The United States of Selfishness – How Unhealthy Capitalism Erodes Empathy & Fuels Cultural Narcissism
- Brainz Magazine
- 7 hours ago
- 12 min read
Steven Thistle is a trauma recovery and mental wellness specialist, as well as the founder of the Consciously Healing Method. He helps individuals heal trauma-related symptoms and unconscious patterns using his Twelve Golden Keys framework.
My childhood mirrors what is unfolding across the United States. What began as a personal reckoning, writing to survive, healing from early childhood and adolescent narcissistic abuse, and passing through ego-death, became an awakening to something far larger. In healing myself, I came to see what has been operating unconsciously not only within individuals, but collectively within my country.
Like a Petri dish, societies form cultures under the conditions imposed on them and the values they reward. The United States has cultivated an ecosystem of I versus us, of competition over collective well-being, where empathy is not nurtured but eroded.
The people are not the problem. Citizens, regardless of political identity, are capable of compassion and care, which is intrinsic to our fundamental nature. Culture is not born from the population, but from value systems shaped by power and absorbed unconsciously by individuals. Economic systems are not causes in isolation, they are mirrors of a collective identity shaped by distorted beliefs about worth, success, and survival.
What unfolds collectively is first learned individually, conditioned by personal or tribal interests, not by the values we instinctively know to be human.
“Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” – Alfred Adler.
To suffer, to hurt, to hunger, to feel helpless, alone, unloved, uncared for, unimportant, unworthy, judged, ignored, while others turn away, blind to your pain, is the collective mark of cultural narcissism. This absence of empathy arises in societies that place anything above the value of human life, not by design, but as the consequence of a system that rewards individual success while punishing failure.
Welcome to my capitalist, greedy, self-centered, trauma-bonded, dog-eat-dog culture, the United States of Selfish.
Collectively, we do not love, empathy is replaced by the value we place on hating anything that does not conform to our illusory beliefs in racial superiority, rigid gender hierarchies, national exceptionalism, economic entitlement, and the idea that suffering is deserved.
I owe my life to my country. Without its social programs, I highly doubt I would be alive. I went from the highest peak to the lowest valley, seemingly in a minute, as my childhood trauma caught up with me. I could no longer repress what happened, and it surfaced in uncontrollable suffering.
This is not hyperbolic. It is my reality.
(Excerpts from Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment.)
“I felt terrific about myself with a home on a gorgeous river and vacation property overlooking a bay and beach full of oysters. My life was a dream come true, a beautiful wife, two children, a house, and a vacation property, all paid for, with no debt. I saved thousands of dollars in disposable income every month. With a six-figure income and no bills, I rapidly approached one million dollars in net worth. Most people would envy my life, yet I did not know what I had because I took it for granted.
After years of being highly successful, the unhealed attachment trauma from my childhood reared its ugly head and whacked me to the ground. I became disabled after acute depression made it difficult to get out of bed. After four decades of repressing the truth about my childhood and unconsciously fearing it would be too painful to know, it made its way to the surface. I lost practically everything in my life.”
Born at the beginning of the Great Depression, both my parents were intrinsically narcissistic and self-centered, shaped by childhood traumas that taught them survival through selfishness. I became the victim, the scapegoat of what they never confronted in themselves, absorbing their pain as a small child while enduring the consequences of their unhealed trauma. I grew highly empathic, feeling deeply for their suffering even as it shaped mine.
The same dynamic plays out collectively in the United States, where oppression, manipulation, and personal or tribal gain are rewarded. At the same time, individual needs, empathy, and human well-being are often disregarded.
This is not only my experience but that of millions, a reflection of the problem with the country I love and must confront, because truth must be spoken and reality must be faced.
This is not political. It is survival.
The manipulation of facts, the gaslighting of citizens, and the games played with our minds and bodies poison us with impossible expectations of how we should, or should not, be.
Those who fail to meet these standards, who need help or empathy for circumstances beyond their control, an illness, a misfortune, are discarded, a symptom of the individual narcissism that now flourishes culturally.
Suppose you have no value to the collective. In that case, you are less than human, a parasite, robbing decent, hard-working people of money to pay for what you cannot afford, food, shelter, healthcare, a life others take for granted because they feel deserving, while others suffer, deserving it.
Allow me to tell you about the country I live in, and why we protest, and why a social revolution is loudly knocking on the door. The MAKE AMERICA GREAT President is making life a living hell for many, not just in the United States, but abroad.
