Throughout history, individuals and groups have fallen for an easy way out

of life’s complications by just pretending that they can do no wrong. Moment

to moment, challenge to challenge, they’ll grab any bogus rationalization that
they pretend beats all challenges to their absolute authority.

It can happen to any of us depending on appetites, aptitudes, and

opportunities. Indeed, as psychologist Craig Malkin rightly points out, some
narcissism is a good thing. But here the focus is on people who fall all the
way into it: Absolute narcissists.

Confirmation bias, the universal impulse to embrace only what affirms us and
dismiss all that challenges us is a problem we all must learn to manage.
Absolute narcissists instead treat confirmation bias as the solution to all of
their problems.

Being an absolute narcissist takes discipline of a peculiar kind, the

discipline to be completely undisciplined, no consistency in their relentless
and bogus rationalizations, the discipline to say in response to everything
“that proves I’m right” with no attention to reality, or the meaning of the
things they say since all that matters is keeping up the appearance of
winning, acting like a robot programmed to pretend to beat every challenge,
an algorithm for sorting all wins to themselves and all loses to whoever
challenges or threatens their authority. To be an absolute narcissist, one
needs to know nothing but how to act like an absolute know-it-all. No
wonder it has been such a tempting option throughout the ages.

For an absolute narcissist to stay on message, there can’t be a message

other than a relentless “See? I win!” Still, to conceal their egomania,
absolute narcissists have to pretend that they have some moral message.
They, therefore, cloak themselves in whatever fake crusade justifies
declaring total war against all of their competition. Their fake crusade
distracts their competition, people who take the meaning of words seriously
and are trying to figure out what’s right.

Throughout history, absolute narcissists have proven again and again that
one doesn’t need a vision, just the pretense of one. Like all con artists, they
can fake a good winning streak and garner a following of gullible people
who want in on the streak. Thus, throughout history, there have also been
absolute narcissist epidemics, cults, thrilling at having discovered a way to
escape reality just by treating their confirmation bias as a solution to all their
problems.

Absolute narcissists are exhibitionists. They sidle up as if for normal human

conversation. When they’ve got you hooked, they open their trench coats
and show off their stiff little absolute invincibility. They do so
with confidence because they know they can win no matter how you
respond. They’re ready for your reaction whatever it may be. If you scold
them, they’ll call you a prude. If you walk away, they’ll call you a chicken. If
you try to be nice to them, they’ll call you a wimp. If you act out, they’ll call
you upset. If you attack them, they’ll scold you for being uncivil. They’ll
posture automatically and robotically any which way to maintain their false
appearance of invincibility.

No society has ever found an antidote to an absolute narcissist epidemic.

Instead, the epidemics have died eventually simply because no one can
pretend they’re righter than reality forever. Such movements eventually lose
their battle against reality, though often causing mass destruction in the
process. The most likely cause of humankind’s eventual extinction is
runaway confirmation bias of absolute narcissist movements whether
through world domination or the conflagration that results from infallibility
battles between opposing absolute narcissist movements.

The challenge that has eluded humankind all along is this: How do you stop
absolute narcissism? How do you stop people and movements whose only
goal is remaining unbeatable? Here are some curiously untried
suggestions:

Don’t try to persuade an absolute narcissist. Instead, humiliate them, cut

them. Make them bleed in any exchange with others listening in, whether
face to face or in a Twitter exchange. Talk past them to the audience. He’s
just a specimen of mindless mechanical pretend invincibility. “See what they
did there?”

How do you cut them?

Absolute narcissists are one-trick phonies. Focus doggedly on their one

trick: “See what they did? They’ll say anything to jerk themselves off into
feeling like a winner, like some scummy little exhibitionist.”

The absolute narcissist will retaliate and yet, having only the one trick,
everything they say will confirm your accusation. Respond with “Look, they
did it again.” Be relentless and don’t fall for any of the distractions they
throw up as their smokescreen. They don’t care about substantive debate
except as an excuse for pretending everything that challenges them is
wrong. Don’t be confused.
Leave your subjective morality out of it. Don’t scold by your personal
standards. Whatever your standards, an absolute narcissist will make you
wrong for having them. There’s really only one moral issue and its
universal: No one beats reality. Reality, which absolute narcissists don’t
care about at all, beats all absolute narcissists no matter how insistent their
pretense of ruling reality.

