11/10/2026

hot take (also opens on a religious note but i swear this goes somewhere different this time)

Narcissism, the cardinal sin

if you know what i've been involved in, you'll know that i have an (armchair theologian's passing) interest in medieval christian concepts. in particular, i have a fascination with the catholic church's seven deadly sins. i commit every single one on a daily basis (and even kin one of them, guess which), so it's strange that i can still be such an upstanding member of society. if you believe that these sins should be avoided at all costs to live a good life, you might ask, what gives?

already, you can mark excess as the true sin underpinning all the others. however, you know that excess can't really exist alone: there is no such thing as excess solely for the sake of excess, because that makes no sense. then what underpins excess?

in my opinion, narcissism underpins every other conceivable sin. personally, i define narcissism as the preoccupation with the self at the expense of others with no rational basis. in its purest form, it's a fixation on one's own needs alone, and by extension, the personality trait that seeks to (re)define everything around that person to suit them alone. it's a narrower definition than anything google will give you, so i think i should be good using it in this way here

you see people get accused of being narcissists all the time, and those accusations can take a lot of liberties. however, i don't think they're completely baseless, because every single one of us is a narcissist to some degree. you are not immune to narcissistic tendencies, and in fact it's a basic prerequisite for survival: without it, you would be human in physical form only, if that

to demonstrate, let's take you buying a croissant at the albert heijn to go at groningen central station at 11:15am, just before taking the next train to leeuwarden. to even be at the station in the first place, you need a reason to go, and given the time, it's highly unlikely you're going there because you have to: you *want* to go to leeuwarden to enrich yourself, by setting foot there, or buying something you like, or both. you also want to be on time, otherwise you're not getting all that, but in a rational world, missing out is entirely fine. while at the station, you might get something to eat so you don't board the train on an empty stomach, even though you could definitely do that with no issue. finally, you pick out the croissant in particular: you don't reach for the salad or the yogurt, because even though those may be better for you, you prefer the taste of a croissant at this point in time
you do all this, even though you could be working 84 hours a week in a factory and actually be useful to the people you know. every single one of your decisions is motivated by something entirely superfluous and selfish, which is a manifestation of narcissism, although a fairly innocuous one in this case

a more extreme and more classic example is a toxic relationship. a person lures you in by showering you with love and recognition. once you're hooked, they get meaner. they expect contradictory things from you: when you're silly, you're told to be serious, and vice versa. the world you know vanishes as it gets taken over by theirs and their crackpot logic. you never know what they want, and you might come to accept that. they might even have countless other people doing the same thing for them. all you know is that you are their plaything, and you don't get to bargain, ever. you are an extension of them and their power, and until you work up the courage to end the relationship, that will be your life from now on. even if you leave, either they'll ruin your life, or they'll move on to the next victim, or both

you may wonder, how can this even be allowed to emerge? the answer is babies


and their relationship with the world around them. to paraphrase the greatest oil lobby mouthpiece of our time, babies are complete narcissists: they want mommy, they want milk, they want to be held, they want to be comforted, and if you don't do all of these things immediately, they will ruin your life. they have license to do this because they've literally just started building themselves up. a true adult narcissist, then, can be equated to someone who never grew up

the opposite of narcissism is what i'll call altruism: the preoccupation with others at the expense of oneself, often with rational basis. if narcissism is total agency, then altruism is the total absence of it. if narcissism makes conscious, albeit irrational decisions, altruism takes refuge in "the way it is". if a narcissist never grew up, an altruist grew up too quickly
altruism cannot be a sin. deliberately striving for altruism is itself a narcissistic trait: more often, it just happens to you, fueled by the narcissism of others. true altruism is not motivated by anything, and it is entirely deterministic: behaviors come about through logical patterns, even if that logic is buried

with this in mind, you can place people's personalities on a spectrum, from most narcissistic to most altruistic. on either end, you find the complete erasure of people, most commonly death or brainwashing. with narcissism, the end goal is omnipotence, where you are the only agent and everything else acts in service of you. where they have no use to you, they are dead. you might even try to find immortality. with altruism, the end goal is a natural opposite: your total service to others, a kind of slavery where you don't even have the right to your own name or face, and quitting means death

i hope it's obvious that a dignified human life sits in between the two extremes, as does continued human existence. if everyone thought the same as a true narcissist, we'd all kill each other. if everyone thought the same as a true altruist, we wouldn't have a reason to live. a good life means being neither an asshole nor a pushover, having enough self-interest to continue existing as yourself while also having the humility to accommodate others

now, you think i'm gonna say "the precise middle point is the ultimate good", but ask yourself this: between true narcissism and true altruism, which is the more pleasant fate of a person relative to the world around them? in a utilitarian view, altruism is the way to go. in a world full of strangers, the only person you're depriving of happiness is yourself, so it is always correct. other philosophies (e.g. existentialism) might favor narcissism, but only because everything else is so twisted and self-centered that, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. in other words, narcissism is a price to pay, rather than being intrinsically good

what i want to say is, the balance is off-center: the damage brought on by narcissism weighs heavier than that of altruism. with altruism, you can only hurt yourself, but with narcissism, you hurt everyone around you, and it can only be tolerated if everyone else also inflicts that pain. there's a reason why, in the prisoner's dilemma, both sides defecting yields a net negative compared to both sides cooperating, and that's this

my personal course of action is to tolerate the absolute bare minimum of narcissism, and not a smidgen more. i should be just enough of an asshole to go on vacation to exotic places, use my skills to make things i personally enjoy, and give myself a name and a presence in this world. i have an ear for those more steadfast in their ideas than i am, but i'm not a pushover, and i (like to think that i) make my concessions carefully. beyond that, i like to play dumb and hide in the grass, minding my own business while being at the mercy of what the world gives me. it's a decidedly altruistic lifestyle, but i'm inching my way towards agency while recognizing my limits

to summarize, i believe that narcissism invites exploitation and exists for its own sake. its opposite, altruism, is a circumstance rather than action, and an ideal existence sits on the altruistic half of the spectrum of human personalities. this is why i think of narcissism as the cardinal sin. more than that, it is the original sin and the universal sin, but it is also the sin that allows us to survive and life comfortably. a perfectly virtuous life annihilates the self, but a good-enough life has as little narcissism as possible

i've tried to structure this but i honestly can't be assed