The Roles Narcissistic Systems Push You Into

0:00 Do you ever feel like you're surrounded by people who make you despair at humanity? Or that somehow, despite an obviously increasing number of [ __ ] people treat you strangely when you call them out? That feeling of having an almost total lack of allies whilst everyone around you enables obnoxiousness is something we will dive into today. Cuz today's episode is the final part of our series on narcissistic systems. The final pattern that helps you recognize them. And that pattern is the outcomes. Because narcissistic systems don't just impose a pattern of values and enforce them via tactics, narcissistic systems also sort us into a well-known pattern of roles. Each role actually serves the

0:45 system itself despite the pain it causes you. And if the system can convince you that these roles are natural order, we end up speaking and behaving in recognized ways as well. The easy linguistic ID kit comes at the end today after the roles, because the roles, scapegoat, hero, helper, and so on, are the confined space that you'll be pushed into by these systems. The linguistic clues alert you to the guards who'll make you stay there. Welcome to the loneliness industry, a podcast about the structural mechanisms behind loneliness that have nothing to do with you being some kind of failure despite what most content will imply. My name is Jordan Rain and I'm a philosophy graduate with a severe allergy to sick systems. I also grew up

1:31 in one and experienced the roles these systems sort us into and that we'll talk about today. Now, this series is designed to help you identify if you are in a narcissistic system, be it a workplace, a family, an institution, or even broader society. For our regular listeners, our beloved guest avatar, Joe [ __ ] who makes his odious re-emergence. Though this time is a tad more multifaceted than usual, because not everyone who's shunted into his golden hero role will manage to become a proper [ __ ] When they do though, they represent more than just another awful prick who ruins your life, because the hardcore Joe [ __ ] of the world turn out to be the clearest, loudest symptom of sick systems. They are invoked like grinning,

2:17 winning demons by the pattern of roles that narcissistic systems produce. Now, psychology would usually have us believe that Joe Shitheadedness comes from something within him, that he is a bad apple on a tree they won't bother examining for rot and disease. As a product of our own wider system and its values, psychology directs attention to individuals, their traits, their histories, their pathologies, which can make it look as if the problem begins and ends with Joe himself. When we do start looking at systems though, as disciplines like sociology and philosophy do, we get a glimpse of why Joe himself, repugnant as he is, is not actually the real root of the problem, you know, even though he is an awful problem. Because in narcissistic systems, Joe [ __ ] will continue to

3:03 drop from the sky like mass-produced high concussion risk Tetris blocks, because these systems produce recognizable, repeating shapes of roles. You yourself might be here because you've been forced into another shape these systems produce, the Z block, the awkward one that gets blamed for making things difficult, the one who ruins the easy flow of the game simply by refusing to lie flat. In a sick system, you can end up as the piece everyone tries to avoid because you make the gaps in their perfect world impossible to ignore. Now, you likely know that the non-retro computer game names for these roles already, most likely from the context in which they were first outlined. Alice Miller and Murray Bowen did a lot of the initial work describing the roles in

3:49 narcissistic family systems, the golden child, the scapegoat, the lost child, and the helper. As we showed in the last episodes, narcissistic systems scale and it will become apparent that these patterns of roles repeat too, because they keep the system running. So, often the these roles are imposed. The scapegoat role, for example, was assigned through blame, exclusion, and repeated targeting. But sometimes these roles, including Joe's role as an insufferable dick, emerge less dramatically, but from how we adapt, from how we survive, and from what we do with the pressure that the system itself places on us. Because narcissistic systems don't just impose the values the whole setup needs. They distribute how those values are carried. In narcissistic systems, some people are

4:34 pushed into absorbing the distortions and the blame. Others are pushed into enforcing it. Some also end up invisible but safe so long as they play along. The advantage for the overriding system is that once this role sorting is done, it can stabilize itself through the people inside it. So, by the end of this episode, one thing will become very clear. If you keep encountering people who refuse to face unfairness and instead put you at fault so you would adjust yourself, try to improve, and try to make things work, and yet still keep getting called wrong, there is a very real possibility that you are not failing to understand the system. You are instead most likely inside one and have been shuffled into a role that allows the system to stabilize

5:21 itself at your expense. Let's kick this off with an example, one from the most familiar fractal of narcissistic systems, family systems. This is simplified for now, but we get to the deeper mechanics soon enough. So, once upon a time in a suburb nearby lived the Joneses. One of the kids, Joe, looks like he's off to a great start in life, head of the sports team, confidently explaining things no one had asked him about, reminding all the other kids of his success, and demonstrating how anything the other kids can do, he does it better. His parents are visibly proud, especially when other parents congratulate them. Although singing Joe's praises in public, these parents are not so proud of Tomic. His name results in their shaking their heads and expressing the terrible

6:06 stresses and pains he causes the whole family. For example, Tomic's selfishness is is illustrated by his refusing to pose for the family's Instagram photos and and calling them performative farce, which is not framed as his having an advanced conceptual grasp of social systems for a child of only nine, it is framed as one of his episodes. Joe and Tomic get a lot of airtime from their parents, the Joneses, who are, by all accounts, pillars of the community. Church every Sunday, charity drives for starving children, and a deep commitment to their public projects, meaning their social media accounts where their perfect smiles and moral clarity can be used to make other people feel inadequate. But aside from all the secret shaming and silent treatment at home, the Joneses have two more not not quite

