LIBERATION VS. NARCISSISM.

Human rights have become part of a global discussion in political, corporate and social circles. This is a good thing. For an old gay rights proponent, like me, it is validating. Gay Liberation, along with late-20th-century Feminism, the truly peaceful race-based Civil Rights Movement and The Anti-War Movement all changed American society's attitudes within decades. America in 1980 was changed for the better. 

The AIDS epidemic, which began revealing itself  in 1980s America, was treated differently from the viral pandemic of 2020. It was ignored by government initially, despite its high mortality rate among the long-infected. It was a targeted infection, it seemed. One that had devastating impact on sexually active adults in large cities and intravenous drug users. Its revelation unfortunately coincided with a wave of increased Christian religiosity in America. 

Gay men and lesbian women showed the world between 1985 and 1995 that they had developed functional  communities in developed countries. Political action, fundraising and volunteerism filled the gap left by inactive politicians and medical systems, who were quite satisfied to see the impacted die in the thousands. The eventual massive death count of gay men and others due to AIDS in the early 1990s was not initially met with the violent mass racialist outrage we see today over the deaths of individual felons at the hands of  some bad cops.

Perhaps a core difference between the Gay Liberation movement and today's identity-based movements lies in its basic principle that lawful, peaceful and productive homosexual men and women deserved consideration as human beings, already actively engaged in society. Gay Liberation did not demand equity for gay men and lesbian women. It simply stood for peaceful demonstrations of equal humanity and competence. It did not demand affirmative action or restitution for centuries of torture and state murder at the hands of the heterosexual majority. 

Today's "activism" is quite different. Today's identity-based movements are based in self-justified entitlement. When that entitlement is not recognized or bowed to, all hell breaks loose. Self-justified entitlement is a symptom of narcissism. 

Those of us who fought for Gay Liberation were fighting for self-respect in our own minority. We understood that the obstacle to our liberation was individual self-hatred which inevitably extended to our own peers if unaddressed. "Homophobia", invented as a Gay Liberation concept, was seen as endemic with homosexuals themselves. We started by addressing it within us. Then we "came out" to society at large with our stories. 

I can say this with some certainty. I was a clinical program director of an early homosexual counseling center in Boston from 1978-1982. I was hired into the state-funded position based on my experience as a psychiatric RN. The group programs for homosexual men, which were my focus, were meant as therapy for internalized self-hatred and the resulting isolation it causes. Positive socialization and eventual coming out (bravery) were the keys to personal liberation through these group sessions. 

The self-justified entitlement of today's identity-based movements reflects the push into individualized virtual reality caused by the overwhelming tide of digital media in our contemporary lives. The false egos and false choices promoted by algorithms for the sake of commerce and politics have corrupted societies throughout the developed world in a couple of decades. Good and bad have become irrelevant concepts. Law-abiding and criminal have become equivocated in news media. Merit is demeaned. Leveling standards is lauded. Promoting fractionalizing concepts is seen as socially progressive. 

Personal liberation from this narcissism-promoting attack on the senses requires a healthy intellect, some basic worldly education and skepticism. The pollution of intellectual lives by digital media from the early years on threatens to extinguish all of these qualities. The evidence is clear. The entire world was successfully shut down by political leaders, acting on the advice of a handful of politically connected virologists, joined into a global cabal via digital media. And billions of human beings simply complied. 

The paradox of mass control of narcissistic populations by digital media is not difficult to unravel with some knowledge of other instances of mass control in history. Broadcast media, print media and religious domination of information (mass illiteracy) have all been effective tools of mass control at times in human history. Whenever a population is driven into isolation by crisis (war, plague, mass deprivation) those who control mass information can control the masses for their own purposes. 

Self-justified narcissism, encouraged by digital media, is a manufactured isolating crisis being used to control contemporary populations, as the use of it during the pandemic has amply illustrated. The brilliant tactic by those who are using digital media to control mass populations is to convince the narcissistic and self-isolating that they are being socially responsible, as long as they do what they are told to do, to think or to say by those with control of mass media.

So, since 1980, much of the mindful individual liberation of The Sexual Revolution, Feminism, The MLK Civil Rights Movement and Gay Liberation has been undermined by digitally controlled group-think. Cancel culture is today's Inquisition. Rioting and burning mobs are today's lynch mobs. 

Group-think is being re-introduced into public and private education systems throughout the world. Whether it is Marxist-based, commerce-based or religiously based, it is the same enemy of personal intelligence and liberation. And, it is also the enemy of healthy societies which thrive on debate, innovation and a wide diversity of ideas, based in the worldly experiences and personal integrity of the liberated. Liberation cannot be cancelled, mandated or controlled. And it ultimately cannot be extinguished entirely from the human soul.