Making Sense - Sam Harris - #411 — The Victimhood Pandemic

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

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00:00:45.420 I'm here with Scott Barry Kaufman. Scott, thanks for joining me.

00:00:49.120 Sam, it's so great to be here again five years later.

00:00:51.640 Is that what it is, five years?

00:00:52.580 Yeah, we talked like right when the pandemic started.

00:00:55.820 Right. Did we know there was a pandemic at the time? Was it?

00:00:58.440 Yeah. And you asked me to make predictions.

00:01:01.760 Uh-huh. What did you predict? Do you remember anything?

00:01:05.060 Yeah. Okay. I think something I said is, we're going to come out stronger from this. We're going

00:01:09.740 to come out of the pandemic with a newfound sense of appreciation for life. I guess something like

00:01:15.080 that. How's that holding up, that prediction?

00:01:17.060 Um, for some people, I think that is true. And for some people, it's far worse. But that's un-pandemic

00:01:24.820 related.

00:01:25.820 Don't you think at the societal level, we're much weaker? I mean, I, my sense is that we're much

00:01:32.300 less prepared for the next pandemic than we would otherwise be socially, politically.

00:01:37.060 Yeah. In terms of being prepared. Yeah. That's a really good point. But I also think, you know,

00:01:43.600 we, we sort of forget what it was like to be in the pandemic. I mean, this is like anything. It's

00:01:48.620 like, if you get a bad headache, you're like, all you want is to not have the headache. And you're

00:01:52.700 like, forevermore, the rest of my life, I'll be so appreciative that I don't have the headache.

00:01:56.300 And then five, you know, about 30 seconds after you're recovered, you forgot what it was like

00:02:01.700 to have that. It's not, it's not like you live up to that promise, you know?

00:02:05.380 Yeah. Yeah. We can put that in the stoicism bucket, which, uh, it seems it relates to a lot

00:02:11.160 of your work, actually. I mean, you, you, you do a lot of work on emotional resilience and well-being

00:02:16.380 and so you're, we should remind people you have a book that just came out this week titled Rise

00:02:21.620 Above, which, um, goes into the problems of, um, seeing oneself as a victim and, you know, the kind

00:02:30.420 of durable basis for self-esteem and, and how we navigate, uh, the various, uh, personality quirks of

00:02:37.060 narcissism and neuroticism. And I want to get into all that, but before we do, you just moved back to

00:02:42.780 New York and have begun teaching at Columbia again. Have you started teaching yet? No, I started

00:02:48.280 preparing for the fall semester, but I don't start till the fall till September. So, um, that Columbia

00:02:54.260 has been very much in the news, you know, right in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. And

00:03:00.660 it was the epicenter of a lot of the, um, protests around the war in Gaza. I know you kind of just got

00:03:07.480 back, but do you have a sense of, of what campus life is like now? You know, for most

00:03:12.520 students, it's business as usual. You know, I think it's very easy to watch the news and to

00:03:17.680 catastrophize the whole school and say, Oh, I, you know, I hear a lot from parents. I'm never sending

00:03:24.760 my son or daughter to Columbia when you're actually in it. As I've been in it, I taught last year for

00:03:31.820 semester. It's pretty calm once you're in it, you know, once you're teaching, uh, the students are

00:03:36.680 great. You may step outside and, and see, you know, a group of 10, 20 students who are very loud.

00:03:42.520 But I just need to emphasize it's, it's the, it's the strong, strong minority of students.

00:03:47.680 I mean, a big part of my book as well is to limit catastrophizing limit, you know, lots of

00:03:53.200 cognitive distortions. And I do fear the media fuels into a lot of this where, you know, suddenly

00:03:58.240 we should, we should be fearful of Columbia or Columbia students. And that's really not the

00:04:03.480 normal business as everyday, everyday business.

00:04:06.300 So the sense of victimhood, I mean, many people feel that that has been amplified in the, in this

00:04:13.980 younger generation, maybe two generations culturally in the, in the West, in the most prosperous

00:04:20.700 societies, you know, especially in America, there's a sense that, that are, um, the sense of what

00:04:26.600 constitutes trauma has been amplified to the point where basically everyone of a certain age views

00:04:34.280 themselves, uh, somewhere in recovery from something awful. And that's something awful could

00:04:39.880 be, uh, almost homeopathic in its level of dilution. Do you think we are witnessing a culture of

00:04:47.300 victimhood that needs a course correction? I mean, just, and how much of that is just the

00:04:52.340 catastrophizing of the media reports about culture?