6:52 secret children, Lola and Helga, who are sort of anonymous props. Lola is barely talked about. She appears in family photos and does what is expected of her, but but otherwise, she stays out of the way. She is easy, but but you know, not as talented as Joe, if her parents will tell you. Helga [sighs] for all her anonymity, is also a good girl, because she loves doing stuff like cleaning up cat puke before her parents see it, or taking out the trash before it starts an argument. It helps ensure she won't get the crappy treatment Tomic does, and it frees up time for her parents to do visibly meaningful things like being admired. And and to be fair, Helga and Lola do get mentioned

7:37 sometimes, like like when they stop being easy, like when Helga's hamster died and she refused to stop crying, thus ruining the family's Easter Instagram shoot. She she did receive the Tomic treatment when that happened, which resolved the issue quickly. Do you relate to anyone there so far? Cuz if you do, I feel for you. And through the course of this, I'll be interested to know if the more expanded roles resonate with you, cuz if they do, you have a lot more clues about what you're dealing with in terms of the system around you. Because although simplified so far, this is not just a narrative device. This story represents the roles that have been observed in different ways across work on family systems and abuse. People like Alice Miller and Murray

8:23 Bowen showed how families organize themselves around these kinds of positions with certain members carrying tension, others reflecting the system's ideal image, and others maintaining stability. As you likely know, there are variations in terms of the parental part, meaning variations in how those with power in the system will behave. There are more alcoholic or more more volatile versions, or a dreadful plus enabler parent versions, and if you experience that instead, means you'll know this part already. The roles for the children, meaning those without power in the system, stay the same. And I don't mean that the roles don't get reassigned, the roles themselves stay in circulation. And before we get to the R18 version of

9:09 this, what our example also highlights is that such systems don't require obvious or diagnosable [ __ ] The sorting into roles can happen in less dramatic ways. Our example was the covert, more persistent creation of the environment where one child reflects the family's image, another absorbs its tension, another maintains its function, and another quietly disappears. The takeaway is this. Miller and Bowen help us see that in narcissistic family systems, there is a pattern in terms of the outcomes, a pattern to the roles that will emerge. Both show how those who act as extensions of the facade the system wants to maintain, i.e. Joe in this case, are rewarded. Those who at

9:54 least facilitate it, like Helga, are tolerated. Those who stay out of the way without breaking any rules, like Lola, are barely registered at all. And anyone who disrupts the system by calling it out or not adhering to the values and rules it sets up is not just corrected, they become the explanation for any issues they raise about the system itself. In other words, if you are atomic, the blame is always yours to carry. The system itself is presumed innocent. Now, this depressing tale of a family whose rented gold statues of Jesus get their Facebook post more likes highlights the pattern we dealt with last time. In narcissistic systems, there are a set of values, not always stated outright,

10:42 but clearly operating, where image matters more than reality, where being seen as good is more important than being good, and where maintaining the image that benefits those in power becomes everyone's responsibility. There is also a pattern of tactics that work with those values that we discussed. Now, Joe is in the golden child position. He reflects the value of image management, rewarded for reflecting the family's ideal image, and becoming an extension of its greatness. His contributions to the family image are held up to make others follow suit, which in turn supports the value of competition. Competing for the approval of the parents, which Tomic fails to even sufficiently try at. So, he is scapegoated, which is

11:30 a great way to demonstrate conditional belonging. Tomic is blamed for not dedicating himself to polishing the turd that is the family image, and for failing to hide he thinks this whole setup is like being forced to live in a toothpaste commercial. Divide and conquer tactics come into because Tomic finds no allies. Helga is the helper, busy maintaining the system, having learned it's the best way to get approval. And given that Joe will likely punch her in the face if she turns out to be better than he is at anything. So, she's focused on the parents, too, and pleasing them in ways that aren't disruptive. Siding with Tomic, bad idea if you want approval. Meanwhile, Lola, the lost child, well well, she's disappeared.

12:17 Neither supporting nor challenging the system. She avoids Joe cuz who wouldn't, but she won't be siding with Tomic, either, because she doesn't want the treatment he gets. So, enough faux happy family stuff. If you're an adult and surrounded by [ __ ] how does this translate? And I will tell you if you click the like button for me. Um it helps others find the vid, and of course, you know I'm going to tell you anyway, but but thanks if you actually did that. To adultness and being surrounded by crapness. Remember how we showed that the patterns of values and tactics that show up in narcissistic systems actually scale up to workplaces, institutions, and even whole societies, as Christopher Lasch, Jennifer Fried, and others helped us

13:02 see. Well, the roles repeat as well, which is what Tomic might help you see the most. Because Tomic likely has the same perspective you do. His impression is often, why am I surrounded by [ __ ] At least if he's lucky. Thanks to how his role works, at some point he might buy the whole idea that he's defective because no one else will confirm his reality. He is alone with seeing how this works. Lola, the lost child, can be thinking the same, too, but she won't dare voice it. And the other non-asshole, Helga, is occupied with pleasing those running the system, so no confirmation that all of this is awful will come from her, either.