I asked ChatGPT:
What numbers and facts show that in the United States, especially those who are poor, sick, or mistreated, are not cared for or valued as they should be?
Take it away, Chatty.
Financial precarity: 67 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, middle-class families struggle despite full-time work.
Extreme inequality: The top 1 percent earn 12.4 percent of all wages, 15.3 percent of children live in poverty.
Homelessness and infant risk: More than 770,000 homeless individuals, 150,000 homeless children in New York, infant mortality at 5.61 per 1,000 live births.
Failing healthcare: $14,570 spent per person annually, yet life expectancy is 78.4 years, the lowest among high-income nations, millions remain uninsured.
Mental health crisis: 22.8 percent of adults and 16.5 percent of youth have mental illness, nearly one-third cannot access treatment.
Suicide and addiction epidemic: More than 49,000 die by suicide annually, more than 80,000 die from drug overdoses, mostly opioids and fentanyl.
Gender and LGBTQ+ inequality: Women earn 80.9 percent of men’s wages, 36 percent of LGBTQ+ adults and 60 percent of LGBTQ+ youth face discrimination, 29 percent report poor mental health.
Immigrant prejudice: 82 percent of undocumented and 65 percent of legal immigrants report discrimination, 37 percent of voters support deportation efforts.
Overall picture: Millions of Americans live in precarity, suffering systemic neglect, discrimination, and preventable death despite national wealth and resources.
Thank you, Chatty. I will take it from here.
Social entropy and the great suffering, why survival depends on collective empathy
Only through empathy can we halt social entropy, love is the glue that holds society together. Hate and division are born of ignorance and wielded by those who use them to manipulate the truth.
Social entropy, the chaos born of dysfunction, emerges when empathy fades. Without the glue of understanding and care, social norms weaken, shared meaning dissolves, and the energy that binds communities drains away, leaving apathy, fragmentation, and division in its wake.
The Great Suffering is upon us, born of humanity’s failure to evolve socially, trapped in repeating egoic patterns that perpetuate collective pain. Its manifestations are everywhere:
Climate catastrophes
Inevitable wars
Mass extinction
Hunger and water scarcity
Global pandemics and health crises
Economic collapse and widening inequality
Political instability and authoritarianism
Mass displacement and refugee crises
Breakdown of infrastructure and essential services
Social fragmentation, apathy, and moral decay
Social entropy increasing in the United States
The breakdown of social norms and cohesion is evident in widespread distrust between political parties, communities, and institutions.
Shared meaning and moral order are dissolving as culture polarizes, and collective values shift toward individualism, consumption, and competition over mutual care. The loss of social energy manifests as apathy, disengagement, and emotional detachment, leaving millions isolated even in a hyperconnected world. Economic insecurity, systemic inequality, rampant mental health crises, and persistent discrimination exacerbate this fragmentation.
Healing the fragmented parts of society will only happen collectively when pain and suffering force us to awaken from the illusion. Suffering awakens the conscious mind, individually and collectively. We are awakening.
(Excerpts from Mind Surgery, Consciously Healing Through Self-Enlightenment.)
“After a lifetime of repressing memories from severe fear and pain in early childhood, I found myself lost at sea, the wind and waves battering my boat in uncontrollable storms. I was slowly sinking into despair. Symptoms surfaced, but I did not know why. With no idea of the cause and being unable to find relief from professionals, one option was to end my pain by allowing my boat to sink with me in it.
For several years, I struggled with the demons of despair and wanted to end my life because my symptoms were unrelenting. Not finding treatments that worked made me contemplate suicide frequently because I lost hope that I could find healing. Floating precariously, I knew at some level that beneath the surface lay a vast reservoir of untapped, repressed fear and pain from my childhood. When it surfaced, I continually threw it back overboard, unable to understand my symptoms, which caused a split in my psyche.
Fragmentation did not allow me to heal because I muted the child in me and did not allow him to speak. I had to fragment a part of my psyche to survive the fear and pain I felt as a child. I forgot that part of myself, threw it overboard, suppressed it, and denied its existence. It was too painful and confusing to recall how I felt and what happened as a little boy. But as an adult, I could no longer repress symptoms, and they surfaced uncontrollably, causing a storm that would not cease.
Still, a light on the shore was trying to show me the way.