00:04:56.180 I've never quite put it this way, but I do think we're living in a victimhood pandemic there. You

00:05:01.640 get there. I just coined that phrase. So yeah, I do think there's something going on in our culture

00:05:07.520 where it's almost like everyone feels like they need to one up each other. Everyone needs to compete

00:05:12.000 for victimhoods. We're living the age of the victimhood Olympics. And I think that implicit in

00:05:17.240 that is there is this assumption that there can only be one victim and everyone's competing for this

00:05:22.240 one spot to get all that attention, to get all those resources. There is a large psychology base

00:05:28.440 and, um, Kurt Gray has done some really good research on this called moral typecasting. And

00:05:34.080 psychologically, if you're put in the, if you're perceived as the victim, you're perceived as an

00:05:38.980 angel who can never do anything wrong. And if you're perceived as the perpetrator, you can't do

00:05:44.340 anything right. And so for good reason, you know, it's a very coveted, coveted spot to be

00:05:50.600 perceived as the victim. It didn't used to be the case though. I mean, when did this flip? It used

00:05:55.300 to be that you would want to diminish. I mean, that certainly there's no sense of higher status

00:06:00.860 accruing to somebody who's a victim. I mean, most people would want to hide whatever wounds they

00:06:06.960 think they're carrying around at a certain point. When did that flip culturally? No one knows the exact

00:06:12.240 answer to that question, but people like Jonathan Haidt and, uh, Gene Twenge have, have done some

00:06:17.540 analysis to know some trends, um, in the last seven years, I would say, you know, you're right.

00:06:23.580 In my youth, when you were submitting college essays, you were rewarded for talking about how

00:06:28.600 you've overcome your challenges and your adversities. Now college essays, you, they're all competing to

00:06:33.980 just have the best sob story in order to get to the, get into the college. That's simply what's

00:06:38.800 rewarded, not overcoming it. Interesting. What's the alternative here? I mean,

00:06:43.800 in your book, you talk about a healthy sense of vulnerability. I mean, you're not, you're not,

00:06:48.640 you're not asking people to deny the slings and arrows they've encountered in life. Just keep 0.84

00:06:54.620 calm and carry on. There's something, what is, what is the balance here? I mean, maybe, maybe this is

00:06:59.220 the point to introduce your transformation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which you, you've changed

00:07:04.680 from a pyramid to a sailboat where the, the hull is the basic needs of safety, connection,

00:07:10.080 and self-esteem and the sail is exploration, love, and purpose. I mean, we'll probably cover some of

00:07:16.320 those, but I guess I'm thinking of self-esteem in this connection. What, what is the, what is the

00:07:21.800 healthy basis of self-esteem?

00:07:24.860 Really, really insightful. In a lot of ways, this book is a, is a, is a double clicking or a zoom in

00:07:30.280 on transcend. Transcend was so focused on the higher self. And I was like, you know what? We need to

00:07:38.780 return to fundamentals because I don't think most people are there yet. Most people are not there

00:07:42.660 right now. Let's double click on the boat, not the sail, but the basic needs of the boat, which are

00:07:48.440 the need for connection, the need for self-esteem, um, and the need for safety. When those three needs

00:07:54.940 are thwarted, it's kind of, they kind of operate as a system. Um, and you can spiral downward quite

00:08:00.660 quickly, um, if one of the three and pull, it'll pull down the other two. So if your need for

00:08:05.860 connection is not satisfied to an adequate level, your self-esteem will take a hit. If your safety

00:08:10.940 is not satisfied, your connection and your self-esteem. So it's all, it's all a system. So in a lot of

00:08:17.400 ways, this new book really is a, a double clicking on that and the mindsets that can take its way from

00:08:23.600 that. But then I do talk about the mindsets that are productive and I call it the empowerment

00:08:27.820 mindset.

00:08:28.400 Yeah. So if, in just in terms of thinking about self-esteem, what is, what is its healthy basis?

00:08:36.100 If you, if you met somebody who's, you know, in their mid twenties and you had a sense that

00:08:42.680 they had a major hole in the, in the hull of the boat and, uh, their self-esteem needed to be shored

00:08:49.580 up. Obviously there's a delusional version of self-esteem, right? There's this, uh, thoughts about

00:08:56.040 oneself that, um, can fail to track one's actual place in the world and this, and the, the health

00:09:03.260 of one's relationships, et cetera. I mean, so presumably there's, there's some, you want some

00:09:07.420 reality testing, uh, which is to say you actually, you require some reasons to feel good about your

00:09:13.800 place in the world. You can't just be psychotically enthusiastic about how good things are going.