13:47 And what is hopefully clear here is that none of these roles are any fun, and and no, not even Joe's. Cuz the not-so-Joe-like Joes can end up sensing that they are only approved of for the role they play, never for who they are. And we'll get to that later. Um the system ensures no allegiances, just everybody looking up at those in power and trying to please, yeah, or being the one who's always doomed to fail. Now, the crucial thing here, in terms of feeling like everyone around you just makes you despair, these roles are not about fixed personality types. They are not about pathology or labels. They are about positions within a

14:33 system, positions that people are pulled into depending on how that system operates. And once you see that, something uncomfortable follows. A narcissistic system doesn't just produce behavior, it limits what kind of people you are even allowed to become. And speaking of limits, a quick update on the state of this channel. Even with you guys' incredible support, YouTube is currently taking nearly 40% of everything you contribute through YouTube memberships, between their flat rate cut and the hidden mobile fees, whilst simultaneously and always stopping the videos from being served after 2 days, despite huge engagement, high CTR, long view times, and all the

15:18 things it professes to base its algorithm on. In 2026, YouTube expanded its medical misinformation policy to include any content that challenges what they call authoritative health sources. Now, this effectively means that the critique of the DSM or standard CBT models, even from a philosophical or sociological standpoint, is flagged for reduced recommendations. It isn't banned, it's just buried. Now, this is institutionalizing the role of the scapegoat into information quality systems, ensuring that that the unadjusted voices like this one are kept in a digital silo. Now, I cannot continue to let your support be harvested by the very same system we are

16:04 analyzing. So, if you are a YouTube member, I'm asking you to please cancel here and move to Patreon or PayPal. You can find all the information on the lonelinessindustry.net. Doing that and saying this is is going to slay my channel further, but it ensures that 90% of your support goes to continuing the work here and does not feed the machine. You'll get the same exclusive content via Patreon, or if you go with PayPal, you get the content via Discord and me mailing you the private links, because if I have to adjust what I say just to keep the lights on, then then I've been sorted into the role of Helga the helper to facilitate the perpetuation of subtle censorship, and I'm not willing to do that. So, so let the low views of this video stand as confirmation to how the system is set up.

16:51 On with the podcast. As we saw in parts one and two, the patterns of narcissistic systems go far beyond the kitchen table. Now, what that means is that even if you didn't experience this kind of sorting at home, when we get out into society, we can still end up being sorted into these roles, because as Jennifer Fried helped us see, these dynamics don't stay confined to families. Institutions, workplaces, schools, even government bodies produce the same patterns, denying harm, shifting blame, and protecting those in power at the expense of everyone else. Thinkers like Christopher Lasch take this even further. He suggests that we are living in a broader culture of narcissism, where the patterns of values and tactics repeat on a societal scale.

17:38 And if Lasch is right, that means the pattern of roles will be repeating, too. So, you might have escaped being assigned that role at home, or even found a fractal of resistance in your workplace, but but bonus prize, Lasch's perspective means you're likely to encounter this kind of sorting in the wider world. Now, you guys already know your Foucault in terms of how we internalize values, but what's with the differential sorting into roles? And and here we can look at what Louis Althusser calls interpellation. His classic example is a cop calling out, "Hey, you!" And whether you look at him or just start running through alleyways, the "Hey, you!" has hailed you into the role of citizen subject to the law. You have been hailed to being judged within that framework.

18:24 Now, in narcissistic systems, this hailing can be the moment in a workplace, a government, or a social media algorithm when it calls out, "Hey, you! Come help me!" or "Hey, you messed up!" The very utterance engages you in the capacity you are being summoned into. You have been hailed into the role of someone who helps or not, or someone who messed up or not. The frame is your helpfulness or your messed-it-up-ness, regardless of what you do. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus helps us see the trap here. Habitus is the way that systemic power becomes deposited in us as lasting dispositions. It's it's the world turned into a body. After being hailed into a role enough times, it stops feeling like a scripture reciting and starts to feel

19:09 like just the way things are. Your adaptation becomes a reflex, like like when dogs like scratch about a dirt they didn't actually [ __ ] on cuz one just scratches for some forgotten reason when one shits. But it's time to get more specific on these roles, cuz more detail will help you recognize if you've been hailed into one, which is the final telling pattern of narcissistic systems. So, first up, Tomic and Lola, cuz they're the ones that that classically end up feeling the most alienated. Though later we're going to talk about the fact that all of these roles can come with their own kind of nausea. First though, we're we're going to pay attention to the function each role has in a narcissistic system, be they workplaces, family, or society at large. We will come to how important wanting to

19:56 vomit is very soon. Tom exposition has been studied in workplaces by Leymann, Zapf, and others, and in societies by Girard, which we will get to, too, of course, and in family systems, as well. Tom whether he is in the room or not ends up being told that any problem is his fault. Others keep insisting he is lacking or failing, but in terms of the system's dynamic, he is necessary for all those members. Now, why? Because Tom exposition means that no one else has to examine their potential issues or mistakes. Tom is often the office go-to blame guy for those special occasions when one just can't be asked reflecting. If you are a Tom, you will notice this. Call out a problem and you'll be told to

