Stephen Roney's Blog, page 87

Waking Up

 We are accustomed to say we are in a culture war. But what are the two sides? It is not two warring cultures. One side seems in favour of culture, the other opposed. 

Why would anyone be opposed to culture?

The answer is simple: those who seek power oppose culture; cultural norms are a restraint on power. See the Cultural Revolution in China, the French Reign of Terror, or the Cambodian Killing Fields.

So the real battle in the “culture war” is the bullies against the decent common folk. In political terms, say authoritarian government against liberty; but, culturally, it is broader than that. As broad as good against evil; the scribes and Pharisees against those Jesus identified as his own in the Beatitudes.

The bullies see the new technologies as the ideal opportunity for Big Brother—level control. They are pushing for constant oversight, censorship, and control as hard as they can. I have long believed, on the other hand, that the natural consequences of improved communications technology, and technology as a whole, favour over the longer term liberty against the bullies. It is harder for a small group of bullies to control and compel people who can communicate and organize among themselves. Indeed, I suspect that much of the current woke drive to authoritarianism is more a fear reaction to cats escaping bags.

What we currently call “woke” culture is the vanguard of the authoritarian bullying impulse. Consider the things it demands. One is now compelled to say that a man is a woman: the overlords demand the right to dictate reality itself. This is eerily parallel to O’Brien, in 1984, demanding Winston Smith admit that he sees three fingers when O’Brien holds up only two. What could be more complete control than a godlike control over reality itself? This is why bullies gaslight.

Language has long been under their control: “politically correct” is what Orwell called “newspeak.” It has gotten so far as the compulsory use of new pronouns. Or, in Canada, face a prison term.

The right to life has been negated by abortion, and now at warp speed in Canada by euthanasia.

Freedom of conscience, is increasingly denied. Expressing any of the major world religions’ teachings on homosexuality is now illegal. This is not because anyone cares much about homosexual sex or the supposed rights of homosexuals. It is an excuse to suppress religion. Religion, with its ethical restrictions, is the main constraint on bullies everywhere, and they always hate it. They will, at the same time, thoroughly infiltrate it, as did the Biblical Pharisees, for the same reason Saudi Arabia, China, and Afghanistan insist on always having seats on the UN Commission on Human Rights: to co-opt and subvert them. Let God actually appear, and they will try to kill him. 

But mere subversion is not enough. They will also attack frontally. The Catholic Church will be condemned and suppressed, and churches will be burned down with no one held accountable, on the grounds that Catholicism is homophobic; at the same time that a huge proportion of the Catholic clergy are revealed to be active homosexuals, a “velvet mafia.”

The issue is not homosexuality. It is getting rid of morality.

Although the night seems dark, and no place left to turn, there are signs of impending dawn. I anticipated dawn for this spring, and I believe the morning star is here.

Styxenhammer notices an interesting recent shift: previously, when an aggressively woke movie got a low audience score on a site like Rotten Tomatoes, it got a high critics’ score. See the all-female remake of Ghostbusters. The scribes were closing ranks against the common people, who were condemned as misogynists, homophobes, racists, “white supremacists,” “Christian nationalists,” deplorables. However, the recent Queen Cleopatra series, which tries to gaslight the public to accept against all historical evidence that Cleopatra was black, is scoring almost as badly with both the critics and the viewers. Latest tally: 15% among critics, 3% with the audience. 

This suggests the scribes and Pharisees, not all of whom are themselves bullies, some of whom are honest working stiffs who have been bullied into line, or suckered into line or have been going along to get along, like Joseph of Arimathea, are beginning to break ranks. The same thing happened with the nobility in the French Revolution, and it was a crucial moment. 

In the meantime, the general public is also increasingly fed up with this stuff; there is much less of the cap-doffing syndrome and deference to authority than there was a couple of years ago. The woke movies and series are now consistently bombing at the box office: The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan and Wendy, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the latest Star Wars bumpf. Literally, the public isn’t buying it any more.

Polls show that the main issue in the minds of Republicans in the US is now the battle against “wokeness.” Above the economy, above inflation, above government corruption (which is number two), above immigration, above national security.

Somebody has indeed woke; but not as advertised. As with most calculated lies, the term “woke” was always the opposite of the truth.