00:09:18.880 And I mean, how do you recommend that someone dig their way out of that hole? If a lack of

00:09:26.340 self-esteem is really the, the kind of the point of the crisis?

00:09:29.860 Yeah. To answer that question, I just want to just take a bit of a bird's eye view for a quick

00:09:34.020 second and say that when we often think of a victim, you're being victimized. We think about

00:09:38.440 you being victimized by external circumstances. And actually part one of my book are all the

00:09:42.680 different ways we are victim to ourselves. And one way is you can be a victim to your

00:09:48.240 self-esteem and you can become a victim to your self-esteem when you have to always feel

00:09:53.380 good about yourself. I kind of, I try, I try to challenge the notion that you always have to feel

00:09:58.280 good about yourself. And I argue, I have a whole section called the benefits of feeling bad about

00:10:02.760 yourself. There is this notion that you should always feel good about yourself no matter what you

00:10:08.780 do in this world. And no, we need to take accountability. We need to, sometimes are we,

00:10:14.880 we're, we need to have a reality monitoring, like accurate reality checking. Are we coming

00:10:20.980 across as a valued social partner? Are we, you know, there are evolutionarily evolved mechanisms

00:10:26.000 that cause us to not feel good about ourselves when we act in certain ways or when we're getting

00:10:29.920 certain feedback. And that is valuable information. There's a reason why that sociometer evolved,

00:10:36.020 as Mark Leary, the social psychologist called it, the sociometer. There's a reason why it evolved.

00:10:41.740 And we should be accurately tracking our sociometer and work toward, of course, self-compassion

00:10:47.620 and mindful awareness. A lot of really great stuff you talk about in your app and in your own work as

00:10:54.100 well. But that's all separate from having an accurate assessment. If your sociometer is broken,

00:11:00.300 you can, you know, be a psychopath who doesn't care at all about your effects on the others of the

00:11:07.000 world or how you're coming across. And yet you're continually set at that high self-esteem switch. And

00:11:12.880 that's not healthy.

00:11:14.440 So then what, what accounts in your view for the success of some prominent psychopaths or at least

00:11:20.820 psychopath adjacent people that we might name? I mean, there are people who come readily to mind now

00:11:26.200 all too often who seem to have a sociometer that, uh, never moves, you know, it's always pointing

00:11:33.160 toward the fact that they are the, uh, increasingly triumphant center of the universe. How do these

00:11:39.340 people succeed in a social context that would seem to, um, want to crush that attitude in, in most people?

00:11:48.160 I knew you'd ask the good questions today. I actually told a bunch of people at my party last

00:11:51.660 night, I was like, I'm talking to the same house tomorrow. I know he's going to ask me good questions.

00:11:54.380 So first of all, how do you define the word success? I think in a lot of ways, the success

00:12:00.520 of certain people, uh, might not be how you define success. Like you might not be willing

00:12:05.460 to make a certain trade-off, but you're right. There's undeniable achievement, societal achievement

00:12:11.180 among lots of people who probably are high on the psychopathy spectrum. And you can get ahead

00:12:17.860 in a lot of ways by disregarding the needs of others. First of all, people are attracted to

00:12:24.260 narcissists to grandiose narcissists. People want to be in their orbit because, well, if,

00:12:29.400 if you're winning, quote, winning, um, that's a very attractive to a lot of people who aren't

00:12:35.180 winning, you know, to be able to, to hitch your, whatever, to hitch your wagon or whatever

00:12:40.220 the expression is to someone who's quote, winning can make you feel like you're winning

00:12:45.100 too. So you're, you're, I mean, if you're being honest with yourself, you're, you're using

00:12:49.180 their power and, and quote, success for your own power and success. So that's a big part

00:12:54.920 of the story for sure.

00:12:56.380 But what is charisma? I mean, how does charisma relate to narcissism? Do you think when, when

00:13:02.740 you are noticing a kind of star quality in someone who kind of seizes the attention of

00:13:07.760 a room, that that is always drawing energy from narcissism or is it a separate, entirely

00:13:14.420 healthy channel?