20:42 fix your issues, upskill, tone down, or stop being so negative. Blame becomes a boomerang coming back to whack you in the eye for any issues you were brave enough to raise. Because when a system's problems can be relocated in a person rather than in the system itself, the system itself can look innocent. And if it's innocent, then nothing needs changing. If you are a Tom, a lot of classic broken records get targeted at you. If bad things happen to you, it's because something in you invited it, and only you are responsible for your feelings. Yeah. Sometimes from those who just don't want you to rock the boat, and other times from people like Joe who say, "Only you are responsible for your feelings." while they punch you in the face. And and whether you actually buy

21:28 this as a Tom, you are likely well aware of the double bind that that any reaction from you to genuinely shitty circumstances will be seen as a failure in your conduct, which makes calling out the setup kind of pointless, which is also the point for the system itself. Because Tom function is simple and necessary. Carry the blame so that everyone else can pretend things are fine or get to feel right or superior or innocent. And this is why if you are a Tom, you won't find allies. Alice Miller and R. D. Laing saw this in their work and described it as the collusive agreement of the group. They

22:13 observed that for the system to stay stable, everyone else has to agree implicitly or explicitly that Tom is the problem. And siding with Tom doesn't just mean agreeing that it's pretty [ __ ] nuts to go around being awful to people and then telling them it's their own fault for crying. Siding with or agreeing with Tom means stepping into risk. It means drawing attention to yourself or or potentially inheriting the same treatment. So even the people who can see what's happening, and many can, will stay quiet. Some people might sort of signal vague agreement in private if if they think no one will see, and some might try and soften it or smooth it over, but very few will stand up next to him openly.

23:00 So anyone in the will learn something very specific. Not just that you are always handed blame, but that no one will back you up when it happens. And over time, that isolation starts to look and feel like confirmation that you really are to blame. And that can make a Tom seriously lose it. Cuz really this stuff does break most people. Research on workplace mobbing, meaning institutionalized scapegoating, shows that the people in Tom's position don't just get stressed out. They develop clinical level symptoms, depression, anxiety, CPTSD, and in some cases even psychotic features. This has been shown consistently in the

23:45 work of Heinz Leymann, who first mapped out workplace mobbing, and later researchers like Ståle Einarsen and Dieter Zapf, who link sustained workplace bullying directly to serious mental health outcomes. In other words, for people in this role, the system produces a pattern of responses that are consistent and severe. There is a clear causal line between the setup of the system and how it damages people. And yet, this outcome gets classified as a disorder in the person rather than as the very clear evidence it is that the system itself is what's sick. In certain cases, as the aforementioned authors pointed out, people die. Also painted as their own mental

24:33 illness, the system still gets to carry on as usual, with with a scapegoat officially labeled at postmortem or post-collapse with the institutional confirmation that this is their inadequacy. And this role, this foisting of sickness onto others, doesn't just happen to individuals. René Girard shows how on a societal level, this role can be pushed onto groups. His work shows how throughout history, societies have resolved their inattention by locating the problem in one specific group. From the pharmakos in ancient Greece to the witch trials to the targeting of Jewish people in Nazi Germany, same pattern, same way to circumvent broader issues, you know, by causing extreme harm to a particular

25:19 group, just a different scale. Each time, the scapegoat is not actually the cause of the problem. They become the solution to not having to face the problem. They are the ones who pay an extortionist price just to keep the system looking like it's fine. And yet in the end, every role in narcissistic systems ends up bearing the burden of the system's distortion in its own particular and invariably shitty way. Now, Lola as our next example is the lost child. Where Tom is the Z block in a Tetris game, Lola is more like an actual gap. But because where Tom is something visible and annoying,

26:04 Lola is more like an absence, a a persona non grata. She will often also think, "These people are awful, but but with a guess I just have to get on with it." thrown in. Because Lola has learned that visibility attracts pressure, or worse, the risk of being treated like a Tom. So she withdraws, and that withdrawal buys her a sort of fragile safety from blame. But but it also ensures she will never be recognized either. Lola's, for this reason, can realize that no one really gets them. And no one sees them as a person. And that's because Lola's function is to reduce the system's load by making zero demands on it. At the price of Lola's safety is the burial of her needs.

26:53 In the workplace, she isn't just a shy personality. She is what researcher Dennis Organ identified in the good soldier syndrome. To the institution, Lola is the dream asset. She is low maintenance. But in a narcissistic system, low maintenance is just a euphemism for self-abandoning. She is the cog that looks like it doesn't need oil. Lola's personal low maintenance can even extend to general further maintenance. She can end up secretly fixing the errors that the Joe [ __ ] leave behind if those errors would have ended up drawing attention to her. You know, thus perpetuating the image that the machine runs just fine. Because the system sees her as an anonymous archetype, this good soldier.