The bullies always have one great advantage: while they are single-mindedly bent on the acquisition and exercise of power, the average person just wants to either help their neighbour, or be left alone, and assumes the same good will of everyone else. So for some time, the bully can run wild and jackbooted without resistance—in fact, with the help and cooperation of those seeking peace at any price.

As a result, we have seen the rise of “woke” corporations. Their actions seem superficially mad; they are supposed to be making money for their shareholders, not pushing a political agenda. And, generally, the political agenda they push is against the interests and sentiments of their customers. In the case of media platforms, Facebook, YouTube and the like, their profitability depends on being the platform everyone needs to be on to engage in the public discourse. Yet they are banning users, increasingly driving the to other platforms or networks to suppress the public discourse. How can this make business sense?

It actually does. They have learned that if they fall afoul of the demands of the bullies, their business will suffer. There will be demands for boycotts, for divestment, for bans on advertising with them, for freezing their assets, silencing them on social media, and so forth. Disney learned this when they made the villain in The Lion King, Scar, appear to be gay. 

If they appease the bullies, they avoid this. 

As the demands of the bullies grow and grow.

On the other hand, they face little or no downside for this appeasement—because their other customers generally just want to buy a needed product, and do not care much whether a man dresses in women’s clothes, say, or has sex with another man, or whether it was a man or a woman who invented beer.

But the bullies have now overplayed their hand. This was inevitable; when you crave power above all, sooner or later you get drunk on it. They went too far with the pandemic lockdowns, vaccine mandates, suppression of news, defamations, false prosecutions, fake hate crimes, drag shows for children, pornographic children’s books in school libraries, and endless cries of “wolf.” The bullying has gotten too directly threatening for the passive and amoral general public. Now they rise up.

The Bud Light boycott looks like a watershed. The customers showed they now care enough about the woke bullying to do something about it. And they have discovered their power. At last, corporations must calculate on paying a price for appeasing bullies. The woke corporate complex may collapse quickly.

As for the woke political complex, Trump is currently running away with the Republican nomination: up 42 points over his nearest competitor, the highly credible Ron DeSantis. If that trend continues, he will enter the general election with a strong party united behind him. 

Why the Trump surge? Because he has the right enemies. He is being legally persecuted, indicted and prosecuted. This establishes his bone fides as the hero of the common man against the corrupt elite. If the bad guys hate him so, he can be trusted.

The Democratic nomination is being contested by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who also has anti-establishment credibility as an anti-vaccination activist. And he is surging in the polls against a sitting president. The usual Democratic backroom chicanery will probably keep him from the nomination; but he will probably weaken Biden in the primaries, encourage others to come out against the establishment “narrative,” and possibly tempt the dark powers to overreach in order to stop him.

In Canada, we now have the rhetorically magnificent Pierre Poilievre. He has apparently decided to make the war on woke a central issue. No doubt he is reading polls, and sees the same surge in concern over wokeness as in the US. I recently saw a clip of Erin O’Toole, and remembered how luck we are to have Poilievre. 

Things will never be as they ought to be, until the clouds part and Jesus comes trailing glory. But I have hopes that in two years, with Trump in power, a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, an originality majority on the Supreme Court, Poilievre presiding over a Conservative government in Canada, and the woke advertising blockade and the regime of censorship on social media broken, the cultural atmosphere will feel quite different.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Bernier Raises the Scarlet Letter A

 

He said it.

Maxime Bernier has firmly grasped the third rail of Canadian politics, and is running in Portage-Lisgar on the issue of abortion.

This was predictable fallout from the US Supreme Court voiding Roe v. Wade. In fact, I predicted it. Canada always looks south. If the US is debating abortion, Canada has to.

It is also a shrewd move, and puts the Conservatives in a difficult spot. Bernier is proposing a very moderate restriction, one that has public support. It will be hard for the Conservatives to oppose it without losing a possibly significant portion of their base. 

On the other hand, the Liberals have already signalled their desire to run on the issue of abortion instead of corruption, loss of freedom, or the economy. If they give any hint of supporting Bernier’s position, the Tories play into their hands.

Polls suggest the majority of Canadians favour such a restriction on abortion as Bernier proposes. So why is this a winning issue for the left, and a losing one for the right? 

The calculation is that, while most people favour restrictions, they do not feel that strongly about it. The issue is unlikely to determine their vote. On the other hand, those who want abortion, although a minority, make this their most important issue--due to a guilty conscience. So, on balance, it is a lose-lose for the right.