00:13:15.840 Yeah. The construct of, of charisma is something that has interested me my whole life. I think

00:13:19.920 there's quiet charisma. I think there's different forms of charisma. I don't think it always has

00:13:23.160 to take the form of a narcissistic persona. It often does because confidence is strongly

00:13:31.440 tied to, to charisma. So, but you can have a hugely introverted, kind, gentle soul that is

00:13:39.420 intensely confident in believing in their cause. Gandhi perhaps had a lot of charisma, you know?

00:13:46.100 And I, so I do think there is a quiet kind of charisma, but I think something that is a very

00:13:50.000 common there is there's a, there tends to be a strong conviction where you don't tend to be a

00:13:55.680 people pleaser. I do have a whole chapter in my book on being a victim to your people pleasing

00:14:00.360 tendencies and people with people playing people pleasing tendencies tend to not come across as having

00:14:05.720 a lot of charisma. So I think that's part of the story as well.

00:14:08.040 So it's being somewhat disagreeable can be, uh, yeah, charismatic.

00:14:12.060 Yeah, it can. Yes. It absolutely can be a route to charisma, but it doesn't have to be to obviously

00:14:17.820 doesn't have to be the route to charisma, but it can, because I think that it's the confidence

00:14:23.700 thing there that really matters. It's like, it's like saying, do, do women really like 0.75

00:14:28.500 narcissistic psychopathic assholes? And I, and I, my research has shown they don't, but they are 1.00

00:14:34.880 attracted to confidence and they often, you know, discover later that, oh, there's confidence 0.98

00:14:41.420 and there's also a narcissistic asshole behind that as well that I didn't want to sign up for. 0.93

00:14:46.080 So if you were going to create the, uh, the most attractive candidate for whatever, for 0.99

00:14:51.060 president, for boyfriend, for girlfriend, and you were going to just adjust these, these

00:14:56.340 variables in the lab, how would you tweak the canonical? I mean, you could, you could go for

00:15:01.600 the big five personality traits. Is there an optimal setting of the dials in your view, or is

00:15:07.920 there, are there several variants of, of optimal? How, how do you think about extroversion versus

00:15:14.860 introversion, conscientiousness, et cetera, you know, openness to experience, or I mean, you can take any

00:15:20.200 other dials you want, but what do we know at this point with respect to the ingredients of human

00:15:27.700 happiness and success as a social primate, uh, at least in the current context of 21st century

00:15:35.300 culture? Yeah. I don't like the question. No, I don't like it. I think there's multiple paths.

00:15:42.200 I'm not, I feel like it's a trap. Um, I think that's the basis of the question. Is there one

00:15:47.160 setting that you think is normative, like, you know, a character in Dungeons and Dragons that

00:15:50.460 obviously is the most normative? Normative? Yes. But what it should be the case? No. So I think we

00:15:56.220 need to distinguish between a couple of things here. I think that the people who tend to rise to power

00:16:01.160 are not the people that society I think needs in power. And, and unfortunately, a lot of people who

00:16:08.080 would make really good, powerful people don't have that ambition. And so a big part of my research

00:16:15.780 and dare I say activism as well is getting those people into positions of power who would,

00:16:20.920 who would make good leaders. I've made the distinction between dark triad leadership and 0.82

00:16:24.940 light triad leadership. Dark triad leaders is they, they, those are the ones that tend to,

00:16:30.280 tend to dominate the leadership space. I mean, we did an analysis of the U S Senate and we did analysis

00:16:35.920 based on speeches and we coded for malevolent traits as well as benevolent traits. We found that across the

00:16:44.940 board, there's a huge preponderance of dark triad characteristics. So I think that's a problem.

00:16:51.080 And you find that the more dark triad leaders, the higher the score in dark triad, by the way, 0.85

00:16:57.100 the dark triad stands for Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. So it's, it's all

00:17:02.600 three combined. Actually, could you, could you just double click on that and, and define each of

00:17:07.160 those a little more? And I think people have a sense of what you mean by psychopathy and narcissism.

00:17:11.340 You might have to spell out Machiavellianism, but say what you want about all three.