27:40 Her specificity is only seen when she's called into question for doing something wrong, meaning the cost for Lola's safe invisibility is psychological erasure. She is the structural beam that is quietly disintegrating because no one thinks to check the parts of the building that aren't making noise. Nor is that just a narrative device. Work on emotional neglect like that of Jon V. Webb shows that when a person's inner world is quietly ignored, not violently rejected, just consistently bypassed, they learn to disconnect from their needs altogether. And and not because those needs vanish, but because having them doesn't work in the current machinery. John Bowlby described a similar pattern with avoidant attachment. When

28:27 expressing needs leads to no response or subtle rejection, the human system adapts by shutting that expression down. And not dramatically, just efficiently. Over time, as Giovanni Liotti points out, this relational pressure leads to a kind of structural dissociation. Lola's disappearance isn't isn't a quirk or some fixed trait. It's a functional adaptation to a system where being seen is a liability. And because Lola is a human and has needs all the same, part of the pain of this position can be the silent, dreamlike hope that someone someday will be intuitive enough to read her, to see the person behind the good soldier,

29:12 without her having to take the risk of explaining. Because she knows what happens when she explains. She becomes a burden, an inconvenience, a problem, and potentially a Tom. So Lola waits and hopes to be seen in a system that pathologizes exactly that kind of perception. She becomes a ghost in a sea of people who don't even try to see her. And yet, as we will talk about soon, how these roles sit with us does vary. It might also sit like this, for example, with Lola praising herself for not needing anyone, with her mistaking her systemic isolation for personal strength, and and wearing her ghost hood like armor. Because the system will brand this as

29:58 strength to help people feel better about their alienation. Now, Joe is coming up, and as usual, he has a few surprises for us. Cuz whilst it is often Joe [ __ ] who make us Google is my boss a narcissist, or are there legal ways to poison wankers, some people who get hoisted into this role get indigestion. And it is one of the most important factors when it comes to what these roles do to us. Because as might be becoming clear, the focus on narcissist or not is way less important than identifying the system that's producing them. Cuz if you find yourself stuck in these roles, it's a sign that the whole tree is poisoned. So, eliminating the worst of the apples does not stop more falling

30:43 on your head. But now to Helga, cuz cuz she is just as vital to the system and its pattern. While Lola fixes things in the shadows to stay visible, Helga the helper fixes things in the light to stay indispensable. And where Tomic is the one we blame for the mess, and Lola is the one pretending she isn't even in the room, Helga is the one frantically trying to vacuum the whole house while it's on fire. Because although Helga is the helper, and that sounds lovely, and in a sick system, helping is often just a polite word for unpaid quality control. Helga is the one who absorbs the frictions and smooths over Joe shithead's tantrums before they can derail the quarterly meeting.

31:28 Arlie Hochschild draws our attention to how this works in terms of emotional labor. Hochschild explains how people like Helga are required to manage their own feelings to create a safe emotional state for others. Meanwhile, Glick and Fiske in benevolent sexism show how the Helga role is often forced onto women through compliments. By being told that they are naturally more caring or the peacemakers, they are socially coerced into the Helga role. It's it's a kind of gilded cage where they they are praised for their service, which makes it socially expensive for them to stop. So, so if you are a Helga, you've likely been told that you are the heart of the office, which is usually code for please keep doing three people's emotional labor for

32:14 the pay of none. Just like Lola, Helga is invisible, but she's a a busy ghost. She is so busy managing everyone else's fragility that she forgets she's a person with needs, too. It's Her needs become blended with the needs of the machine, and thus she becomes a high-functioning appendage of it. There is a double bind for Helga, though. The system wants her to believe that her role is vital, and and yet not give her the kind of credit that Joe gets. As we showed in the family system example, where part of the system's stability means not challenging Joe's position as golden child or hero. Now, research by Deborah Kolb shows that Helga's behavior is often praised, but

33:01 as Joyce Fletcher points out in her work on relational practice, it is also systemically devalued, meaning it goes unpaid. But as long as Helga feels her safety lies in her indispensable but second fiddle position, she will busily fix the system's symptoms for it without actually looking at the cause. Now, this this actually sucks for Helga, cuz Helgas are often good-hearted people, but their role becomes a classic example of how goodness gets roped into doing toxic work if you are in a narcissistic system. Now, organizational psychology talks about something called the Karpman drama triangle, in which Helga is the rescuer. Her work can extend to shutting Tomic out or down to save the system from

33:46 unwanted conflict, but she will also act to reduce the impact of Joe's conflicts, too. And it sounds nice, right? Studies have shown that this actually perpetuates the problem of whatever system she is in. Because the rescuers are shown to prevent organizational learning. By fixing the mess, they hide the fact that the system is broken, which is exactly why the system needs a Helga around. And all this is why if you're recognizing these roles, which are the patterns narcissistic systems produce, it makes complete sense when you feel like you're surrounded by [ __ ] Cuz it's not just that Joe is a prick, it's that Helga is busy making sure Joe's prickness doesn't have any

34:33 consequences. And and without being horrible herself, Helga still turns any crackness in the system or in Joe into a management challenge for herself to solve. So, by the time Helga is done helping, the system looks functional. And the Joes will just look like sort of difficult personalities, and the Tomics will still be being fitted with DSM dunce hats. So, Helga isn't just kind. I mean, okay, she is, but she's also been railroaded. She's become the glue that makes the toxicity feel permanent. And finally, we get to Joe, the guy we love to hate and hate to love. Yet, we have to take him seriously here. And the non-amusing thing is that his

35:18 role is not great, either. Because the not-so-Joe-like Joes can even sense that this position is kind of unfair. Cuz as mentioned, these roles are not equivalent to personalities. They just induce certain patterns of behavior in terms of trying to cope with the role. Which sometimes means nausea and indigestion. Cuz like the values of the system, the roles also won't sit the same with everyone. And when the Joe role sits badly, it turns out to be the nausea itself that stops those in the Joe role getting to be proper [ __ ] They can even lose their places Joes completely. And more on puking soon, I I promise, because it saves us from more than just becoming a Joe. For now, though, in order to hone in on

36:04 why so many of us feel despair at being surrounded by horrendous behavior, we must focus on how Joe's role is meant to pan out in terms of what the system needs from him. So, please forgive me, former and unwilling golden children, we will get to why you are not [ __ ] pretty soon. Ideally, Joe will dig his role as favorite-winning guy. His task for the system is embodying what is valued, performing it so perfectly that the system can use him as an example and say, "See, he managed to succeed. He rose to the top. The code of the operating system is perfect. The world is fair." And in this setup, this role, Joe isn't just a person. He becomes a systemic node.

36:51 He is the point where the matrix's ego and the human body overlap. He is not just a tool of the system here. His internal workings need to become the system itself. He needs to have swallowed the values with no indigestion. He needs to take on the tactics scapegoating gaslighting blame-shifting to protect his own internal version of the system from being found lacking. Remember Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus? The way that systemic power and social structures become deposited in the individual as lasting dispositions? Well, that means that Joe doesn't think he's being a dick. He thinks he has a feel for the game. His gaslighting isn't always a conscious strategy. It's a systemic reflex. And and with him, he's

37:38 like a [ __ ] scratching dog, and more like a cat landing on its feet. Now, Winnicott's idea of the false self is interesting to look at here as well. Usually, the false self is a mask, but for the ideal Joe, there is no true self left to retreat to. The system has performed a total annexation of his interiority, replacing it with itself. The perfect Joe has had to murder his own spontaneity and vulnerability. He isn't just faking it. He has achieved a state of total internalized compliance. Though he would never call it that, cuz he is the perfect actor who's forgotten there was ever a script. And this is why he can look like he is protected by a kind of automated real-time patching.

38:25 If Joe knocks over a five-grand statue of the company logo, neither him nor the system he's a node in sees a clumsy employee. It sees a glitch in the simulation that must be overwritten. It lets him launch a formal investigation into why the floor was so slippery, and to recode the janitor that the handy nearby Tomic is the source of the error. Because in doing this, Joe exists in a state of Teflon hero-hood. You could catch him standing over a literal smoldering ruin with a flamethrower in his hand, and the system's internal rendering engine would rewrite the scene before the pixels even settle. The smoke would be rebranded as innovation, and the ruin as overdue renewal. Remember how parts one and two talked about the system creating distortions

39:12 and forcing those without advantage to bear them? Narcissistic systems are all about that, and as that system's avatar, Joe is as well. If anyone labels Joe flawed, the system's source code might be outed as corrupt, and and that is the one thing the simulation can't allow. If Joe is outed as a monster, the social media verse starts to flicker, and a green rain smear campaign is written about anyone uttering monster talk. So, we all play along. We explain the world around him, bending the physics of our own reality so that he is never the cause of destruction, only the beneficiary of our optimized output. Goffman talked about how institutions strip people of their identity kits. In

39:59 total institutions, the person is replaced by the role. Joe has been given a premium identity kit by the system. It comes with the flamethrower and the innovation rebranding software. He cannot put the kit down because without it, he won't get the pretty simulation that reflects his awesomeness. And he needs those just as much as the system he's a node in needs them. All that to say that what Joe internalizes as his needs are the simulation's needs. He becomes a distortion of greatness but both for others and himself. He is a one-man fractal, a being that houses an instantiation of the system itself. He has become a node within it.

40:46 Which means, just as for the system, other people's needs aren't just inconvenient. They are legacy bugs, outdated, burdensome to work around, and subject to immediate deletion if they produce an accurate reflection of his shitness. The ideal Joe, who will not turn up in a therapist's office, is usually the very one we Google after being screwed over. Joe is the one we call a narcissist, but not by virtue of his individual human flaws. It is by virtue of his having internalized the narcissistic system itself. And here is a foreshadowing of the big reveal. Joe is not the only one who can actually do this. The most likely one, sure, but there are others who can swallow the

41:32 system whole if there's no gag reflex. Now that your gag reflex can save you becomes the most important thing to know, but I'll explain a little later. And for now, the takeaway is this. These kinds of people are not glitches. They keep the system running as intended. And as do each of these roles, though in less obvious ways. They each encourage different behaviors, they end up being different experiences, too. Yet their function, in the end, is the same. In one way or the other, each of these roles keeps the system intact. They are each a vital part of the machine that is a narcissistic system. They each serve a particular function for the system's perpetuation.

