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Narcissus Was No Narcissist
For two thousand years, we’ve been telling a story about a young man who sat by a pool of water and fell so in love with his reflection that he wasted away and died. We’ve built entire psychological frameworks around this interpretation. We diagnose people based on it. We’ve even named a personality disorder after it.
Because everyone knows that solitary contemplative people are just vain. Right?
Look closely at the deep-thinking people you know. I mean really look. Are they obsessed with their appearance and constantly seeking admiration? Or are they lost in thought, deeply immersed in understanding, often forgetting to even check a mirror. What is labeled as “vanity” in this story is something profoundly different. It is self-reflection. And it’s time we understood how long the legacy of oppression for the creative intellectuals is.
Let’s look at the story of Narcissus, the most famous character in history for vanity. Now let’s use that story as frame of reference to run a simple experiment.
Find any natural body of water, a pond, a lake, even a puddle will do. Try to see your reflection clearly. You can’t, can you? The surface moves constantly, the water’s too dark, the image distorts with every ripple. This basic fact of physics has been true for as long as water has existed, which makes what we’re about to discuss…
