Malevolent personalities within the Narcissistic Paradigm existed as long as humans themselves. The history has plenty of examples of this. In this article we will look into writings of Solzhenitsyn who described behaviors of malevolent actors of labor camps but then also his added philosophical wisdom. We agree with some, yet not with all of his conclusions. The parallel between labor camps, interrogations, and family law system is significant. And perhaps we can learn something from it.
The reader is encouraged to read these articles first in order to understand concept of evil and what role we play in it: Paradigm, Narcissistic Paradigm, Codependent Paradigm, and Paradigm Blindness.
Below are quotes from Gulag Archipelago, chapter 4, The Bluecaps. Each quote will follow with our comment.
Chapter 4, The Bluecaps
"... it was clear to the interrogators at least that the cases were fabricated... Nonetheless they kept right on producing depositions page after page to make sure we rotted.... They understood that the cases were fabricated, yet they kept on working year after year.... Either they forced themselves not to think (as this in itself means the ruin of a human being), and simply accepted that this was the way it had to be..."
Here, the author describes how the hosts of Narcissistic Paradigm keep on doing the Paradigm's job. The hosts knew that they are fabricating the cases. Their motive was not to find truth, but to abuse. To "rot" the target. Because the abuse, and acting out (fighting) of the targets, is what gives narcissistic supply.
"The blue caps understood the workings of the meat grinder and loved it... 'Interrogation and trial are merely judicial corroboration. They cannot alter your fate, which was previously decided. If it is necessary to shoot you, then you will be shot even if you are altogether innocent. If it is necessary to acquit you, then no matter how guilty you are you will be cleared and acquitted.'"
Again, the paradigm has its own motive. Everything else is nothing but a legal, conscious, logical justification. The end is predetermined. Once you are identified as a target, that's it, the means to extract narcissistic supply is figured out. You pushing back, showing evidence, fighting back IS the narcissistic supply. Your suffering IS the narcissistic supply. However it only works if you are a host of the Codependent Paradigm. If you are not, then you are 'cleared and acquitted' no matter if you are guilty of anything. This whole game has nothing to do with guilt or innocence, but with paradigms.
"'Just give us a person - and we'll create the case!' That was what many of them said jokingly, and it was their slogan. What we think of as torture they think of as good work. The wife of the interrogator N.G. said touchingly to her neighbors: 'N. is a very good worker. One of them didn't confess for a long time - and they gave him to N.. N. talked with him for one night and he confessed."
Here, it is shown again how the mind within the Paradigm Blindness fools us and validates the Narcissistic Paradigm. The paradigm has to keep itself hidden, and portray itself as good.
Here Solzhenitsyn postulates that if there is no moral code for a person, something to push against its own paradigm, the paradigm is a poison:
"... to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote."
However, the author here incorrectly assumes that all human beings are capable of atrocities, only if given either the opportunity, or environment that forces them to do so. And that only some higher power, like God can reign in the poison.We disagree in that it is the Narcissistic Paradigm that causes the hosts to act out. And yes, a "nurturing" environment will make that paradigm go to the extremes. While we believe that faith in God can stop any paradigm, Narcissistic Paradigm prevents the host from believing in God, and the host is blind to why - it just "knows" God doesn't exist.
"If we were able to discover the hidden motivation behind individual arrests, we would be astounded to find that, granted the rules governing arrests in general, 75 percent of the time the particular choice of whom to arrest, the personal cast of the die, was determined by human greed and vengefulness, and of that 75 percent, half were the result of material self-interest on the part of the local government."
The author describes here that the arrests and persecutions were not based on some charges, but merely on individual motives of the interrogators. It is the Narcissistic Paradigm after a Codependent Paradigm. If you are identified with the latter, then you are arrested and off you go. The author is unaware of this pattern, yet is aware of the dynamic where arrests are not made on actual charges but on individual choices of the local government (full of narcissists).