Except for Bernier. He has nothing to lose, sitting at 3-4 percent nationally in the polls, and everything to gain.

One can sympathize with Pierre Poilievre, now caught between a rock and a hard place. If I were he, I would say nothing unless challenged. But he will be challenged. Challenged, I would respond that the Conservative Party and a Conservative government would not introduce any bill restricting abortion. 

But would Conservatives be allowed to support a private members’ bill?

Then he should answer yes. Conservative MPs should have the right to vote with their conscience on any private members’ bills. Now let’s talk about more urgent issues.

This will lose Poilievre some support among the pro-abortion crowd.

But it is also a test of his honour and his leadership. Is he just another political hack, or does he have principles?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

What Canada Now Looks Like from Abroad

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Bug's Life

 

A man, not an insect.

Everybody thinks that Kafka’s Metamorphosis is about a man who turns into a giant insect. This is a good example of how everyone misreads parables. I suspect denial.

To begin with, people do not turn into giant insects. When an author describes something impossible as happening, this tells us we must understand the thing as symbolic, not literal. Not a complicated principle.

Second, Kafka never says that Gregor Samsa turns into a giant insect. What he actually says, in German, is “monstrous vermin.” A “monstrous impure, unholy, and/or defective and undesirable animal or human,” to work out all the connotations of the original German. 

Kafka always forbade any illustration of Gregor. Any drawing would be an immediate falsehood.

Artists usually show Gregor as a cockroach. But cockroaches have six, not “many” legs. Gregor makes frequent reference to “many” legs, all moving independently. Nor is he a centipede or caterpillar; centipedes and caterpillars do not have rounded shells, as Gregor does; they would not need to struggle, as he does, to turn or to roll over. Kafka has deliberately given Gregor features that do not correspond to any real physical insect or other bug.

And then there is the apple. Gregor’s father bombards him with apples. One lodges in his back.

This Is not realistic. Why apples, of all things? And how could one lodge permanently in his back, and cause him great suffering?

The apple too must be symbolic.

The need to resort to symbols is usually to express some emotion. As T.S. Eliot pointed out, one cannot convey an emotion to a reader by simply stating it. The experience of an emotion is purely subjective; you therefore cannot know whether what I call “love” is the same thing you feel as “love.” Ask any anxious fiancée.

Therefore, in order to convey an emotion to a reader, you must find and describe some object that evokes that emotion; what Eliot calls an “objective correlative.” Hope, Emily Dickenson wrote, is “that thing with feathers.” Love, Robbie Burns wrote, “Is like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June.”

And depression is like thinking of yourself as a “monstrous vermin.”

Gregor shows all the symptoms of depression. Before the transformation, he has been, according to the office manager, lax at his job, and has not been bringing in any sales. For everything that happens, he blames himself. He blames himself for missing work, even if sick. He takes it upon himself entirely to make up for his family’s misfortune over the past five years. He blames himself for his family’s disgust at his appearance. He is more upset at his mother’s fainting than at his own slow death by starvation. He loses interest in food—this is not explained, but is a common depressive symptom. He is unable to get out of bed. Towards the end of the tale, he cannot move out of sheer disappointment.

The apple? Like any great author, Kafka is a great psychologist, and is able to tell us exactly where depression comes from. It comes from a narcissistic parent. This apple is as old as Eden, and it always hits you in the back, comes from the person you most trust, your parent. It is the apple of original sin, which passes down, generation by generation. A parent given over to vice inflicts depression on a child. Samsa Senior, we discover if we read attentively, is wholly given over to sloth, greed, gluttony, and wrath.

The next important and mysterious story element is Gregor’s sister Grete. Having been his lone ally, having taken care of him, why does she lose interest and then turn on him? Why is she in the end the one who wants him dead?

Because, in an abusive family, if one child is driven to depression by persecution, another will be favoured and trained into narcissism; and so the apple of sin is passed on, generation to generation. There will be an Abel, and there will be a Cain. Like Grete, the spoiled child will usually be of the sex opposite to that of the dominant narcissistic parent. Because narcissists are also into lust, along with the other vices. And narcissists do not respect family responsibilities. They may not act out their sexual fantasies—unless they are stupid—but they will favour their little trophy child, just as Gregor adores the woman in the picture on is wall. A caveat: this will occasionally vary if the dominant narcissistic parent has homosexual tendencies. Which is intrinsically common among narcissists. But that is a sidebar here.