There’s no need to defend yourself. Absolute narcissists will try to ensnare

you in your own moral doubts by pretending they care about moral
standards they care nothing about. They operate on defaulty logic.  If they
can find any fault in you, that proves that they are faultless by default. They
blare their morality police siren so loud they don’t have to hear their own
hypocrisy. Don’t let yourself be ensnared. Be proud of your human fallibility
and shame them for pretending to be superhumanly infallible.

For example, if they play prude, saying, “Don’t be a mean name-caller,” say
to the audience, “This fool doesn’t even notice that name-caller is a name.
We all name call. We’re all mean sometimes. I’m trying to name call with
precision, and I’m mean where I think meanness is earned. This absolute
narcissist doesn’t care about name-calling or meanness. They pretend to
care when it helps them pretend they’re eternally right and righteous.
Pitiful.”

And then flip it to ensnare him. Call them things that you don’t think are
universally bad. Say they’re just masturbating in public. When they try to
deny it as though masturbation is bad, laugh at them for their prudishness.
Tease, ridicule and shame them mercilessly for not trying to figure out right
from wrong, instead, pretending to have it all figured out.

Stay calm, even friendly, to the person cowering inside their

absolute narcissistic fake infallibility cloak. Stay light, even humorous. It’s
nothing personal. Anyone can become an absolute narcissist. They think
they’re special. Far from it. They’re just another in a long line of people for
whom reality is too scary to face and too easy to dismiss.

Don’t be distracted by your own judgmental labeling as if calling someone

an absolute narcissist is condemning them to a life sentence. A narcissist is
a gloat-aholic, absolutely addicted to the gloating lifestyle. You're
intervening because you are optimistic that they could get over
their addiction. They'll deny it and scold you for calling them names. That's
no different from an alcoholic taking umbrage at being called an alcoholic.
The irony is that you're more hopeful than the absolute narcissist. You
believe they could drop their robotic self-aggrandizement and rejoin
humankind. To you, it's a deadly lifestyle they could drop. To them, it's their
very essence, unchangeable. If anyone thinks their condition is permanent,
it's the absolute narcissist, not you.

Exhibit confidence not born of some strategic posture you have to try to
sustain through all of the absolute narcissist’s maneuverings but from your
gut opposition to all absolute narcissists because they pretend they’re God,
masters of, and not subject to reality. If an absolute narcissist tried to
seduce you by pandering to your every care and commitment, you’d try to
cut them too. You’re not fighting against what the absolute narcissist
believes. They don’t have beliefs in anything other than their own absolute
infallibility. Rather, you’re fighting in opposition to all absolute narcissism.
You’re a fallible human trying to adapt to our rapidly changing reality – just
as the narcissist would be if he hadn’t fallen for the oldest, cheap trick in the
book. Life is and has always been trial and error, iffy guesswork. Be proud
of your ever-learning guesswork.

Don’t let the narcissist turn the debate into a win all/lose all battle for fake
infallibility where if you admit to your humanness, that you're suddenly
proven eternally absolutely wrong about everything and they’re vindicated,
suddenly proven eternally absolutely right about everything. No one is
infallible and anyone who pretends to be deserves a swift, sharp kick.
Kicking them doesn’t mean you’re infallible. Don’t play along. Everyone is
fallible.

Fallibilism has always won because reality isn’t impressed by narcissistic

strutting. Reality will do what it does and all we can do is our human best to
learn how to deal with it, starting with learning how to shut down know-
nothing, know-it-all narcissists who pretend they’re done learning.

With absolute narcissists, it’s not that the emperor has no clothes. It’s that
the emperor is nothing but clothes, a suit of armor with nobody home. You
can embarrass that empty suit in front of an audience. That’s how you
shame a narcissist back to their fallible human senses.