00:17:17.260 Yeah. Uh, the dark triad is a combination of those three personality characteristics that we all

00:17:22.360 are somewhere on the spectrum for each of them. Narcissism, grandiose narcissism. And, uh, we can

00:17:27.800 talk later about vulnerable if you want, that's a different special kind, but grandiose narcissism,

00:17:32.680 Machiavellianism, which is your strategically manipulating things in the longterm for some

00:17:38.300 ultimate goal, selfish goal, usually. And psychopathy, where you're prone to lying and

00:17:44.460 deceit and thrill seeking. Uh, you get it, you got to actually get a thrill out of causing

00:17:49.300 destruction. So the white triad incorporates, oh, faith in humanity. You believe humans are

00:17:55.820 basically good, even though you see their flaws. Um, humanism, you tend to treat everyone

00:18:00.260 with dignity and respect. And, uh, we call it continism, which is not seeing people as a means

00:18:06.420 to an end, but seeing people as an end to themselves. And yeah, we've just found over and

00:18:12.020 over again that dark triad traits are just far more predominant in leadership positions than

00:18:18.380 white triad traits. And I don't think it's logical to conclude that therefore that means though, that,

00:18:24.500 that, that, that you need those traits in order to be a good leader. In fact, I think we've seen over

00:18:29.900 and over again, how those traits lead to downfalls of civilizations and societies.

00:18:36.720 But what you're calling light triad sounds more like a system of ideas or beliefs, you know,

00:18:43.400 than it is traits, psychological traits that somebody would naturally exhibit. You know, I mean,

00:18:49.880 maybe faith in humanity is some kind of, you know, positive social, you know, pro-social

00:18:55.500 emotional tone. But, um, you tell me, but you know, what you're talking about is Kantianism,

00:19:01.040 for instance, that's a realizing at some point in your life, you know, that ethics entails not

00:19:07.740 treating people as, as instruments toward an end, but as ends in themselves. That really is a kind of a,

00:19:13.880 that's kind of hard one territory on, on the, on the field of, of ideas and knowledge,

00:19:19.060 more than it is a quality of somebody's personality that you might identify earlier in life.

00:19:25.180 That's the thing is that I think these things are far more intertwined than we

00:19:28.720 realize. Your worldview and your personality are, are so tightly connected. And I'll give you an

00:19:35.700 example that maybe will give you an insight. The dark triad is, is a worldview. And that worldview

00:19:42.860 is at the extreme, Ted Bundy has a quote that we always use as the prime example of a dark triad

00:19:50.280 way of thinking. And that's, well, what's one less person on the planet anyway? And so that's a

00:19:57.260 worldview. Um, the light triad worldview is consistent with, uh, Anne Frank, who was as the, as the Nazis were 0.74

00:20:05.000 trying to find her, you know, her last days, she wrote in her journal, I still believe in spite of

00:20:10.180 everything that humans are truly good at heart. And so, I don't know, I really think that our

00:20:16.480 personality is, is colored by a certain worldview and, and, uh, belief in certain things. We can go

00:20:25.820 through every single personality trait to figure out what that is, but I do think those things are

00:20:29.340 very tightly connected. I guess it runs the other direction too, that your, your worldview is often

00:20:35.060 fairly obviously anchored to your psychology and your personality. I mean, even if only it's the

00:20:41.160 worldview you find attractive, you know, I mean, I, I often see examples where it seems like a

00:20:47.180 philosopher's philosophy is much more of a, an advertisement for their psychology than anything

00:20:52.660 else, right? They're the kind of, I, I, I think I often catch people mistaking one of their

00:20:57.900 psychological proclivities for a philosophical insight. I mean, I certainly,

00:21:02.480 could you give me an example? I've certainly seen this in the case of people who, who arrive at

00:21:07.140 some very dark place where they think, you know, the, the life is no longer worth living. And they,

00:21:12.340 they believe they have this as on the basis of some kind of philosophical epiphany into,

00:21:19.020 rather than it's, it's like, it's a, clearly if, if they felt better, if they had a higher level of

00:21:24.280 wellbeing, they wouldn't find this insight to be insightful, but because they feel so lousy,

00:21:30.040 then it's really kind of a captivating kind of, you know, singularity of pessimism.

00:21:36.680 It's actually a really, really profound point. You, you hear people with bipolar disorder,

00:21:42.560 they literally, they, they literally feel like they're two different people.

00:21:46.380 And it's very confusing to wake up one day and feel everything you see around you is colored by

00:21:54.000 darkness. And then the very next day you wake up and the world is literally your oyster.

