The Scourge of Moral Narcissism

Since when are our personal beliefs the most important?

Moral narcissism has overtaken America. On both the right and the left, so many of us now think that what really matters is what we believe.

Let me explain.

Group A believes that it is morally wrong to eat blue cheese. Blue cheese has mold in it. Mold is a fungus, eating fungus is unclean, and thus, immoral. Group A holds a lot of political power, which they use to pass laws based on their beliefs.

Those laws take effect, banning the consumption of blue cheese. They prevent restaurants from even talking about blue cheese with their patrons. People are also not permitted to buy blue cheese to consume at home. 

Over time, studies come to show that banning blue cheese kills more people than it saves. People tried making illegal blue cheese at home, and ended up producing toxic strains of mold. Not only that, it didn’t lower the consumption of the cheese, it just made people seek it out in other places.

Scientists testify in front of government committees, saying, “Our findings indicate that deaths from toxic mold is up 40% since the blue cheese ban went into effect. The ban didn’t stop people from eating the cheese, it just stopped them from eating regulated cheese.”

Group A doesn’t care. They don’t actually care if their fellow citizens live or die, they care about holding the correct moral opinion on blue cheese, and if people are dying, well, that’s on them. 

Permit me one more.

Group B thinks that Group A is immoral. When Group B finds out that someone is part of Group A, they are mocked, excluded, called out, the recipients of nasty social media comments, or otherwise held to account. The only correct belief is that Group A is evil. 

Over time, people studying the matter find that the beliefs of Group B have served to radicalize people in Group A. Some members of Group A begin carrying out terrorist attacks. They plan political violence.

“The best way to stop Group A from becoming violent is to enfold them into a caring community,” scientists warn. “Being isolated and excluded is how they become radicalized, and is a motivating factor for terror attacks.”

It doesn’t matter to Group B that their beliefs are killing people. What matters to them is that they held the “correct” moral opinion. 

So too go politics in the United States. One group seeks to restrict behavior that they deem immoral. They don’t care that the restrictions have negative outcomes overall, they care that they were right. 

At the same time, another group seeks to exclude the group with the wrong moral beliefs, because even being marginally associated with them is enough to taint their own sense of morals. They don’t care that their behavior has negative outcomes overall, they care that they were right.

Both groups are moral narcissists. They are prioritizing the correctness of their own belief systems while ignoring the very real harm they are causing their communities as a whole. They don’t care who is hurt, or even if people die, they care about how holding the correct beliefs made them feel and about the standing they now enjoy within their community of people who already share the same beliefs. 

Moral narcissism is not normal, it is new. It is not constrained to one political party.  This is not how humans have coexisted in societies for eons — people have always been deeply interdependent, it is how we have evolved and what has allowed us to survive. Caring for each other has always been required, because existing in a state of moral narcissism would have meant our demise in the past. 

It’s time for each one of us, no matter if you are the most conservative or the leftiest of leftists, to examine the ways in which our own moral narcissism may be contributing to violence, to death, and to a host of other negative outcomes you claim to be against with your correct beliefs. 

Moral narcissism is at the heart of the culture wars, the rise of hate groups, the resurgence of racism and xenophobia, and the deaths of children in their classrooms at the hands of gunmen. It contributes to addiction, to crime, to the mental health crises that plague us.

Is it a virtue to believe the right thing if that thing is actively harming your community? Is it an arrogance to believe that our personal opinions must be valued above everything else?

I’d really like to have a conversation on this topic, and am eager to hear your thoughts about the concept of moral narcissism.