Violence and Narcissism



IT WAS the summer of last year. My wife and I were eating ice-cream and drinking water from a small plastic bottle at the same time. On finishing my water I took my bottle in hand. I scrunched it up and started to inflict violence upon it. First, I squeezed the air out of the bottle. The bottle shrivelled up. Then, using both hands I crushed it completely. It wasn't going to be used again so it didn't matter what shape it ended up. And moreover, it was a lifeless object and didn't feel anything I did to it. I was just about to kick it, aiming for the waste basket when I looked up in time to see my wife’s tense face watching me. "Do you have the right to do that to that bottle?" she asked. In psychiatry this is called confrontation. "This bottle has been created by Allah. Now it's carried out it's function and served you. It has been the means for quenching your thirst. Aren't you being disrespectful towards it in the face of it's service to you? Are you the one who made it, who created it in this way?"


In psychiatry confrontation is used to make a person realise an action they were not previously aware of. I learned my lesson from this confrontation. This event was a free psychiatric session for me. Never again did I disrespect a plastic bottle, never again did I act with force towards one.


This event came to mind as I was reflecting on flying chairs, broken tables, beaten people, broken hearts, swearing and cussing, scuffling and pushing. It was probably the most important event in enabling me to comprehend the essence of violence.




There are three areas in our lives which we all must comprehend, which we must give meaning to: (1) ourselves; (2) other people and other things; (3) life itself. We each form opinions on the above three subjects and develop our own set of fundamental beliefs. Eg. "I'm good-I'm bad; I'm talented-I'm not talented; life is worth living, beautiful, meaningful - life is not worth living, is ugly and meaningless; other people can be trusted- other people cannot be trusted".




Violence arises as a result of a distorted and mistaken understanding of these three areas. There are two basic ways of approach in understanding, comprehending and conceptualising these three areas. On the one hand there is the definition provided by the Koran and the Sunnah. On the other hand there is the rationalistic approach, ie the approach of philosophy. In the Koranic definition, man is a creature, needy and dependent. He realises his place, his worth, and his position as being servant to a Creator with absolute power. With this definition, man cannot act in any way he pleases. Truth is his foundation. He cannot condone the use of violence or acting according to his own desires. Because man is in a position of weakness and doesn't assume an inflated ego. At the root of violence however, is narcissism, an inflated sense of self, and a state of grandiose. In the philosophical definition of man, man appears on his own and makes his own rules. But man-made rules are subject to change, depending on the particular benefit to be gained at a particular time and exist as long as a person has a high level of confidence in themselves and in their own importance. And so a situation arises in which it is deemed permissible for man, dependent on everything in order to live, to violate others in society, to fight for his own personal benefit, to contend for possession of things which are limited, and to dare to infringe upon others.




The other beings present in relation to man - tables, chairs, cars, trees, the sky, other people - are, in the Koranic definition, other creatures, created like man himself. With the acceptance of this definition, man's relationship with others, and the nature and limits of this relationship are carried out in accordance with the wants and desires of The Creator, and in this way man avoids the violation and infringement of others. Well-defined systematic rules determine these relationships. A type of interaction arises which doesn't change according to you or me, and which has an inherent consistency about it.




In the philosophical definition every creature/object is assumed to occur on it's own in order to satisfy man's desires and needs and is free for man to use unconditionally and in an unlimited fashion. This approach paves the way for the overstepping of limits, for infringements, for mentalities such as "I'll do whatever I want with whatever I want, it's nobody's business"; that is, in short, for violence. In a relationship which is determined by this definition violence towards other objects is inevitable. These relationships are in accordance with fleeting personal benefits, desires and cravings; they are carried out on a foundation which is inherently inconsistent.




While life is, in the Koranic definiton, worthwhile, beautiful, a gift and favour from the Creator, the philosophical definition places life in a position of meaninglessness, of being a problem unable to be solved, of being ugly and disgusting, without purpose, and exisiting on it's own and this definition itself leads to violence against life. Because it renders life worthless, and in rendering it worthless it negates it, in effect destroying it. As a result of this definition, life perceived in this way will of course be subject to violence in every form - eg, the killing of the possessors of life, destruction, torture, disrespect etc.



There may be other societal explanations for the violence seen in universities, in the streets and elsewhere. However these do not concern me that much. Because it is my belief that, in any American or European university/school in which there may not be any fighting, any noise pollution, any rebellion or where students do not vandalise their schools and in which they get along very well, there is in fact violence. And this violence is inflicted on the individual’s own inner world and in his own personal life. Feelings die, the mind suffocates, emotions are harmed by insignificance. Individuals accuse themselves, each other and the objects around them as being worthless in a universe in which everything has been created so wonderfully. And in this way, they inflict the most violent of all violence. For a person working in the field of psychology this type of violence strikes me with a greater degree of horror.

Karakalem.net
Mustafa Ulusoy
(tr.: Ozlem Kaba)