The Cost of Arrogance.

We all pay.

These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.

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Some quotes:

“ ... the United States is a mortal enemy of China” (Prof. John Mearsheimer, at 33.20).

“A woman’s worth is determined by her ability to please and satisfy a man” (Andrew Tate).

“America is the greatest and most powerful nation in the history of mankind” (US Sec. of State Marco Rubio).

“A beastly people with a beastly religion” (Winston Churchill, speaking of Indians).

“If we have to use force it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future” (fmr US Sec. of State Madeline Albright)

“Will I annihilate Iran and do it quickly?” Trump.

What do these all have in common? They show the urge to dominate, a critically important part of what we can call human nature. Modern social sciences, including psychology and psychiatry, don’t like to talk about human nature, they see it as a primitive idea, hardly better than talking about spirits and tree nymphs but it depends on how it’s defined. It should be restricted to what humans are likely to do rather than what we are compelled to do. For example, we don’t normally include breathing, eating and drinking and seeking shelter as “human nature,” it is reserved for what we’re likely to do, our inclinations or proclivities rather than absolutes.

The first and most obvious feature is that we are social animals, we like to be with our kind and it’s fairly easy to imagine an evolutionary basis for this. The early protohuman who liked to wander off alone would have been eliminated from the gene pool in short order. Hanging around and bonding with other people feels good and is probably related to the hormone oxytocin, which has wide effects throughout the body, male and female. As soon as we form a bonded social group, two other factors become important, fear and dislike of outsiders and strangers, and the urge to dominate, within the group and over other groups. Oxytocin seems to incline people to want to support their group and at the same time, inclines them to dislike outsiders and push them away. These are not fixed reactions, they are heavily influenced by individual psychological factors but they’re always there, lurking in the background.

The urge to dominate, as explained in Narcisso-Fascism, is largely mediated by the male hormone, testosterone. This has an intense “feel good” effect so people seek it in a myriad ways in daily life. Going up the dominance hierarchy causes surges of testosterone whereas being pushed down or excluded suppresses it. People with high levels feel fantastic, while the people they are suppressing feel useless and despairing. The effects are so strong that people fight to get to the top but, at the same time, everybody else fights to resist being oppressed. Each of us has wired into our DNA the urge to dominate and the urge to resist domination, sometimes known as the paradox of hierarchy. This is inherently destabilising, which means that without some system of laws and enforcement, human society is by nature unstable, disorganised and often chaotic, as Thomas Hobbes described in his epic work, Leviathan (1651):

In such condition (of no authority offering protection against violence) there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Ch 13).

He wrote that just 375 years ago; nothing has changed. Mearsheimer’s thesis is that international relations are anarchic just because there is no “higher authority” keeping the peace. Therefore nations must strive to exert local dominance because if they don’t, somebody else will take over and life for the losers will be worse. That is, he licenses aggression, he justifies the preemptive attack. This leads to constant struggle which regularly spills over into violence. Currently, Mearsheimer says, the US is engaged in a life-or-death battle to “contain” China, to prevent its rise as a “superpower.” In fact, it’s not just China, it’s everywhere. To Mr Rubio’s open delight, Cuba is being strangled; Venezuela has been emasculated and its oil shipped to the US; Iran, of course, is the eighth Muslim country to be attacked in 20 years; Russia is the eternal enemy; and everybody else must keep their heads down or have them kicked in.

My view is that international relations are chaotic just because the US is insistent on being dominant in every respect and accepts no limits on its conduct, anywhere for any reason. Why is China a “mortal enemy”? What have the Chinese done to deserve that dire prize? What is the rational reason for the US to decide that it has to box China in with military bases, impose punitive financial sanctions, attack the country that provides most of China’s oil and generally make life as difficult as possible for one sixth of the world’s population? Answer: there is no rational reason. The US is simply doing as a country what the despicable Andrew Tate does as an individual, trying to dominate for domination’s sake. In fact, Mrs Tate’s little boy and the Gifted Leader of the Free World are good mates, as he regularly boasts:

And I’m very close to the Trump family. I know them well. And I spoke to Barron after the incident and I look forward to once I am free being with Donald Trump in person and reminding him that he’s a bulletproof badass (here, at 2.44).

It takes one to know one. An academic analysis [1] of Tate’s utterances over the years shows how he inserts the message of dominance in everything he does: what he wears, what he drives, where he goes, who he is seen with, his sport, how to treat women and gays, on and on. Everything comes back to one point: I’m fantastic, everybody else is a dog and you can be like me if you try hard. And as we see, this has appeal. He had huge followings on Twitter/X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and everything else and was making a lot of money from selling pornography and many other crimes. The message of domination is wildly exciting and irresistible, anything can be sold if it’s tied to the single idea: “This will get you up the hierarchy.” At the same time, it is dangerous and wantonly destructive. Nazi doctrine said:

We’re superior, the Slavs are inferior. We have hardly any land which means we can’t assume out rightful place in the world. They have vast areas of land that they don’t know how to use, therefore we have the right to take it from them, eliminate half of them and build an empire to last a thousand years.