Grete is the golden child, allowed to lounge around, go out for entertainments, devote herself to the violin. Nothing is asked of her, in stark contrast to Gregor. She is being groomed for narcissism. She even craves a little responsibility, and so is fiercely possessive of Gregor.

Another sidebar, but shown in the story: when one parent is a dominant narcissist, the other parent will inevitably be conspicuously passive, submissive. This is the only pairing that works with a dominant narcissist. But the submissive parent will be narcissistic too, in his or her way, like Echo in the original legend of narcissus, or like the oddly absent fathers of Snow White or Cinderella in the fairy tales. Their submissiveness is a strategy to avoid responsibility for their acts—a licence for self-indulgence without guilt.

The spoiled child will generally choose the path of narcissism at adolescence. In the end, whatever grooming is done, one must still choose to be a narcissist, because it is a moral issue. Just as, whatever the grooming, one still chooses at adolescence whether to be promiscuous, and are still responsible for that choice. Grete succumbs at adolescence to both lust and narcissism, and this is why she turns on Gregor. He has interfered with her chance to get something going with one of the bearded lodgers. 

Kafka leaves us with her parents thinking of a marriage for Grete. The original sin thereby reproduces itself, like one of Richard Dawkins’s selfish genes.

Kafka offers no escape, no solution. Gregor finds respite in art, in the violin music, or in the picture on his wall, as Kafka did in writing; but this aesthetic escape, real as it is, is only transitory. The only solution is religion Kafka does not get that far here. As, perhaps, he did not in life.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Real World of White Privilege

 

Most things most people pretend to believe are the opposite of the truth; for most people are in denial, and the Devil rules this world.

One example is “white privilege”: the idea that white people, and Asian people, have it easier from birth because they are given special advantages due to the colour of their skin.

I teach Chinese and Korean students. I have lived in China and Korea. I can attest that the life of an East Asian child is hell. I have had to watch kids beaten in front of me; over the Internet. I have had to try to teach kids unable to keep their eyes open, taking extra tuition on weekends, first thing in the morning,  and late into the night.

Jewish parents are similarly demanding. I have just finished “Maus” and Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” with my students. Either suggests the hell of a Jewish childhood. As does Cohen’s “Favourite Game.” If it isn’t the hypercritical father, it is the Jewish mother smothering you, making constant demands.

To a lesser extent Anglo and other “white” parents are demanding of their children. They allow them relatively little time for idle childhood fun: for listening to their favourite music, for playing with friends, for hanging out. They may go out for sports; but then they must bring home trophies.

By contrast, very little pressure is put on black kids or aboriginal kids. In part because many do not have a father around; but either aboriginal or African childrearing was always culturally relaxed. They get to be kids and do as they like growing up. They get praised and coddled. They are brought up to think they are wonderful, and deserve anything.

There is a similar contrast in how we raise boys and girls. Little girls are always adored, given the benefit of any doubt, and treated like princesses. Little boys get suspected of the worst and criticized. One of my earliest memories is of being driven out of a public playground, that I had innocently entered, and before I could actually do anything, by adults, because there were girls playing there, and “boys play too rough.”

This harsher treatment in childhood, this lack of parental warmth, may or may not lead to success in later life. Some are destroyed by it.

But it is certain that these white, Jewish, Asian, and/or male kids are not brought up with “privilege.” It is the black and aboriginal kids, and the girls, who are accorded privileges they did not earn.

Being used to privilege, they continue to demand it in adulthood, and cry injustice if they do not get it. The white, Asian, and Jewish men just grit their teeth, accept the expected abuse, and get back to the grindstone.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Something Rotten in Stratford

 

I really dislike Shakespearean acting; I hate listening to actors read poetry. It is because they insist on acting. They keep peppering their lines with odd pauses, caterwauls, tears and gestures, to express emotion. 

This treads all over the words. It is a distraction, like a moustache on the Mona Lisa. For either Shakespeare or poetry, they make a hash of the rhythm, and generally also other sound elements, like alliteration. They are even often inaudible.

Perhaps they do not grasp that Shakespeare was written for the stage, and for large open -air performances. The manner required is oration, like giving a speech. Small hand gestures and mumbling and grieved expressions would be lost in such a venue. The imperative is that the words be timed and enunciated clearly.