Next, the author is imparting his philosophy about humans:
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
The author here is 100% correct but for a wrong reason. The author postulates that every human being has a capacity of doing evil atrocities as described above, given the right condition. And that it is inside our own heart to fight the evil, but who would fight one's own heart. That is not correct. All humans live within a Paradigm. And there is Narcissistic Paradigm that is malevolent in its own nature. It does not need any environment, it will do evil by its own existence. However, there are environments that will enable it or suppress it. That's where the author is wrong. However, there are other paradigms, e.g. Codependent Paradigm that on the surface is opposite to the malevolent paradigm like nurturing, nice, good but it is not. It enables the Narcissistic Paradigm. It breeds children with it. It supports it. And there are many other paradigms, who get sucked into the delusion, or psychosis of the Narcissistic Paradigm. Without knowing, within their own Paradigm Blindness, all of these other paradigms will become complicit Flying Monkeys and enable the Narcissistic Paradigm. And that is evil in itself. The author is correct that evil is inside all of us in one form or another. Yet this evil is hidden in one's own heart. And logically justified on the surface as doing good.
"It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past - Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens - inflates and inflates the images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black. And they reason: 'I cannot live unless I do evil. So I will set my father against my brother! I will drink victim's sufferings until I am drunk with them!' ...
But no; that's not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for this actions.
Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology."
The above is an excellent narrative by Solzhenitsyn. In other words, in order for a person (host) to do evil and bid the work of its Narcissistic Paradigm, it (the paradigm) has to fool itself (the host) through Paradigm Blindness and thus to justify the behavior as good. Solzhenitsyn calls it "Fortunately", we call it "Unfortunately". The Paradigm has to always hide. From others, but also from its own hosts.
The author then claims that stories of classic authors do not go deep enough. Remember that these stories are written by another hosts of a paradigm. Solzhenitsyn states that it is an ideology that can bring the evil to a new level. Well, the ideology IS created by the Narcissistic Pyramid. The ideological state is reached when the Narcissistic Paradigm creates a mass psychosis in all other paradigms. At that point no host knows what is going on but is fighting for something that it believes. The Paradigm Blindness reaches unprecedented levels in society. Everybody is at Level 1 (of the Paradigm Blindness) and fighting for what the Narcissistic Paradigm induced psychosis of. And anybody at Level 2 or higher is persecuted because s/he stands in the way. This adds to the persecution of the hosts of the Codependent Paradigm.
"Ideology - that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors."
"Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, not passed over, not suppressed. How then do we insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was that destroyed millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago."
When hosts become aware of his Narcissistic Paradigm
OK, we said that hosts of the narcissistic paradigm cannot see their own paradigm. That is true, but in extreme situation (like under threat of execution for its deeds) the host may start seeing the evil it committed. But the process is no different than an alcoholic finally admitting s/he is an alcoholic.
"In the German trials (concentration camps) an astonishing phenomenon takes place from time to time. The defendant clasps his head in his hands, refuses to make any defense, and from then on asks no concessions from the court. He says that the presentation of his crimes, revived and once again confronting him, has filled him with revulsion and he no loner wants to live."
"That is the ultimate height a trial can attain: when evil is so utterly condemned that even the criminal is revolted by it."
Here is a case when the host of the Narcissistic Paradigm becomes aware of what it did, has it in its face, and is repulsed by its own deeds. We can guarantee you however, that when the deeds were performed, the hosts had no clue, it believed it is doing a good thing, as within its own Paradigm Blindness it was all justified. Yet now, the host realizes that it was duped by the paradigm and is repulsed by it. Paradigms use people as their warriors. Paradigms don't care to abuse, or even kill its own hosts (suicide). Paradigms will do everything to hide themselves (addiction, depression) from the hosts.
Solzhenitsyn's conclusion, we will leave un-commented for the reader to interpret itself:
"It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that 'past' which 'ought not to be stirred up'"
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundation of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the 'weakness of indoctrinational work' that they are growing up 'indifferent'. Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity."
"It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!"