As a result, they launched their attack on the USSR, killing anything up to 35million people in the process and destroying all industry and agriculture over huge parts of Eastern Europe. Hitler had no trouble selling this to the German public; they weren’t keen on his move against Czechoslovakia but once the victories started to roll in, they joyously jumped on the bandwagon. Similarly, Rubio is comfortable pushing the idea that broke Cuba (pop. 9million) is an “existential threat” to the nuclear-armed US (pop. 350million) and has to be throttled.

You can always sell the idea of dominance, even if you have to tell a few lies to do it. In July, the US State Dept. issued a 100 page report entitled: Cuba: the Capital of 21^st Century Communism (not Beijing? They’ll be so disappointed). From beginning to end, it’s a pack of lies so juvenile that its authors must have been laughing as they wrote it but Rubio approved it and critics have been labelled “front groups and fellow travellers.” It has nothing to do with the reality of Cuban politics or intentions, and everything to do with the rage of a man who would kick a puppy to death because it wet on the floor. There is no reason or rationality in any of what we see going on in the world today. The boiling chaos is not, as Mearsheimer claims, due to individual countries trying to exert control in order to calm their neighbourhoods. Instead, it is entirely due to one country and a few of its vassals trying to dominate the world just because they like the idea.

Next question: Why do they want to? Why is it so important to be Number One in everything? Let’s assume they get their wish and one day, we have a universal pax americana where we all walk around in jeans, eating hot dogs and moaning along with Tammy Wynette. What then? How will everybody’s lives be improved? Will there be better novels, better music, better food? Will everybody be healthier with better education and longer holidays? I don’t think so. If the standard of living of the ordinary American is anything to go on, the rich will be richer but we, the common herd, will all be worse off. They should look at the example of Japan, which decided it would push the whitefellas out to build a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Fifteen years and 20 million deaths later, they realised it wasn’t possible so they got to work and quickly became the world’s second largest economy. Same thing happened to the Germans, they did very well once they got over their Aryan obsession. Why doesn’t domination work? Because while a few people want to be dominant, everybody else doesn’t want to be dominated and will fight to be free. That’s elementary but the idea of winning is woven into the very fabric of our lives, it colours everything we do. It starts very early in life, in kindergarten or even with “beautiful baby” competitions, and although it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction, it never stops voluntarily. Just ask the Germans and Japanese.

Will there ever be a world kept in quiet order by the self-appointed World Policeman, Uncle Sam? No, I don’t think that will ever happen, for two reasons. First, the other 97% of the world aren’t going to accept a subordinate role. That path leads to and creates the anarchy that Mearsheimer described as inevitable. Second point is that the present world order is teetering on the brink. The US economy is heading downhill fast. With his tariffs, Trump has nearly bankrupted their agriculture, and Chinese retaliation means their high tech industry is running into the sand. Don’t be fooled by all the activity building data centres, the equipment they need to put inside them comes from China and they’re not playing the game. Across in the Gulf, the petromonarchies are in serious financial trouble and are under deadly warning that if the US resumes its attacks, Iran will destroy their water and power supplies. If that happens, the monarchies will be overthrown in a few days. In Europe, Ukraine is a lost cause; German industry is on the ropes; France and Italy are in more financial trouble than usual and Britain continues its post-imperial decline. Meantime, the Japanese economy has just been bailed out by the US but it’s not getting any better; Pakistan is sliding toward civil war; Bangladesh can’t afford fuel to run its power grid; in Indonesia, the deeply corrupt and criminal president, Prabowo, son-in-law to the late dictator, Suharto, is spending far more than the country earns ... So much for the rules-based international order. When people don’t follow the rules, disorder follows, just as Hobbes said.

Is there a simple solution to all these woes? No. Is there any solution? Yes, we need to get rid of the notion that we can’t be happy unless we’re Number One. The world is now too small for any person or group or nation to strut around saying: “We’re the boss, you have to do as we say.” Changing that requires that people understand the urge to dominate is driven by mindless hormones, that it has no rational basis and, left unchecked, is most likely to lead us to catastrophe. The Doomsday Clock sits at 85 seconds to midnight but do you think people like Trump and Musk and Tate and Netanyahu and all the gang give a shit about that? No, all they can think of is, as Tate said, if you’re not No. One, you’re nobody. The researchers who studied Tate’s influence over social media concluded:

These findings underscore the oft-unspoken reality that patriarchy is not just about men’s control of women and non-binary persons, but men’s control over other men.

I don’t know why they doubted that: international behaviour is simply individual psychology writ large. Dominance is in our nature, and it starts with getting rid of the competition.

Reference:

1. Love TP, Prskalo E, Maloney ME (2025). Hatespeech or Tatespeech? Andrew Tate and the rise of the radical misogynist. New Media & Society 28(9) 4860-4881. DOI: 10.1177/14614448251374158

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My critical works are best approached in this order:

The case against mainstream psychiatry:

McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. at https://bookshop.org/ (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).

Development and justification of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At https://bookshop.org/

Clinical application of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At https://bookshop.org/

Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:

McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At https://bookshop.org/

The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.