MGTOWing the Line:
Thoughts on Men Going Their Own Way
Joe Szimhart (August 1, 2020)
The wounded narcissist represses low self-esteem by mastering a blame-game, finding fault with the social and natural environment to keep from self-blame. Unable to conquer or at least cope with the social milieu on their own, the wounded narcissist seeks a transcendent theme, a hero-system and a hero perhaps that offers not only solace, but also a way to secure the narcissistic project which is: I am not only worthy; I am worthier than all you scum out there imagine that I am. The wounded narcissist will not accept the subtle insight in this line from the song “The Blame’s on Me” by Chris Smither (2018 album, Call Me Lucky):
My friends will tell me that it’s no big deal,
Reality is not about the way you feel,
If it ain’t in the cards, and the stars ain’t aligned,
It’s the universe that’s guilty….the blame’s all mine.
Narcissism and Politics: Dreams of Glory by Jerrold Post (2015) is a good source for grasping the nature of a wounded narcissist and why they behave the way they do. Though narcissism, like neurosis and anxiety, can be healthy and of service to the struggling human’s quest for meaning and stability, a disorder or overvalued idea begins creeping into narcissistic behavior when, on the one hand, a leader emerges who believes that he or she has the answer to repair or heal society or the flawed universe and, on the other hand, the “wounded one” finds a transcendent ideal and a hero-system on which to transfer self-worth. In other words, narcissism becomes a disorder when grandiosity covers for low self-esteem and engages in an emotional dismissal of anyone that criticizes the narcissist’s treasured hero-system. A charismatic hero within the transcendent hero-system offers reparative leadership for his cult following: We will repair America, manhood, femininity, the sea, the air, the planet—you get the idea. The followers become a therapeutic work project that gives the leader(s) value, as the followers feel more self-worth by submitting to the behavior, language, and investment required by the managers of the transcendent system. In the end, the transcendent system that feels like a warm, safe cocoon for a while, often becomes a spider’s web wrapping in which the follower is eaten alive. Like people in malignant cults, the transition into a super self with the freedom of a butterfly never comes for those within a narcissistically disordered scheme.
Men Going Their Own Way is, as far as I know, a loosely affiliated movement that started formally after 2000 on chat rooms on the Internet and has expanded to include aspects of the alt-right and white male supremacy at one extreme to neurotic, angry men who worked hard but have had lousy luck with women and raising children at the other. (The universe is guilty, but I am not to blame types.) Now, I am not denying that some men have legitimate reasons for being losers in life: The environment, the justice system, and other people can be harsh, impersonal, and downright mean. The difference between the wounded narcissist among the MGTOW crowd that seeks to blame immigrants, the Left, women, the media, the intellectual, and other religions for their woes and the loser who accepts their portion of self-blame is in what they do about it. The loser with self-esteem does not dwell in MGTOW and manosphere chat rooms and has little investment in blaming others while working to repair their lives.
How would I know to apply this idea of wounded narcissism to MGTOW devotees? For one, it makes sense as we all feel wounded in our narcissism, we are all anxious, and we can all be categorized as neurotic and cult prone. Any analysis of the human condition shines light on these factors. The concern here, as mentioned earlier, is more about exaggerated responses and overvaluing the ideas that support exaggerated response. According to Robert Jay Lifton in his 2019 book, Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, we lose touch with reality when we lose ourselves in movements with grandiose and unsupportable historical, scientific, and social ideas. I reviewed Losing Reality elsewhere (to appear in forthcoming International Cultic Studies Association publication) but it is also posted on my website, jszimhart.com, under book reviews. For someone with my long background as an interventionist and researcher on the cult problem, signs of cultism and malignant narcissism are not hard to spot in the MGTOW milieu.
So, as I tell my clients: telling me that someone is in a cult (or heavily into MGTOW) is like telling me they are in a car. Yes, it’s not natural, and yes, cars can be confining, but all humans in a modern setting ride in cars. What I want to know is the style, the manufacturer, how old it is, who is driving it, are the people inside acting okay or are they afraid of yetis, demons, communists, or girls. Why are they afraid? Are they going in circles? Is the engine all that good? Where do they get gas? Do they even believe that they need fuel? Why is it parked in the desert? Why are some people riding on the hood and in the trunk while others sit inside it? MGTOW is a little like a car of a certain style that appears to be stuck in a social rut to avoid another social rut defined by MGTOW.