Fragmentation is a last-ditch effort the psyche employs to preserve sanity, used only when the psyche must fragment a part of the mind to survive. When experiencing physical trauma, the brain releases endorphins to nullify pain. It temporarily blocks physical pain to varying degrees. When experiencing psychological or emotional trauma, the psyche automatically employs the ego to help us cope. Magically, the ego can take memories, put them in a crate, discard them, or twist them into stories or narratives to keep us afloat. The ego temporarily mutes reality when it is too painful or frightening to process consciously. The ego’s job is to suppress fear and pain until we can intentionally see what is real and heal. The mind is so powerful that it can seemingly forget the unforgettable. But the subconscious mind and ego forget nothing.”
An undeniable fragmentation and subsequent suffering are upon us because the structures that once held society together, empathy, trust, shared purpose, are eroding, replaced by transactional relationships, fear, and the relentless pressure to survive rather than to live meaningfully.
The only way we will survive collectively is through love, not hate. Hate divides, empathy and love unite.
We are at a crossroads. Heading into the Great Suffering, we need one another, and only empathy enables us to love, not to hate.
When we move right politically, it is out of fear. We want someone to lead us with authority, to dictate our hatred, to denounce that which we fear, to control the narrative of our anxieties, and to impose order on the chaos within and around us.
Right is wrong, left is right
When we collectively become righteous, we build walls of judgment between ourselves and others, weaponize morality as a mask for cruelty, and extinguish the warmth of empathy, replacing hearts with rules while the soul of humanity withers under the weight of our own moral certainty.
It is not too late. We can survive collectively, but destruction lies ahead if fear governs our choices, empathy is silenced, and we continue surrendering our humanity to division and chaos.
Cultural narcissism and the erosion of collective reality
In the run-up to and aftermath of the 2024 United States presidential election, vulnerabilities in voting systems, insider threats, and coordinated disinformation campaigns revealed more than technical flaws. They exposed a society losing faith in itself. When citizens come to believe the process is rigged, responsibility is abandoned, and the collective ego remains blind, just as I once was, until I confronted my own patterns born of narcissistic abuse, faced my unconscious ego, and underwent a process of awakening and healing.
To move forward, my country may need to undergo the same kind of collective reckoning, confronting the unconscious patterns shaped and twisted by those who pursue self-interest and ideology at the expense of the collective. Only by examining and reshaping our values, beliefs, and systems, letting empathy, accountability, and shared responsibility guide us, can we hope to awaken from this cycle and begin healing as a society.
The country I love is under the grip of collective trauma, orchestrated by those in power who pursue their agenda with ruthless self-interest. Like a narcissistic parent abusing a child, the system thrives on manipulation, denial, and projection, leaving the populace disoriented, silenced, and wounded, not just in the United States, but across the world.
Ending this cultural narcissism requires more than reforming machines or systems. It demands cultivating humility, shared reality, and empathy over the desire to feel right or be validated. Only then can trust be rebuilt, and the wound of collective denial begin to heal.
In every era, cultures reflect the beliefs, values, and inner emotional state of their people. When a society becomes addicted to spectacle, validation, and denial of accountability, it begins to mirror the traits of a narcissistic individual, exaggerated self-importance, projection of blame, and distortion of reality. This collective disorder, cultural narcissism, is now a defining feature of political and societal life in the United States.
By the time of the 2024 U.S. election, cultural narcissism had evolved into a pervasive force, reshaping public perception through projection, gaslighting, and strategic disinformation. The real crisis is not political division but the immaturity of a society unable to face reality, accept responsibility, or feel empathy as a whole.
The illness beneath the surface
A narcissistic culture thrives on image, outrage, and conflict. Reflection and accountability are punished, performance and spectacle are rewarded. Political figures and institutions often embody this pathology, amplifying grandiosity, perpetual victimhood, and emotional reactivity, while discouraging self-examination and critical thought.
Gaslighting as governance
Gaslighting, the systematic distortion of reality, has become a tool of control. Leaders and institutions manipulate perception to avoid accountability, reframing missteps as persecution or casting aggression as defense. In such environments, perception, not truth, becomes the instrument of power, and reality itself bends to the ego’s needs.
The manipulation of trust
Cultural narcissism does not require a system to be flawless or broken. It requires only that ambiguity be exploited and responsibility endlessly deferred. In such an environment, documented voting barriers affecting marginalized and targeted demographics, combined with procedural gaps and unresolved vulnerabilities in election infrastructure, become less about technical failure and more about psychological leverage.