But surely ignorance is not the entire explanation. After all, Shakespeare is still most often presented on the stage, and even movie actors probably apprenticed treading the boards. I think it speaks instead of an unfortunate aspect of human nature: envy. Presented with someone else’s great art, having control of it, if briefly, the typical actor seems driven to make it uniquely their own; and to draw attention to themselves instead of Shakespeare. Or Keats, or whatever poet.

This would account as well for the undying inclination to restage Shakespeare in modern times. Or to make MacBeth black instead of Scottish. Tiresome; but the director is saying “look at me. Never mind Shakespeare; notice my clever reinterpretation of him. But there is nothing either clever or innovative about setting Shakespeare on Manhatttan’s West Side. Everybody does it.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Is the Dam Cracking?

 

Several substantial Hollywood names have just come out against aspects of the woke agenda: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Richard Dreyfus. They might have only publicly objected to this or that point; but that does not matter. With wokeism, you are either all in, and question nothing, or you are out, and the enemy. Ask Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, or Tulsi Gabbard.

This begins to look as though the dam might be bursting. A huge proportion of people, in Hollywood and in the wider society, have been going along not out of any conviction, but either just to get along or to avoid having their career destroyed. Artists—and these people are, in the end, artists—are rarely really ideological. They don’t care about politics, and will generally just accept and roll with what those around them say. They are highly empathetic. But they are also free spirits; they will entertain any idea, however mad, but will soon hate being restricted to it. The chameleon poet. So they could embrace the woke assertions at first, and superficially, but over time, will feel desperately constrained by them. The strengthening of the woke dam, I suggest, is why the arts have been so moribund over the past few years and decades. Hollywood more than anywhere.

Pressure has been building up behind that dam. Now, if enough artists too big to be destroyed start speaking out, it will be like the tension being released in a deluge. The woke will suddenly go from being seemingly all-powerful to being common objects of ridicule. I think this is happening now to Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light.

More evidence that the arts may be about to flip: at a recent meeting of the League of Canadian Poets, I was encouraged to hear that they were having continuing trouble finding members for their inevitable Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee—the woke police. The chair of the Feminist Caucus declared her suspicion that one current member of that DEI committee was a mole. The Feminist Caucus is feeling vulnerable. A recent online reading provoked a high level of negative comments—it got ratioed, it seems,  in YouTube jargon. So the next time they disabled comments; and found that attendance dropped by half. In other words, half their audience seems to have been coming to jeer. 

And, while the Feminist Caucus motors on, the committee for Queer Poets is moribund--not enough members any longer to hold a meeting. This despite the fact that there are a lot of homosexual and lesbian poets. The Aboriginal Poets continue, but the chair looks less aboriginal than I do—blonde, very pale of skin, with an Anglo name. By contrast, new committees for Parenting Poets and Poets of Faith have recently formed, and are apparently growing fast.

I am hopeful that things are happening, or are about to happen, in the culture.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Pretty Great Rhetoric from Pierre Poilievre

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Death of Everyone

 

This film on the growing problem of depopulation has been prevented from being shown at Cambridge University, so far, by protests. This, the protesters say, is because it is prejudicial to feminism. They necessarily have not seen the film, as the entire film has not yet been generally available. This was to be the local premiere.

What you see on YouTube is only part 1. Judge for yourself. 

Here we see the zombie culture, the NPC culture. They do not want to think; they do not want to learn; they do not want to know. This is what denial looks like, and what it does.

What really has them agitated? I suspect that the problem of depopulation is a prima face argument, if not a direct one, against abortion. Which then also means against unrestricted sex. An unrestricted sex and perhaps abortion these students are themselves already guilty of. And so, denial.

Welcome to the roots of the current zombie apocalypse.

The creator of the film keeps saying the cause for the decline in birth rate is unclear. There seems to be no unifying underlying factor; it is as if it is all happening at once spontaneously. It is not the availability of the pill; the birth rate declined in Japan at the same rate as Europe, although in Japan the pill was not legal. It is not the growing cost of raising children. The birth rate declined in Germany at the same rate as elsewhere, although tertiary education is free in Germany. It is not families leaving the farm for the cities—that happened in Europe a hundred years ago or more, and, as the film points out, the significant change is not from large to smaller families, but from having children to not having children at all. 

The film correlates the declines to specific financial shocks; but this does not work. The shocks they cite are different in different countries; there have always been financial shocks, at any point in history; and the cited shocks are transitory. They can only be seen as triggers, if that.