00:22:01.000 Mm-hmm it, it, it, so that can be very confusing to people with certain psychological disorders. So

00:22:07.040 the extent to which our emotions and our biochemicals and a lot of things that have nothing to do with

00:22:12.720 the outside world can influence and color our personality that day. It's, it's really,

00:22:18.560 it's a really important point. I'm glad you made that.

00:22:20.780 So back to the dark triad for a moment, how do you view Trump on the landscape of

00:22:27.020 psychology that, I mean, is he a dark triad character or do we, do you feel like you,

00:22:32.020 you don't know enough about him? You do, I know you, I know there's a taboo around,

00:22:36.040 I mean, you're not a clinician, right? So you, you don't, you're not covered by the Goldwater

00:22:40.120 rule, are you? Can you, you can diagnose freely from your armchair, can't you?

00:22:43.640 But Dr. Harris, Dr. Harris, if the word psychopathy is to mean, or let me just say this,

00:22:48.920 Dr. Harris, if the word narcissism is to mean anything, Trump would have to be a narcissist.

00:22:55.540 I mean, we've never, I've never seen a case study so clearly consistent with the research

00:23:02.400 than that case study.

00:23:04.280 Well, I mean, he's obviously the, I mean, he's the, I think he's the greatest example

00:23:09.020 of narcissism anyone can name, you know, outside of the original grandiose narcissism.

00:23:15.040 But what about the other two? Do you, do you feel as confident in talking about the other

00:23:19.120 two legs of the?

00:23:20.100 Yeah. The Machiavellianism, see, I don't know how long-term thinker he is to, to give him

00:23:27.400 enough credit to say he's high in Machiavellianism, to be honest, because usually people who screw

00:23:32.340 high in Machiavellianism are very, they're very thoughtful people, like Machiavelli, the prince,

00:23:38.340 you know, like very strategic, long-term. I think we give Trump too much credit sometimes,

00:23:46.000 like, you know, right now with the tariffs, like, oh, he don't know, he has a long, trust

00:23:50.120 me, he has a plan, you know, like a long-term plan. I don't think he really has thought this

00:23:55.820 through in all honesty. So I don't know about that one, but then let's think about psychopathy.

00:24:00.880 That's perhaps a more controversial one than the, than the narcissism one. So let's, let's

00:24:07.280 think about psychopathy a second. So a real key characteristic of psychopathy is callousness.

00:24:12.740 And I think we do see quite a high level of, of being very callous, but I, I think there's

00:24:19.280 something interesting going on where you see in certain cases of the dark triad, a fascinating

00:24:24.360 interaction between their narcissism and their psychopathy, where the extent to which you view

00:24:31.500 someone as connected to your own sense of self is the extent to which you show compassion to that

00:24:37.100 person. And my, my thinking, my, my take, my intuitive take, and I've never met the guy is

00:24:43.380 that if you're really loyal to him and you're really in his orbit as in his own mind as part,

00:24:50.320 just an extension of his self, of his own self, and he loves himself so much, he probably comes

00:24:56.500 across as, as, as quite compassionate and caring towards those people, but can be quite callous.

00:25:03.820 The farther you move away from that, the, the, the vice versa, the farther you move away from that

00:25:08.280 all the way to the, to the end where, where he views you as someone who has caused him narcissistic

00:25:13.760 injury, someone who is a threat to his own ego. Um, he, I think he would have no problem being

00:25:18.840 extraordinarily callous towards those people. So that's my nuanced answer.

00:25:22.120 Hmm. I think we've been talking about grandiose narcissism. What is vulnerable narcissism?

00:25:28.460 That's my favorite one. Vulnerable narcissism is a topic I've studied, uh, that for well, well over

00:25:35.340 a decade. And I've argued that the field of psychology needs to pay it more attention and to

00:25:40.860 treat it as a personality trait, not just like as a clinical thing, because it has deep implications

00:25:46.320 for a person's functioning every day. And with grandiose narcissism, there's a form of entitlement

00:25:51.580 there, which is I deserve special privileges because I am superior to others. I am the best.

00:25:58.100 I'm inherently the best. So I deserve special privileges. Those who score high in vulnerable

00:26:03.420 narcissism feel entitled to special privileges, not because they think they're the best, but because

00:26:08.800 they view themselves as fragile or I deserve special privileges because I've suffered more than anyone

00:26:15.140 else. Hmm. And so what, in what context do you see? I mean, is this giving energy to the victimhood

00:26:22.860 culture we're talking about? It's like, is vulnerable narcissism being rewarded on TikTok or by other,

00:26:28.740 you know, cultural trends? Yes. Um, I had, uh, Jean Twenge on my podcast. We talked about this. I

00:26:35.200 asked, cause I, I, I thought that, uh, there's a trend that, uh, we're seeing in this generation,

00:26:40.460 higher levels of vulnerable narcissism, narcissism than we've ever seen before. And she agrees.