Numerous analysts and observers of the 2024 election have pointed not simply to errors, but to patterns, statistical irregularities, anomalous machine behavior, and tabulation discrepancies that, whether ultimately proven consequential or not, were met not with transparency, humility, or independent scrutiny, but with dismissal, deflection, and narrative control. This is the signature of gaslighting, when legitimate concern is reframed as irrationality, and inquiry itself is treated as a threat.
Cultural narcissism thrives under these conditions. It externalizes blame, protects institutional self-image, and preserves power by insisting that trust must be granted rather than earned. Citizens are told to doubt their perceptions while being offered no shared reality in return.
The result is not clarity, but psychological disorientation, an erosion of agency that mirrors the dynamics of narcissistic abuse at the interpersonal level.
In such a climate, disengagement, cynicism, and fear are not pathologies of the public. They are predictable outcomes of a system more invested in appearing legitimate than in being accountable. When truth becomes subordinate to reputation, and transparency is replaced with reassurance, democracy is not overturned in a single act. It is quietly hollowed out.
Healing this rupture requires more than technical assurances. It demands the opposite of narcissism, humility, openness to scrutiny, and the courage to confront uncomfortable realities without projecting or denying them. Without that reckoning, trust cannot be restored, only managed, manipulated, and slowly exhausted.
The creation of convenient enemies
Cultural narcissism relies on scapegoats to absorb collective shame. Convenient enemies, immigrants, journalists, scientists, protesters, or foreign nations, allow the collective ego to externalize failure rather than confront systemic shortcomings or its own complicity. By projecting blame, societies avoid facing the patterns that perpetuate dysfunction.
The narcissistic wound of a nation
A nation that grounds its identity in supremacy or pride struggles to tolerate loss or uncertainty. When outcomes threaten that self-image, failure is often externalized, reframed as sabotage, betrayal, or hidden forces beyond one’s control. Narratives of stolen legitimacy function like a narcissistic defense. They shield the collective ego from shame and vulnerability, allowing unresolved fear, insecurity, and unexamined trauma to remain unaddressed.
In both individuals and ideologically driven cultures, projection becomes a powerful tool. Accusations of corruption or rigging are sometimes not expressions of truth-seeking, but acts of displacement, attributing to others what one fears or conceals within oneself. Many observers of the 2024 election argue that this dynamic was at play, allegations of wrongdoing served less to expose reality than to obscure it.
This is the most corrosive form of manipulation. By publicly condemning an act as immoral or illegitimate while quietly engaging in distortion, suppression, or control, a culture gaslights itself. Attention is redirected outward, scrutiny is neutralized, and accountability becomes impossible. What appears as moral outrage is, in fact, misdirection, a sleight of hand that keeps the public defending illusions instead of confronting the deeper mechanisms of power.
Healing cultural narcissism
Healing begins within. Societies must cultivate humility, reflection, and empathy, valuing truth over pride and shared reality over spectacle. Protecting independent journalism, promoting civic education, and fostering psychological literacy empower citizens to recognize gaslighting, projection, and manipulation.
Cultural narcissism exists because it resides in us. Leaders and institutions are mirrors of the unhealed collective. Only by confronting these patterns, individually and collectively, can a society awaken, reshape its values, and stop mistaking its wounds for enemies.
Disclaimer
This article is intended for informational and reflective purposes only. The perspectives presented are drawn from the author’s personal experiences, research, and observations, including the life-altering effects of narcissistic abuse. The views expressed are offered to encourage critical thought, self-inquiry, and dialogue, and do not constitute clinical, legal, or political advice.
Read more from Steven Thistle
Steven Thistle, Trauma Recovery and Mental Wellness Specialist
Steve Thistle is a specialist in trauma recovery, mental wellness, and narcissistic abuse healing. Drawing on personal experience and decades of study, he developed the Consciously Healing Method, a structured approach to resolving trauma at its roots. Through his Twelve Golden Keys framework, he guides clients in re-framing false beliefs, releasing toxic somatic energy, and restoring emotional balance. Steve has helped hundreds overcome patterns that traditional therapy often overlooks, offering a practical and empowering path to lasting healing. He is passionate about making trauma recovery accessible and transformative, combining insight, empathy, and proven methods.