The real reason for the decline in childbearing is a loss of meaning. Darwin more or less pointed this out back in the 19th century, in the Descent of Man. He noticed that, wherever Europeans came in contact with some previously isolated, technologically primitive society, the men stopped working and the women stopped having babies.

Having children is an expression of confidence in the world, and hope in the future. To these primitive people, the world as they knew it had fallen apart. Nothing made sense any longer. They succumbed to depression: spiritual despair.

The baby boom from 1945-65 supports the point by showing the opposite. After decades of war and economic depression, with the worst rascals apparently wiped out, there was a burst of optimism for the future. So, having babies seemed like a good idea. The optimism lasted until about the assassination of Kennedy and the escalation of the war in Vietnam; that killed both the optimism and the baby boom. 

There has been an accelerating loss of meaning in the past few decades: a turning away from religion; a rejection of existing culture, history, morality, and norms. Scientism and wokeism have been wholly inadequate substitutes. Because they almost immediately stop making sense. 

The film keeps citing Germany, Japan, and Italy as examples of the birth gap. Perhaps this means they have been leading this trend. They are the nations that most succumbed to the post-religious scientistic doctrines of fascism and Nazism. Granted that there was a delay of a generation or two before the loss of the war discredited these world views, but it may have taken that time for a sense of guilt to have overcome the sense of release from the sufferings of the war.

The collapse in birth rate seems most severe now in Eastern Europe. These are the nations that most succumbed to the post-religious scientistic doctrine of Marxism. If the subject populations have little cause to feel personal or even cultural shared guilt for this, their situation is like that of someone who has had an abusive childhood. It is hard to cast off the lies one’s parents have raised you with without a profound disorientation and period of despair.

Meantime, the only area that seems to have resisted the population collapse, so far, is subSaharan Africa. A place where Christianity is spreading rapidly.

Kind of makes you think.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

All the Way with RFK

 

I am glad RFK Jr. is in the race. I might disagree with him on many things, I might never vote for him, but he is speaking sense and raising important issues others are not talking about.

RFK is right in this clip on the connection of mass shootings to SSRIs. 

The problem is not guns. Other countries have stricter or looser gun regulations than the US, more or fewer guns, but this does not correlate with the number of mass shootings. Nor do they correlate state by state.

The problem is not mental illness. We do not need more money for mental health. The reality is, all these shooters were already being treated. And other nations spend more or less money on “mental health,” but this does not correlate with the statistics on mass shooting. 

What does correlate, and possibly 1:1, is the treatments we are using for “mental illness”: the problem is SSRIs. That is, Prozac and its kin, the standard treatments we use for depression and anxiety.

Or rather, the problem is our inability to diagnose. SSRIs may be helpful for many, for those suffering anxiety and grief over false guilt and moral confusion produced by an abusive childhood or other abuse. But many others also suffer anxiety and grief, but over their own bad behaviour. The anxiety and the grief are actually their conscience calling them to account.

SSRIs deaden the ill-feelings in either case. 

In the first case, this is beneficial. They can allow the unjustly suffering to lead relatively normal lives—at the expense of never dealing with the problem causing the pain. 

In the case of the latter, this is catastrophic. It frees the narcissistic predator of all restraints. 

Modern psychiatry/psychology cannot see the difference, and cannot accept the difference, because it will not recognize, and denies, all moral issues. All it sees are the symptoms, of anxiety and grief, and so prescribes the same pill.

In either case, the better treatment is a call to true religion; to straighten out a smashed moral compass.

Nor is it that hard to make an accurate diagnosis, were we not in denial of morality generally. The effects of SSRIs are like those of alcohol. Either eases inhibitions. 

So observe someone drunk. If they remain good company, and simply become more talkative and sociable, they are safe for SSRIs. If the difference is notable, they are naturally too inhibited. If they just become sleepy and dopey, this is a bad sign, they are an addictive personality, who do not need more comfort, but at least they will not likely become violent. If they become critical of those around them, pick fights, or show outbursts of anger, they are a risk for violence with SSRIs. They need what inhibitions they still have.

If a true depressive feels bad, they blame and may harm themselves. If a narcissist feels bad—and they inevitably will, for the universe will always disappoint their sense of their just desserts—they will blame and seek to harm whoever else is available.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.