The examples to illustrate my point are legion on the Internet, but I randomly chose this one on YouTube* which is a decently produced video by one of the interesting Internet gabbers about life, “Jessica J,” posted in December, 2019. It had over 100,000 views and a host of dismissive and nasty comments by MGTOWers. Jessica J addressed MGTOW from a sassy and attractive woman’s feminist perspective for over 5 minutes. Her critique was relevant enough, but many of the comments from MGTOW enthusiasts expose the MGTOW character story well. Two examples: “Annoying voice, crazy eyes, and a feminist. What a catch fellas. Step right up.” That is a weak, ad hominem approach to discourse. The second one includes the “red pill” mythology of MGTOW posted by someone disguised as Redpill Mgtow: “She literally have [sic] no idea what she is talking about.” That is an absolute dismissal without substance, the argument of emotional (unmanly?) reaction. She had some idea and using “literally” meaning obviously is the language of non-thought—a thought terminating cliché. An intelligent person would attempt to describe what makes her ignorance obvious.
The “red pill” is the one taken by Neo, the hero in the sci-fi film, The Matrix. Neo chooses to battle for his reality against the controlling dystopian illusion created by The Matrix culture. MGTOW followers believe they are like that hero. The Matrix theme is a rehash of the Christ event as touted by Gnostic cults since the 1st Century. Gnostics tended to believe that this entire material universe, including our physical bodies, is a controlled creation in the mind of a jealous deity [Demiurge in Greek cosmology] from which awakened humans need to escape. The Christ hero in the Gnostic mythos appears in the guise of Jesus to participate in the illusion to defeat the deranged deity. Much like Neo, "the One" in The Matrix, Jesus battles (spiritually) and denies the evil deity who tempts him to accept and rule this material world. Jesus as the new Adam (Neo) then went on his mission to show the few with true sparks of awareness the real way of escape from this evil materialistic trap. As Jesus the body, he got crucified for exposing the oppressive “lord of this world.” As Jesus the Christ-spirit, he was never a material being anyway, so he merely escaped back into the Light and felt no pain...so goes the myth. If nothing else, Gnosticism tends to be radically dualistic. According to Ernest Becker (Denial of Death) all humans live in a dual (natural and symbolic) reality, but that dualism has to work pragmatically in tandem and not be broken into an "us vs them" category of behavior.
MGTOWing is all about escaping from the evil trap set for men by social expectations and unenlightened, selfish women. MGTOW is radically dualistic or an "us vs them" scheme. However, as with the Gnostic myths and the Marxist "us vs them" myth, the MGTOW mythos has severe limitations. There was no good plan for governance in society among Gnostic cults, no good governing plan in Marxism either, and I see nothing remotely sane or useful for governance in the MGTOW literature. And that is what eventually degenerates new movements into malignant cults: Poorly moderated ideas guiding enthusiastic people with constricted neurological functions in their brains (they buy the party line) and no healthy sense of governance for society. Like so many Gnostic cults and Marxist enterprises, the result so far in the MGTOW community is socially immature, authoritarian or elitist, and intellectually harmful in expression.
The problem boils down to an immature management of narcissistic motives. As I see it, since the era of The Sixties (I’m 72—an early Boomer) half a century ago, modern societies have developed narcissistic traits to levels not seen before in human history. The endorsement rate, in one study I read, for the statement “I am an important person” has increased from 12% in 1963 to nearly 80% in 1992 in adolescents.** That was well before the social media explosion. I can only imagine what it is now. Everyone on social media seems to be engrossed in enlightened self-interest. Anyone can post their face as another Wizard of Oz appearing on a screen to spout versions of reality. MGTOW may be only one of the more egregious symptoms of this disturbing trend fueled by social media.
There may be a remedy for individuals seeking to mature and to see what has happened to them as wounded narcissists. You can start by reading Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (1973) and Losing Reality by Robert Jay Lifton (2019, mentioned above). There is life after MGTOWing if you want it.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcWax45F4-4
**https://bigthink.com/design-for-good/your-culture-affects-how-narcissistic-you-are