00:26:44.840 She agrees that that is the case. Um, it used to be grandiose narcissists. Like the prior

00:26:49.320 generation was like, we're the, we're the best. Now it's, we suffer more. We've suffered more than

00:26:54.480 any other generation. We all have Tourette syndrome. Yes. Yeah. Maybe we should, should we remind people

00:26:59.980 who Jean Twenge is, what her work is? Cause Jonathan Haidt has referenced it a lot. Yeah. She wrote a book

00:27:06.200 called Generations. Um, and, but she's done research for many, many, uh, years, uh, multiple

00:27:11.600 decades on generational trends and what explains those generational trends. And, uh, you know,

00:27:20.120 she's tracked the self-esteem movement to, it looks like it morphed into a grandiose narcissism

00:27:26.740 movement, but it looks like that has morphed into this vulnerable narcissism way of thinking

00:27:32.280 where you really do feel entitled to special privileges because of your suffering. And there

00:27:38.520 also is a lot of hostility there. Um, a lot of victim mindset kind of hostility where the finger

00:27:45.680 is, is pointed at cyst, you know, system, we're going to take down the systems. There's a great

00:27:50.440 injustice everywhere, everywhere there's injustice. Usually when you double click on that, it's meaning

00:27:56.920 there's an injustice against your own ego, you know? So is this expressed when you're talking

00:28:03.540 about a culture of victimhood, when I try to map that onto the political landscape, I more readily

00:28:09.380 see it on the left, but it's victimhood, victimhood. But I think as I, you know, think for two seconds

00:28:16.240 longer, I, I see it on the right too. It's just expressed differently. Well, how do you, how do you

00:28:21.520 map the victimhood pandemic onto our politics? Hmm. I think, I think that's what you should call

00:28:27.160 this episode, the victimhood pandemic. Teddy, did you think about that already? Uh, no, but, uh, I

00:28:32.700 will take your direction there. I very likely will work. So I think that's interesting because I think

00:28:39.080 there's a victimhood mindset. We should distinguish between victimhood and a victim mindset. They're not

00:28:44.280 necessarily the same thing. You can have been horribly victimized and have a victim mindset or not

00:28:49.180 have a victim mindset, but can also not have been victimized and have a victim mindset. And I think

00:28:53.280 that's what we're seeing a lot of today. And I do think there are so many clear, obvious examples of

00:28:58.240 it on the right. I would disagree with you and say that my perception is that it's more prominent on

00:29:04.400 the right right now. If you listen to virtually any far right podcast now, you listen to now there are

00:29:11.560 comedians that are opining that they know the answers to everything and they're, they're, they're the

00:29:15.500 victim to, you know, big pharma and, and powerful people. It's almost like everywhere I listen on

00:29:20.960 the, on the far right, I'm hearing victimhood. So where I'm even curious, where are you seeing it on

00:29:27.260 the left right now? Not now. I understand me five years ago, but like right now, I'm thinking about

00:29:32.220 the, the hangover we all had from identitarian politics and, and wokeness and, you know, yeah.

00:29:39.400 What, what, what Elon calls the woke mind virus, that, that seems to have been a correlation between

00:29:45.300 being a credible, a credible claim of victimhood, you know, and certainly even an intersectional

00:29:51.800 claim of victimhood, you know, having enough victimology points would allow you to claim high

00:29:57.220 status and, and that the, the only truly guaranteed low status position there on that landscape would

00:30:05.080 be to be, you know, the, the white cisgendered man who has no right to complain about anything

00:30:10.980 essentially.

00:30:12.480 So I want to say something that might trigger you, but I, I, let's go, let's, let's watch.

00:30:17.160 I said that jokingly and lovingly, but, uh, I miss wokeness a little bit and, and I want to unpack

00:30:23.360 what I mean by that. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm not sure, I'm not sure that phrase has ever been uttered

00:30:28.780 left or right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I, if you'd like to continue listening to this

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 25, 2025

#411 — The Victimhood Pandemic

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