The Cat Who Would be Emperor

When our family left Chicago, in 1969, Jerry asked if we could take their cats, Pooka and Narcissus, since they were moving to a place that did not allow cats. "Pooka" was the Americanized version of Swedish for boy: pojka. Narcissus was Greek for abnormal human behavior, characterized by grossly exaggerated feelings of self-importance, a monstrous need for admiration, a near-absence of understanding the feelings of other people, and an occasional desire to become Emperor of the Universe.

The ancient Greeks also had a cat like that. His name, as you might have guessed was not Pooka: it was Narcissus.

As the ancient Greeks tell it, Narcissus was a hunter who fell in love with his own reflection. He disdained those who loved him, of course: they were not worthy of admiring him. As the myth goes, he saw his reflection in the water of a pool, fell in love with it and, not realizing it was just a reflection, not a real person, refused to leave and starved to death. There are alternative versions of the story that say he merely lost an election, but no one would believe that. It is more believable that he preened himself to death.

I have been thinking about Narcissus. I looked up "narcissism" on Wikipedia: It is "characterized by . . . persistent grandiosity, excessive need for admiration, and a disdain and lack of empathy for others. These individuals often display arrogance, a sense of superiority, and power-seeking behaviors. Narcissistic personality disorder is different from having a strong sense of self-confidence. This is because people with NPD typically value themselves over others to the extent that they disregard the feelings and wishes of others and expect to be treated as superior regardless of their actual status or achievements. In addition, people with NPD may exhibit fragile egos, an inability to tolerate criticism, and a tendency to belittle others in an attempt to validate their own superiority."

In other words, a preening cat that thinks it is a lion.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog