As Horney pointed out, child-prodigy is dehumanized and instrumentalized. His parents love him not for what he really is - but for what they wish and imagine him to be: fulfilment of their dreams and frustrated wishes. The child becomes vessel of his parents' discontented lives, a tool, magic brush with which they can transform their failures into successes, their humiliation into victory, their frustrations into happiness.

The child is taught to ignore reality and to occupy parental fantastic space. Such an unfortunate child feels omnipotent and omniscient, perfect and brilliant, worthy of adoration and entitled to special treatment. The faculties that are honed by constantly brushing against bruising reality - empathy, compassion, a realistic assessment of one's abilities and limitations, realistic expectations of oneself and of others, personal boundaries, team work, social skills, perseverance and goal-orientation, not to mention ability to postpone gratification and to work hard to achieve it - are all lacking or missing altogether.

The child turned adult sees no reason to invest in his skills and education, convinced that his inherent genius should suffice. He feels entitled for merely being, rather than for actually doing (rather as nobility in days gone by felt entitled not by virtue of its merit but as inevitable, foreordained outcome of its birth right). In other words, he is not meritocratic - but aristocratic. In short: a narcissist is born.

Not all precocious prodigies end up under-accomplished and petulant. Many of them go on to attain great stature in their communities and great standing in their professions. But, even then, gap between kind of treatment they believe that they deserve and one they are getting is unbridgeable.

This is because narcissistic prodigies often misjudge extent and importance of their accomplishments and, as a result, erroneously consider themselves to be indispensable and worthy of special rights, perks, and privileges. When they find out otherwise, they are devastated and furious.

Moreover, people are envious of prodigy. The genius serves as a constant reminder to others of their mediocrity, lack of creativity, and mundane existence. Naturally, they try to "bring him down to their level" and "cut him down to size". The gifted person's haughtiness and high-handedness only exacerbate his strained relationships.

In a way, merely by existing, prodigy inflicts constant and repeated narcissistic injuries on less endowed and pedestrian. This creates a vicious cycle. People try to hurt and harm overweening and arrogant genius and he becomes defensive, aggressive, and aloof. This renders him even more obnoxious than before and others resent him more deeply and more thoroughly. Hurt and wounded, he retreats into fantasies of grandeur and revenge. And cycle re-commences.

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Mistreating Celebrities - An Interview

Granted to Superinteressante Magazine in Brazil March 2005

Q. Fame and TV shows about celebrities usually have a huge audience. This is understandable: people like to see other successful people. But why people like to see celebrities being humiliated?

A. As far as their fans are concerned, celebrities fulfil two emotional functions: they provide a mythical narrative (a story that fan can follow and identify with) and they function as blank screens onto which fans project their dreams, hopes, fears, plans, values, and desires (wish fulfilment). The slightest deviation from these prescribed roles provokes enormous rage and makes us want to punish (humiliate) "deviant" celebrities.

But why?

When human foibles, vulnerabilities, and frailties of a celebrity are revealed, fan feels humiliated, "cheated", hopeless, and "empty". To reassert his self-worth, fan must establish his or her moral superiority over erring and "sinful" celebrity. The fan must "teach celebrity a lesson" and show celebrity "who's boss". It is a primitive defense mechanism - narcissistic grandiosity. It puts fan on equal footing with exposed and "naked" celebrity.

Q. This taste for watching a person being humiliated has something to do with attraction to catastrophes and tragedies?

A. There is always a sadistic pleasure and a morbid fascination in vicarious suffering. Being spared pains and tribulations others go through makes observer feel "chosen", secure, and virtuous. The higher celebrities rise, harder they fall. There is something gratifying in hubris defied and punished.

Q. Do you believe audience put themselves in place of reporter (when he asks something embarrassing to a celebrity) and become in some way revenged?

A. The reporter "represents" "bloodthirsty" public. Belittling celebrities or watching their comeuppance is modern equivalent of gladiator rink. Gossip used to fulfil same function and now mass media broadcast live slaughtering of fallen gods. There is no question of revenge here - just Schadenfreude, guilty joy of witnessing your superiors penalized and "cut down to size".

Q. In your country, who are celebrities people love to hate?

“This Place is Terrible”

By Robert Bruce Baird:

INSPIRATIONAL COMMENTS:

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

Bucky Fuller said these most important words in 1981: ‘The U.S.A. is not run by its would-be 'democratic' government. All latter can do is try to adjust to initiatives already taken by [the] great corporations. Nothing can be more pathetic than role that has been played by President of United States, whose power is approximately zero. Nevertheless, news media and most over-thirty-years-of-age U.S.A. citizens carry on as if president had supreme power.’

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” - Albert Einstein

"The Lord Buddha has said that we must not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor rumors, as such; nor writings by sages, because sages wrote them; nor fancies that we may suspect to have been inspired in us by a Deva (that is, in presumed spiritual inspiration); nor from inferences drawn from some haphazard assumption we may have made; nor because of what seems an analogical necessity; nor on mere authority of our teachers or masters. But we are to believe when writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness. ‘For this,’ says he in concluding, ‘I taught you not to believe merely because you have heard, but when you believed of your consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly.’” - Secret Doctrine, Vol. III, page 401. [vii]

“We have it in our power to begin world over again.” -- Paine, Common Sense, 1776.

INTRODUCTION: