You know. For the Mojo. Mojo=Approval=Acceptance=Interest. From total strangers.
The Mojo for my posts feeds what I've recognized as some pretty deep seated needs. Since I was a young child, people told me I had an unusual gift for language. I think very verbally and I think about all kinds of things all the time. When I speak, I am simply thinking out loud. Once upon a time, when I was teaching at a law school, one of my students remarked "Professor Left, when you talk it sounds like you are reading from a book."
The problem is that I cannot expect anyone in my real world to really listen to some of the things I could say, if I fully expressed some of my more fully realized thoughts about the world. My devoted and indulgent spouse of 46 years gives me all of her ear that she can spare, but she has her own life, too, and isn't necessarily interested in everything that interests me. This, then, is my intellect, and it possesses a deep need for expression and acceptance.
The term narcissism, strictly speaking, denotes actual mental illness with particular characteristics of:
An arrogant or haughty attitude with exaggerated self-importance (inflates perceived talents and achievements).
- A sense of entitlement (expects especially favorable treatment and compliance with personal preferences).
- A belief of being special or unique such that the rules for others do not apply to self.
- Fantasies of ideal power, intelligence, love, success, riches, etc.
- An excessive need for praise and admiration from others.
- Envy of others or belief that others are envious of oneself.
- A lack of empathy, the ability to understand the feelings and needs of others.
Without disrespect for anyone afflicted with actual mental illness, the term, here, more playfully, means that my intellectual need vaguely shares remote similarities with some of the characteristics of real narcissism. But those needs are nevertheless real.
My posts here at Daily Kos provide therapy, not to cure, but more like methadone therapy, allowing me an outlet to fully express various ideas of interest to me and, in some instances, evoking interest, discussion and genuine intellectual exercise. At the same time, people I've never met express approval for what I have written, what have said, what I have thought.
My beast is fed and sleeps soundly.