No Narcissists in Nature

wild creatures are entirely self-centered - but only humans are narcissists

We think of her as our squirrel. She thinks of us as part of her territory.

Since our arrival in her neck of the woods, we have paid tribute to her ancestors, and we intend to continue remitting regular sunflower seed payments to generations of her descendants to come. In return, she majestically tolerates our presence within the bounds of her domain.

We can’t hand-feed her because she is very finger-curious. In fairness, all of our fingertips do bear striking resemblance to juicy earthworms, and she frequently can’t resist the urge to give a nip-test, just in case. She has no idea, of course, that she could make us ill, and we don’t want to blame her, so we just avoid the whole situation.

Her entire life is her-centered. And it’s really beautiful to behold. She is all squirrel all the time, unapologetic, pure and unaltered in any way by any outside opinion. She runs her day by her rules and you do not factor into her one-track considerations.

She always arrives on scene in the full force of her nature, effortless in domination, scattering small, panicky feather-fluffs to the wind. It’s her right, and she commands it in supreme confidence.

If someone larger arrives, she does not lose one single second taking up her proper place in the new world order. She retreats ever-so-slightly, in a flash of fiery indignation, to a branch just out of reach, and commences scolding furiously at top volume.

When she arrives to a seed pile, she settles in to eat absolutely until she decides that she has had enough. If any competitor approaches the area, she allows one brief moment to lunge and yell, and then promptly returns to entirely self-absorbed nibbling.

There is no one else in the world. Just her. And her pile of seeds. Until she is done. She deems it acceptable to pause her goals momentarily to address unscheduled intrusions by others - but only very momentarily.

Much to do. No time for your irrelevant and wildly un-squirrel-centered agenda.

If our squirrel was a human, this would be a problematic indication of narcissistic tendencies - but there are no narcissists in nature.

Some of us are taking our ball and going home, and they don’t like it. They want us to want them. They need us to need them. They’d love for us to love them, as Cheap Trick sang. Anyone familiar with bullies or narcissists has heard their serenade.

Since my brain filters everything through a nature lens, I read this passage from Thomas Pluck’s Late Stage Capitalism essay¹, and was suddenly struck by the fact that narcissism doesn’t occur in nature, even though wild creatures are entirely, delightfully, enlighteningly self-centered.

Wild creatures’ cognitive processes just don’t include planning ahead and thinking of others and synthesizing perspectives. Their lives are an endless cascade of activities centered on their own individual, immediate needs, moment by moment. And it’s fascinating, and lovely, and endearing, and perfectly balanced! You learn so much by watching a squirrel being entirely a squirrel, without concern over what his squirrel-ness means to the birds and the bunnies and to your plans for your bird-feeders 🤣

But you know what’s different about human narcissism? Our cognitive processes do include planning for futures and accounting for others. We can understand the far-reaching effects of our words and actions, and we actively choose our words and actions with full access to that information. So human narcissism is self-centeredness that also demands from others and that operates at the expense of others. It’s an unnatural predation, foreign to the wild world - sadly unique to the human experience.

I recently found myself devoting a very long Note to narcissism. Because watching it multiply in the world right now became a sort of pond-ripple-reflection of watching it unfold in my life growing up. I recognize it in broad strokes - how it starts, how it’s going, what comes after - and I feel compelled to talk about it, where I can, when I can, compelled to hope that sharing will ripple and reflect to others around the pond who I know have had similar experiences. I’ve included the link here, for those of you who participate in Notes, and the full text for those of you who don’t.

I’ve met a lot of narcissists in my life. Like, a lot a lot. I’m not talking about those moments of selfishness that we all experience from time to time. I’m talking about strong narcissistic personalities that lack empathy, prioritize emotion and intuition over information and reality, are susceptible to conspiracy theories, and simply can’t see or care about harm to others in the pursuit of their personal desires. And I’ve learned a couple of things.

It’s not me, it’s them. Any strong narcissist will be the first to tell you that it’s not them, it’s you. You’re over-reacting. You’re being too sensitive. You’re not thinking about it from their perspective. You’re not doing your research. If you could just be nicer or calmer or if you could have just picked a better time or better tone for this conversation, then there wouldn’t be a problem.

It took me a long time, and a lot of trial and observation, to fully realize that the only thing that was true about those claims was that the narcissistic person who made them absolutely and unshakeably believed them. No matter how perfect I could be, I could never be perfect enough - because it wasn’t actually me, it was them.

But that made me wonder, if it wasn’t me, why were there so many of them in my life? If I wasn’t the problem, why was I attracting so many individuals who were?

It was also me. And that was because it also was me. I grew up with a severely narcissistic mom, so I didn’t develop a good understanding of what a healthy relationship looked like. I learned that a relationship meant adapting myself to whatever the other person needed. Do you know what type of person that behavior consistently attracts? Narcissists! So the problem was definitely them - but the reason I kept running into that problem was also definitely me.

So I have actually seen more than my fair share of narcissists in my life. First, because I was shaped by narcissism, I invited it more. Then, once I figured it out, I also just noticed it more. So in my perception of the world, it seemed to me like more than half of people were pretty high on the narcissism scale. But I don’t think a lot of people with healthy boundaries necessarily saw the world that same way.

And that’s because if you are a person with healthy boundaries, a narcissist who tests your boundaries will find them firm, and will just move on. And it may not have even registered on your awareness, because it starts with minor things. But that same person can go on to be devastating to a person with soft boundaries. Narcissists need the right conditions in order to be harmful. It’s definitely them, but it’s also definitely what they find in us.

I think that’s one of the reasons that it was such a shock to see the prevalence of extreme narcissistic tendencies at election time. Because if you had healthy boundaries, you might have tended to think most people had some basic shared lines that would be too far. But suddenly, 70 million people were unbothered by a pathologically lying, predatory felon for President. Suddenly, 70 million people were happy to trade democracy for fascism over the so-called price of eggs. Suddenly, 70 million people were championing a racist and misogynist platform, entirely unmoved by pleas for the well-being of innocent children and wives and daughters. Where did all this narcissism suddenly come from? But of course, it had been there all along, growing and spreading unnoticed because it could mostly be held in check in daily social interactions by healthy boundaries.

Because most of our daily social interactions don’t really rise to the level of impacting our freedoms and well-being, do they? If your friend was always flaking on your lunch plans, you weren’t necessarily jumping to the conclusion that she would be willing to leave you to die from a miscarriage or to reenact the horrors of race-based detention camps or to deliver little children back into the ravages of measles and polio. But here we are 😳

The truth is, narcissists were always going to trade your well-being for their momentary satisfaction, given the chance. What’s new is the level of broadly impactful chances that history has suddenly delivered to them, en masse and all at once.

It’s hard, sometimes, after having seen the destructive power of a narcissist in a relationship, to consider what it’s like to have narcissists running the entire country. Like, the inmates are running the asylum. The people with the most disordered, distorted, unhinged, unstable sense of reality are now the ones defining reality.

It’s going to be weird, and it’s going to be ugly, and they’re going to keep saying it’s us, not them. But it’s definitely them. And now that we know it’s them, I hope we keep finding all the ways to band together and hold firm boundaries and take up space and push back hard - because I for one am done letting it also be me.

Thanks for connecting here at Nature Moments, where we are making the world a better place, one nature connection at a time :) Be curious. Be amazed. And then do it again!

Thank you for your support! 💕

1. Gift Ideas: Late Stage Capitalism Edition