both on an individual level and an evolutionary level, I recommend the game theory for laypeople book Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher and the evolutionary psychology for laypeople book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar.

Part 4 of the scientific racism series is up over at Nexxt Level Up.

As usual, the comments are closed over here. If you want to discuss it, go to the comments over at NLU.

As promised, whenever I make any addition to my Recommended Reading List, I will accompany it by a blog post letting you know. That way you won’t have to constantly keep checking the page fishing through the entries to see if something new has been added or not.

Black Players: The Secret World Of Black Pimps by Richard and Christina Milner

I added this book to the list under “Essentials,” and you don’t have to be remotely interested in hero worshipping or emulating a pimp to find this book fascinating. This book is one I read a while back, when it was still out of print. I had to buy it used via the Internet, and a small, ratty, chewed-up, faded, yellow, torn copy of it ran me $50. And you know what? I still consider it one of the best bargains I ever got, even though I finished it in a single night (mostly because it was so good I couldn’t help reading it in one sitting). The premise of this book is truly insane.

Richard and Christina Milner were husband and wife, and both were students in the graduate program for Anthropology at UC Berkeley. For their doctoral dissertation, they wanted to do something different than the usual. At the time it was all about going to “exotic” locales like New Guinea, East Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. They decided that there was no need to travel so far when the ghetto areas of America’s cities had such a rich, fascinating culture that was just as foreign to a White academic as any of the other, distant, cultures anthropologists typically gravitated to.

So his wife worked as a stripper under the name “Tiger Red” for two years in a seedy, ghetto strip club frequented by pimps, hustlers, and whores, and they did a serious, rigorous, academic paper examining and dissecting the subculture. The result is mindblowing, and it really transcends just the topic of pimps and the streets. The commentary gets deeper and more profound than you’d initially suspect, and the Milners show a real respect for the people they’re interviewing and avoid the need to either excuse, glorify, or morally condemn any lifestyles. This project eventually ends up getting Richard Milner kicked out of the Berkeley’s Anthropology program.

The whole book is great, but the last three chapters especially were mind-blowing to me, and the incredibly brutal and cynical relationship and dating insights from the pimps is really something else to behold, whether you end up agreeing with it or not. The last three chapters are called “Sex, Race, Manhood, and Womanhood,” which is still perhaps the most insightful, most provocative, discussion of race and sex in America that I’ve ever read, “The Pimp Game as a Model of the World,” and “The Secret America.”

Tariq Nasheed a few years back bought the rights to the book and rereleased it, so now you can get it at Amazon for only $27 (in recent years since I bought it and before the rerelease, the price had reached over $300, it was that much in demand). The one downside: I love the original cover so much better and find the new one a little cheesy in comparison (the original cover is the one pictured and the one I own).

You can hear Tariq Nasheed interview Richard Milner about the book here.

You can hear Alan Roger Currie interview Richard Milner about the book here.

I read a book a while back called Shadow Syndromes: The Mild Forms of Major Mental Disorders That Sabotage Us by John Ratey. It’s a decent enough book, but I wasn’t quite crazy about it overall, which is why I didn’t add it to my recommended reading page. However the premise of the book was interesting to me because I thought it was one that could be expanded to subject areas not originally discussed by the authors.

The premise of the book is that many people out there are walking around with “shadow syndromes” of major mental disorders, meaning that they have mental health issues that are bad enough to limit their lives, productivity, and happiness, yet is still slight enough that people can’t easily tell they are suffering from a mental disorder. Since these shadow syndromes are not strong enough and debilitating enough to be considered to be at clinical level, they can be considered subclinical, meaning below clinical levels of mental illness.

Examples from the book include someone who has a shadow syndrome where they are chronically sad, which actually turns out to be subclinical depression. Someone who is a bit manic, high energy, and always undergoing mood swings, but not to an extremely destructive extent, may have subclinical bipolar disorder. Someone who is prone to tantrums may have subclinical intermittent rage disorder. Ratey also discusses shadow forms such as the subclinical forms of autism, OCD, addiction, and anxiety. Unlike people who have these disorders at clinical levels, it is far easier for people suffering from these issues at subclinical levels to slip through the cracks. They know something feels “off,” or they have personal quirks that make their life feel difficult and slightly dysfunctional, but otherwise they feel normal and don’t even consider seeking therapy or medication. Their friends may find them eccentric or a little intense, but otherwise normal. Even trained menntal health professionals may miss the signs because the shadow forms of major mental issues are easy to overlook.

I think the concept of subclinical mental disorders, or shadow syndromes, is a valuable one, because people often think that mental health is something that is either fully on or fully off, like a traditional light switch that only has two positions, when in actuality it’s much closer to a sliding dimmer light switch that allows for all different types of light levels between fully off and fully on.

Although I wasn’t particularly interested in most of the specific shadow syndromes he was discussing, I came to realize that the same framework could be applied to personality issues, allowing us to take into account subclinical forms of Cluster B disorders, people who aren’t as bad as full-blown narcissists, histrionics, sociopaths, and borderlines, but are still bad enough to lead destructive, dysfunctional lives. The section on the shadow forms of addiction could also apply to Cluster B personality disorders, since I view those to be an addiction to narcissistic supply . We’ll be discussing subclinical emotional issues often this year, including subclinical narcissism, subclinical borderline personality disorder, and subclinical histrionic personality disorder. It is very possible for people to suffer from shadow versions of these disorders without being at full-fledged, clinical, pathological levels, and once we understand the the concept of shadow syndromes we can realize that problem of emotional vampires is far more widespread than much of the professional literature suggests.