The Narcissist on Instagram: Epigrams and Observations The First Book by Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation and SIAS-CIAPS Centre for International Advanced Professional Studies (SIAS Outreach) The author is NOT a Mental Health Practitioner The book is based on interviews since 1996 with 2000 people diagnosed with Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Disorders (narcissists and psychopaths) and with thousands of family members, friends, therapists, and colleagues. Editing and Design: Lidija Rangelovska A Narcissus Publications Imprint Prague & Haifa 2021 © 2017-21 Copyright Narcissus Publications All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from: Sam Vaknin – write to: [email protected] To get FREE updates of this book JOIN the Narcissism Study List. To JOIN, visit our Web sites: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/narclist.html or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse Visit the Author's Web site http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com Facebook http://www.facebook.com/samvaknin http://www.facebook.com/narcissismwithvaknin YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vakninsamnarcissist/ (archive) https://www.instagram.com/narcissismwithvaknin/ Buy other books and video lectures about pathological narcissism and relationships with abusive narcissists and psychopaths here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html Buy Kindle books here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Sam%20Vaknin&search-alias=digital- text&sort=relevancerank C O N T E N T S Throughout this book click on blue-lettered text to navigate to different chapters or to access online resources I. Scams, Scandals, and Scoundrels II. Men, Women, Gender Wars III. Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Other Predators IV. Sex and Intimacy: Forgotten Arts V. Democracy, History, and Other Fictions VI. Me, Me, and Me VII. Public Intellect, Private Rants Author Bio Scams Scandals And Scoundrels 1. Medical doctors falsify lab results and order unnecessary and sometimes injurious medical tests in order to extort money from gullible, scared, and hypochondriac patients. This is a global phenomenon - 200 BILLION USD in the USA alone! I initiated and participated in the healthcare committee of Macedonia headed by then Minister of Health (now Deputy Prime Minister) Bujar Osmani. Here is its interim report https://issuu.com/samvaknin/docs/health 2. Interesting and courageous point of view. The Holocaust is a touchy subject. I received death threats on these 2 videos about Hitler, the Jews (I am a Jew!), and the Holocaust https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZv9QwoQVc and https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjRwearNVII 3. There are no diagnostic HPV tests for MEN. All HPV "tests" for men are FAKE. Such tests are sold exclusively in poor countries to the gullible and ignorant population. The most prestigious private clinic in the USA, Mayo Clinic write: "The HPV test is available only to women; no HPV test yet exists to detect the virus in men." https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hpv-test/about/pac- 20394355 About Mayo Clinic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayo_Clinic 4. These are my new - brandname - shoes. My previous branded shoes - bought in Geneva - disintegrated within the year. My 250 euros belt purchased a year ago started falling apart in 6 months. All my 25 euros belts and shoes are intact years - even decades - later. Brands are the biggest forms of commercial fraud ever perpetrated. They are manufactured in poor countries often using inferior materials (despite claims to the contrary) and then sold as status symbols in societies that elevate conspicuous and ostentatious consumption to the level of a religion. The gullible and the vain pay 10 times the right price just to own - and show off - the "right" label. More about differential pricing https://samvak.tripod.com/pp151.html 5. Could official, institutionalized corruption actually be a GOOD thing? Corruption runs against the grain of meritocratic capitalism. It skews the level playing-field; it imposes onerous and unpredictable transaction costs; it guarantees extra returns where none should have been had; it encourages the misallocation of economic resources; and it subverts the proper functioning of institutions. It is, in other words, without a single redeeming feature, a scourge. Strangely, this is not how it is perceived by its perpetrators: both the givers and the recipients. They believe that corruption helps facilitate the flow and exchange of goods and services in hopelessly clogged and dysfunctional systems and markets (corruption and the informal economy "get things done" and "keep people employed"); that it serves as an organizing principle where chaos reins and institutions are in their early formative stages; that it supplements income and thus helps the state employ qualified and skilled