A society made up of self-loving individuals does not fail spectacularly, does not explode, does not collapse with the sounds of sirens and dramatic images of historical ruptures, but settles in its own banality, like excreta in a septic tank, in the slow decay of responsibility, while everyone in that system tirelessly defends their own image of themselves as the last refuge of meaning.
photo: narcissus / caravaggio (1594–96)...
Such societies rarely seem tragic in the classical sense. Much more often, they seem tired, fed up with themselves, covered with a layer of everyday cynicism and violence that have become so normalized that no one even notices them anymore. People in such a society gradually stop distinguishing morality from utility, principle from marketing, truth from the psychological need to preserve a positive self-image, and therefore everything becomes a matter of personal validation. Even when they talk about community, justice or nation, they are actually talking about their own egos that seek validation through collective symbols.
In such an environment, the leader is not the cause of the disease but its symptom, only the most visible expression of something that has existed in the mass for a long time, something that the psychological sediment of society would inevitably bring to the surface sooner or later. Therefore, a leader does not arise in a vacuum, but is a distillate of a collective character, usually hysterically self-loving, with a repeatedly overestimated image of his supposedly important role in world history.
The mass almost never chooses what it morally needs, but what reflects its repressed impulses. If a society is composed of people who are incapable of self-criticism, who shift every fault to external factors, who instinctively choose their own innocence in every conflict — then such a mass cannot produce a leader who will be anything other than a magnified version of those same traits.
Such a leader does not even have to be particularly intelligent. It is enough for him to intuitively understand the psychological weaknesses of the masses and feed them properly, thus becoming a mirror of collective narcissism. The people do not see a man in him, but their own idealized projection: a figure who never makes mistakes, who is constantly threatened by the outside world and who perceives any criticism as an attack on the community itself. This is why the relationship between the masses and the leader often takes on an almost religious structure: rational analysis disappears, and emotional identification remains, which is more resistant to facts than to any kind of propaganda.
The self-loving, therefore, want a leader who will confirm their image of the world, not someone who will question their mythomania and fabricated national history that justifies the destruction of Others and the Different as just another form of disinsection.
This is where the egomaniac comes in, but not just any egomaniac, but one with a touch of sadism, because the masses who reject responsibility have to channel their frustration somewhere. Unable to direct its frustration towards itself, the crowd looks for external targets. The psychological mechanism is almost primitive in its simplicity: if we are inherently good, then the cause of our failures must exist outside of us. This is how internal and external enemies, traitors, foreign mercenaries, minorities, the Different, all those on whom the burden of collective frustration can be shifted, are created.
The paradox is that even the opponents of the leader who was politically born, raised and voted in by a society of selfish people — operate from the same mindset. They are also self-loving, just on a different ideological or "moral" frequency. Their criticism is not based on principles, but on a wounded ego. They don't challenge the regime, they just want to take a place in it. This is why political changes in such societies often act as cosmetic changes to the system's identity, rather than a fundamental break with the pattern.
Few really want to destroy the very psychological structure of power; most just want it to finally work in his favor. That is why the opposition often unconsciously imitates the methods it publicly condemns: the cult of personality, moral exclusivity, propaganda simplification and emotional manipulation. The difference is mostly aesthetic, so when such people come to power, the result is almost identical: a new version of the same pattern, with different slogans, but the same essence. Society then falls into a cyclical shift of narcissistic elites who hate each other, but are psychologically more alike than they would ever admit.
Real change, if it is possible at all, does not begin with changing the leader, but with changing the inner structure of the individual. However, it is a slow, painful and unpopular process. It requires the ability to self-criticize, and self-criticism is one of the rarest human qualities, because it implies the destruction of one's own myths. A person has to accept that he may not be morally clean, that he may not be just a victim of history, that perhaps part of the problem lies within him, and that is much more difficult than hating a political opponent or idealizing a new figure of salvation.
