Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 25, 2025


#411 — The Victimhood Pandemic


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

178.35641

Word count

5,530

Sentence count

291

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman joins me to talk about what it's like being a professor at Columbia University after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He talks about the impact of the attacks, how to prepare for the next pandemic, and why he thinks Columbia is better than most.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
00:00:11.780 hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing
00:00:15.740 the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
00:00:20.100 Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. There you'll also find our scholarship program,
00:00:25.900 where we offer free accounts to anyone who can't afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast,
00:00:30.740 and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.
00:00:34.080 So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
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
00:30:35.880 conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access
00:30:41.420 to all full length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The podcast is available to everyone
00:30:46.340 through our scholarship program. So if you can't afford a subscription, please request a free account
00:30:51.580 on the website. The Making Sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support.
00:30:56.980 And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.