personnel; and that it preserves peace and harmony by financing networks of cronyism, nepotism, and patronage. Bribes are paid in order to limit choice and eliminate competition. Consequently, in corrupt environments consumers pay less than optimal prices. The difference between the competitive price and the new, post-corruption cost equals the amount of bribe paid in cash or in kind. Corruption amounts to a unilateral transfer from the consumers's pockets to the manufacturers's. In times of economic crisis, consumers tend to shop around (in other words: they prefer price competition and encourage it via their behavior). Producers/manufacturers tend to collude in order to fix prices. In recessions, businesses regard consumers as enemies and vice versa: producer-firms court consumers, but they also seek to limit their choices by "channelling" their purchases and determining their preferences. More about venality and corruption here: https://samvak.tripod.com/corruption.html 6. According to British law, there were two types of suicide: an act committed by a person of unsound mind and "felo de se" ("felon upon himself") - an act of self-destruction committed knowingly and willingly by a person of sound mind: “A felo-de-se, therefore, is he that deliberately puts an end to his own existence.”—Blackstone: Commentaries, book iv. chap. xiv. p. 189. But killing oneself inadvertently, while trying to kill another, is also considered felo-de-se: “If one commits any unlawful malicious act, the consequence of which is his own death, as if attempting to kill another he runs upon his antagonist’s sword, or shooting at another the gun bursts and kills himself.” Prior to 1870, the estate of a feb-de-se - except his land - reverted to the crown. The relatives could redeem the chattels and goods for a fee. The body was subjected to an “ignominious burial on the highway, with a stake driven through the body.” The Burial Act of 1823 forbade such practices and ordered to bury the feb- de-se within 24 hours after the coroner's inquest, between 9 PM and midnight, and without Christian last rites. The Interments act of 1882 permitted to inter the culprit in a churchyard or parish burial grounds, again without rites - though a special kind of rite was allowed. British law did not cross the ocean. Thus, William Penn included this clause in the charter of privileges he granted to the inhabitants of Pennsylvania: "If any person, through temptation or melancholy, shall destroy himself, his estate, real and personal, shall notwithstanding, descend to his wife and children, or relations, as if he had died a natural death." More: https://samvak.tripod.com/factoids.html 7. "The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest." (English historian Edward Gibbon on Pope John XXIII) The Bible: no other book has been compiled and composed by men of genius only to be avidly championed by the retarded and the insane. Institutionalized religion leveraged this discrepancy to great benefit. Consider the Catholic Church: its history reads like the annals of a global crime concern. It gave the world the inquisition, incestuous and murderous popes, religious warfare, paedophiliac sex scandals, idolatry, money laundering scandals, and the gnawing guilt that comes from embracing life-defying ideals. Its intentional lack of transparency, murky dealings, and refusal to be held accountable for the actions of its adherents and officials have rendered the Catholic Church complicit in the most horrendous events of the last two millennia. It might well meet the criteria for a “criminal organization” set in the London Charter and endorsed and implemented in the Nuremburg Trials. With a modicum of justice it has been accused of anything and everything from collaborating with the Nazi regime (and helping war criminals flee justice) to instigating and perpetrating the more insidious forms of anti-Semitism. The Church’s current head – Pope Benedict XVI, former chief of the current- day intolerant incarnation of the infamous Inquisition - was a member of the Nazi youth movement: when he had joined, in 1939, only one third of Germany’s youth belonged to the Hitlerjugend although membership of Aryan youth was theoretically compulsory by law. The German Pope added insult to injury by reinstating patently anti-Semitic bishops, excommunicated by his predecessor (who, on his part, actively spread AIDS throughout the developing world by prohibiting the use of contraceptives). Hence "The da Vinci Code" and a slew of other anti-Catholic tomes. This genre thrives on the widespread conviction that there is nothing the Catholic Church will refrain from doing or find too abhorrent to further its earthly wealth and might. Alas, history this time is on the side of the conspiracy theorists. 8. According to David McClintick ("Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal"), in the late 1980's, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funnelled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset seizures.