42:19 Now, to deepen why this really is not about bad apples, and and rather a very rotten tree, some Zhuangzi, and you can look up how to spell that in the show notes. Zhuangzi talks about how none of us are separate from the system that we live in. We are expressions of it. Distortions in the system ripple through us because we are connected to the whole and its parts, the self, society, nature, all the systems that we are embedded in. None of it stands alone. He pointed out, too, that the micro level, which means us as human beings or our families, reflects the macro level, the broader systems that we are part of. Which might sound lovely in another context, like a retreat in Bali. We have brought your crystal egg to meditate with and have somehow managed to manifest the non-exploitation of the

43:05 locals. But in narcissistic systems, Zhuangzi's idea adds weight to the following point. When the roles we just looked at keep showing up across different families, different workplaces, institutions, and even entire societies, it is difficult to argue that this is about core traits in our personalities, like some loser trait that renders all of us Tomics inherently hopeless. Personality is messy, inconsistent, wildly varied. In a narcissistic system, the roles do not reflect this. They are limited, predictable repeating. And that said, it's something more uncomfortable. That people are not bringing these roles into systems via the kinds of characters

43:51 they are. Instead, people are being shaped by the roles themselves, by the system itself that invokes them, that hails us into them. But of course, that's not how it's usually explained. More often, you'll be told that it's you. That you're the helper because you're codependent. Or that you're the lost child because you lack agency. That you're the scapegoat because you have poor boundaries. And that that Joe is the way he is cuz he has a personality disorder. The point is, psychology explains a pattern of behavior the same way the wider system does, by making it all about the individual. Not by making it about what flows through us all. And those labels I mentioned, they can

44:38 describe real patterns of behavior, but they take the behaviors of the role and turn it into a personality. They take the outcome and energy of a system and lock it up inside a person. In psychology, the focus shifts away from the idea that we are affected by the systems we are part of, away from the structures that keep producing the same roles, and on to the person who's been slotted into them. Psychology, in a clear expression of the system's core value of radical individual responsibility, puts the cart before the horse. It looks at how one behaves and assumes it is because of something in you, instead of asking, instead of asking what kind of system

45:24 would produce or require such behavior in the first place. But when the same patterns keep emerging across wildly different people, it is a serious slight of hand to ask, "What's wrong with you?" The actually useful question is this. What have you had to take in, adapt to, or survive for this role to make sense? And for those of you who listened to part one, you already know. The first pattern of narcissistic systems is the pattern of values they install to ensure that those with advantage will retain it. In the same way that Antonio Gramsci talks about values that ensure those in more powerful positions get to retain advantage. In the case of narcissistic systems,

46:09 these are values like self-regulation and control, radical individual responsibility, competition as natural order, the necessity of being useful, image management, and all the other things we covered in that episode. But bonus prize, in narcissistic systems, you also have to take on the distortions that those values produce. It is you who bears the burden for them, while the system that produces these distortions continues to look blameless. As Gramsci also comments, the values of those with power install always come to look natural and neutral, which makes distortions all the more difficult to see as distortions at all. Yet, where Zhuangzi points out the systems we are embedded in will flow through us, Althusser points out that we don't take

46:55 it all in perfectly. So, the values and distortions will sit differently in us due to what Althusser terms our human contradictions. So, here is where our gag reflex kicks in. Think of it like eating one of those English pasties with lots of slimy bits in it. You know, the carroty chunks of competition, potatoey blandness of total emotional control, the meat-flavored gristle of radical individual responsibility, and the delicious-looking image management pastry. It happens to be the only meal on offer, and it looks fine enough, so you take a bite, as will everyone. Some will notice no ill effects. Others will get a brief stomach ache and carry on. A few of us might start to feel nauseous and be descended upon by others who think force-feeding us more of the same is the only solution. And some will get

47:42 explosive diarrhea, for which they themselves are blamed. The difference here is not about good or bad people, at least not at source. It is about how values and distortions are digested. Now, hands up if you actually have tried to eat one of those pasties they have in England, because if you have, you'll know that it makes a mess. So, this is the messy part. It is where, if you have managed to restrain yourself from the usual kind of comments like, "No, here is exception XYZ and therefore you are full of shit." then you have my utmost respect. And if you did write such a comment, well, the part on linguistic tells is coming up right after this. But to the mess. Because the roles we have discussed are understood in terms of their function within narcissistic systems,

48:28 we know how each role services the system in fairly clear ways. So, when it comes to the question of why you're surrounded by [ __ ] the roles will mostly point to Joe. I mean, sure, he's the likely candidate, but but let's remember why. When he fulfills his role correctly, he replaces his own interiority with the system. He is not so special in that as he might like us to believe. Others can actually do it, too, within the confines of their role. And and some Joes don't manage to do it within theirs. Which makes the real problem of being surrounded by horrible people come down to their digestion. It comes down to who will swallow this stuff whole. And while studies show us that the Tomics often do end up with labels or

49:13 actually did, they also show us that one of the labels can be NPD on occasion. Well, which means any roles can finally drink the Kool-Aid. Now, I had a friend who was an actual example of this once. My Tomic was called Yarik, and and he was a scapegoat in his workplace cuz of German stereotypes about his country of origin. When he moved to England, where other foreign nations were much lower down the ladder of ludicrous stereotypes than he was, he gladly began to scapegoat the lowest ranked group. This got worse when he got promoted, something that had been kept back from in the decades he was in Germany. Following his UK promotion, he became a golden hero, puffing up into ever more odious as he gained power over his newly

49:59 sanctified underlings. Because Yarik did buy that this is just the order of things, that that some of us get kicked and that's fine, cuz if you can learn the tools and figure out how to do the kicking yourself, then the system must be okay. And what this means is no matter which position we are in, some don't just eat the food, they become the food itself. At that extreme end of ideal digestion, we are not just identifying with the system, we are becoming a fractal of it ourselves. We are becoming the nodes that reinforce the system on others. We become the sufficient number of horrible people required to make you tune in to ask why you're surrounded by this mess. So,

50:45 narcissistic personality disorder is another name for total systemic identification. Those who manage to become it aren't aren't evil geniuses, they are hollow. Their false self is the system's operating manual. And and this is why these human fractals are secretly the most fragile people in the room. In Hegel's master-slave dialectic, the master is actually the one who is enslaved to this arrangement, because his entire identity depends upon the slave's recognition. Without others to look down on, the master has no height. As Hannah Arendt might put it, those who replace their conscience with the operating manual of the system achieve a kind of thoughtlessness.

51:31 This is the banality of evil. There is no thinking, just doing what one's role requires. Because Arendt's point about Adolf Eichmann wasn't that he was a monster, but that he was an automaton. He spoke in cliches. He couldn't think from the perspective of another. He was not a mustache-twirling villain, he was a man who had replaced his interiority with the system's KPIs. And this helps us understand something. It helps us understand why when the golden mask slips, these human fractals undergo what is called narcissistic collapse. Because it's not just an external failure. With no outward praise or likes or promotions, they fall

52:16 inwards into an internal war. The system they swallowed whole starts to eat them from inside. They are forced to face every role they've ever projected onto others, but now it's all happening in their own mind. They are haunted by the terror that they are actually the inadequate hated tomic they've spent a lifetime looking down on. They are terrified of being disappeared like Lola, never praised or seen or admired. And yet they must become her for as long as this lasts, for fear of being seen in their collapsedness. To survive that abyss, they Helga their own psyche. They must try and self-soothe by by gaslighting themselves into a new distortion. And if they can't trap some external Helga nurse to fix their image, they manifest

53:03 an internal one to do it. Wanting desperately to repair the golden mask with the same fervor Helga uses to emotionally manage a crisis. And this is the origin of the vulnerable narcissist, a system on fire frantically conjuring up a new distortion because facing the abyss of their own hollowness, being unplugged from the system that feeds them, is beyond their ability to cope. And for the real actual Joe [ __ ] of the world, the best defense against this is not to let it happen. Enter the linguistic tool I promised you. Because the system has developed a language-based immune response, a Teflon shield to protect itself and its nodes. That shield is dogma. Because dogma

53:50 stops us questioning the things the system runs on. It stops you asking for answers to why the gold standard somehow tarnish. The thought terminuses are sometimes known as thought-terminating cliches. It is the voice of the guard. And it is adopted by anyone who has somehow gained advantage in the system to keep others from challenging it. It is a verbal stop sign designed to kill curiosity before it can threaten the system's machinery. It sounds like, "You're just jealous." Or, "It's just human nature." Or, "Of course someone like you would think that." Uh there are many variations, but it always feels the same. The thought terminus feels like being slapped in the face with a stop sign. It signals that dogma is behind the door

54:36 and the system is no longer opening it for questions. If you have ever been told, "If it doesn't work, you're just doing it wrong." Or, "Everyone knows it's just how it is." You have met a thought terminus. Now, I've decoded these linguistic traps in an episode as well. It is the manual for spotting the guard's voice before they can silence you and keep you in your role. And I'll link to it at the end. If you want to see the full system code, it's there. Meanwhile, it's enough to know that dogma is not just annoying. It is the defense wall of a system that runs on distortions. The discussion-terminating thought termini that protect it are what lets you know you are hitting the firewall of the system. And you are seeing this play out right here. This channel has been made a Lola.

55:23 The lost child of the algorithm hailed into the role of the unseen because it sadly it is the job of philosophy to ask questions. And I know that didn't work out well for Socrates, but I am not Socrates. And I did an experiment to check this. Content that was buried and siloed on here, unless you're listening via the podcast form, reached more people in 5 hours on another platform than it had on this particular video flat platform in a week. A short that got stuck on this platform at 200 views had almost a thousand in half a day. The algorithm isn't broken. It's working exactly as intended. It is sorting unadjusted voices into the digital basement so the gold standards never have to answer difficult questions.

56:08 They want you to think the low views means no one cares. They want you to think the low views means you are alone, but the data shows that isn't true. So, by episode three, this much is clear. A narcissistic system is defined by its requirements, image over reality, and the redistribution of blame to protect those in power. So, if you feel alone and can't find allies, chances are you aren't failing. Chances are you are simply inside one of these. And your indigestion, your failure to do these roles perfectly, is actually integrity. If you are atypically irritably bowed tomic or Lola or Helga or Joe with similar digestive issues,

56:54 you are a fractal of resistance. You kept your indigestion because you refused to swallow the poison. But the system relies on your isolation. It wants you to believe you are the only one who sees the glitch. We have to be the ones to confirm reality for each other cuz the system never will. So, please share this where you know others with indigestion come together. Move to Patreon or PayPal. Head to the lonelinessindustry.net for the links to those. Every one of them gets you a link to join the Discord community. To all of you living among the distortions without confirmation, I see you. Resistance isn't about being better than the system. It is about being realer than the system. So, if you have had a

57:39 gutsful of being alone, of being told your inquiry is hate, where your reaction to a sick system [music] is a disorder, please join us. Help those who are like us keep the signal alive. From my ever tomic heart to yours. Bye.